After the tragedy of 9/11 in the West and the crisis of socialism in the East, the overriding ironic tone that had pervaded the 80s and 90s has begun to withdraw from the aesthetic and socio-political scenes. The last decades have witnessed an increasing celebration of affects and emotions, a return of authenticity and the real, and the birth of a “new sincerity”. This backlash against ironic alienation or “cynical reason” hopes to replace playfulness, shallowness and negativity for an ethos of commitment, sensitivity and integrity. Nevertheless, these attempts could easily turn out to be rhetorical or ironic. The present book seeks to address, on one hand, the impulse of and the resistance to irony in today’s artistic, cultural and political discourses and practices. On the other hand, given that ironic attitudes and expressions in late modernity are anticipated in German idealism, constituting as such a Romantic possibility, we welcome reflections on modern irony at large.

Following on from the 4^th Graduate Conference in Culture Studies, Irony: framing (post)modernity, held in January 2014 at the Catholic University of Portugal, we would like to prompt a reflection on the problem of irony in modern and contemporary culture.

Argument

After the tragedy of 9/11 in the West and the crisis of socialism in the East, the overriding ironic tone that had pervaded the 80s and 90s has begun to withdraw from the aesthetic and socio-political scenes. The last decades have witnessed an increasing celebration of affects and emotions, a return of authenticity and the real, and the birth of a “new sincerity”. This backlash against ironic alienation or “cynical reason” hopes to replace playfulness, shallowness and negativity for an ethos of commitment, sensitivity and integrity. Nevertheless, these attempts could easily turn out to be rhetorical or ironic.

The present book seeks to address, on one hand, the impulse of and the resistance to irony in today’s artistic, cultural and political discourses and practices. On the other hand, given that ironic attitudes and expressions in late modernity are anticipated in German idealism, constituting as such a Romantic possibility, we welcome reflections on modern irony at large.

Some of the key questions we wish to tackle are: how does irony become political? Can it build a community? How does it affirm the subject (e.g. in post-structuralism)? How does it provide a model of opposition to the status quo or, instead, how does it neutralize critique? How does it become an aesthetic principle and what are the strategies that this entails or, instead, how does it perform deaestheticisation? What kind of relation can the ironic and the tragic have? Are there historical moments that can be nominated “ironic”(e.g. post-modernity)? What are the post-ironic alternatives?

In this volume, Michele Cometa (University of Palermo) will address the theory of irony in Schlegel and Paul de Man, and its potential for culture analysis, Jorge Fazenda Lourenço (Catholic University of Portugal) will analyse irony’s political overtones in Jorge de Sena’s poetry and Philip Auslander (Georgia Institute of Technology) will discuss irony in the performative arts.

Submissions guidelines

We invite contributions to be sent to the editors, Elsa Alves & Ana Dinger (irony2014@gmail.com),

until the 1^st of March 2015.

Authors are encouraged to write an article specifically for the volume. However, it is also possible to draw on already published work, adapting this to address the volume theme.

Articles need to be written in English and language editing is the responsibility of the authors.

The texts will be selected according to their relevance regarding the goals set out for the volume, originality of scope and theoretical framing.

Articles will need to be max. 20 pages in length, Times New Roman 12, including bibliography. For more information see the style sheet.

Please attach a short bio-bibliographical text (c. 150 words).

Deadline for submissions is 1^st of March 2015. The organizers will return their decision by the end of April 2015.

For further information

• http://irony2014conference.wordpress.com/
• http://cecc.fch.lisboa.ucp.pt/en/

Scientific Committee

• Isabel Capeloa Gil – Catholic Univesity of Portugal / CECC
• Peter Hanenberg - Catholic Univesity of Portugal / CECC