The Problem With Irony

Less irony, more poetry

Irony is generally defined as a figure of speech that consists in saying something different — usually the opposite — of what one thinks, or feels, and wants to be heard. Irony may fuel satire, a type of indirect wit that is meant to mock human vices or faults, with the intention of conveying across society a norm opposed to an unsatisfactory state of affairs, for people to sit up, think, and question the status quo.

Irony is not easily defined, nor spotted — we usually sense it without being able to clearly describe it — and if we’re not careful enough it can quite easily become a vehicle for nihilism, shouting obvious condescending fatalism, overplaying disillusioned negativity, and merely masking some opportunistic cynicism. Irony as a means of confronting reality may well lead to a means of avoiding it, as if the courage to be serious, even with humor, has become too unsettling to be confronted even indirectly.

Irony may often turn into parody, solely intended to provide comic relief, while pretending to some trendy self-mockery, multiplying meta pirouettes, contradictory discourses, and where we finally lose all bearings. Leveraging on its more or less socially acceptable way to express hostility, irony may even become plain sarcasm, mocking others with contempt, and it then feels more like some bitter passive-aggressive expression of defeat than some courageous inspiration for change. And when sarcasm becomes a common lens to look at the world and depict the perceived absurdity of the present, it tends to indulge us in hollow tales that point finger with anger, offering nothing new on what they address, and resemble more and more to what they’re laughing at. As we’re trying to reassure ourselves that we’re on the right side of the fence and not one of those we’re laughing at, the only ambition becomes to make fun of easy targets, to be entertained and flattered under the false guise of subversion, while we bath in the soft comfort of easy indignation.

Instead of persevering ever further with irony, as if it were the only way to survive in the midst of the world’s irrationality, perhaps it’s time to explore other disruptive practices to create meaningful expressions to face the pretensions of a narrow world.

To prevent from drowning in irony, let’s learn to play with it without rejecting it, by opening ourselves to other poetic mechanisms. Let’s explore words and the way they resonate within us, not just the common and over-used ones, the unsettling and rebellious, but also the vintage, the less easily pronounced and even the almost invented, how they influence sentences about the present, how they guide us and alter the rhythm of our moods, and let them open up new paths into uncharted territory.

Applying the principle of deviation, as irony has taught us to do, leveraging the catalytic power of constraints, let’s move beyond getting cynical, angry, and upset. Let’s reconnect to a way of being that enables us to remain creative and resourceful. Daring to expand our perspectives, let’s aspire to reopen space for imagination and playfulness. Through language, let’s evoke the imaginative awareness of experience, and rediscover and embrace the vast power of poetic metaphors, focusing on the details, bringing out the meaning of the particular to approach the universal.

In an attempt to foster agency, creativity, personal leadership, and empathy, providing the energy that holds human beings together, let’s not be shy to welcome again poetry in our lives, that vital feature of human communities that has accompanied us since memory first began to express itself.

Let’s embrace poetry as a means of exploring obliquely the world to which we belong, to uncover the unthought and express it through a continuous, creative and semantic process, an existential practice that plays out the adventure of meaning “between center and absence” (to quote the title of a poem by Henri Michaux), to foster the collective elaboration of meaning, decision-making and implementation of action.