In these days of earnest despair, self-description seems to come too easily, while irony is in short supply. Irony, according to the OED, is ‘the expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect [. . .] the use of approbatory language to imply condemnation or contempt’. Its association with condemnation and contempt makes it all the less surprising that earnest attempts to know one’s true self flourish while irony seems to have died a thousand deaths. Irony’s most recent death occurred around the turn of the present century. In 1999, for instance, the legal scholar Jedediah Purdy, then a recent graduate of Harvard University, went in search of ‘common things’ in response to ‘an ironic time’. For Purdy, ‘irony has become our marker of worldliness and maturity. The ironic individual practices a style of speech and behavior that avoids all appearance of naivet e—of naı̈ve devotion, belief, or hope’ (1999: xi). Purdy saw the possibility of community in a move away from irony, from detached knowingness. Sounding a bit like a ghost from the mid-nineteenth century haunting Y2K modernity, Purdy offered sincerity as a corrective to irony. If in 1999 there was too much irony, just two years later, in the wake of 9/11, we were being told that irony was dead, and that its death was a source of fleeting joy in the midst of catastrophe. As Roger Rosenblatt (2001), writing in Time Magazine, put it, ‘One good thing could come from this horror: it could spell the end of the age of irony’. If we follow Purdy, Rosenblatt and company, to have social relations, intimacy and real political and ethical hope we must do away with the tyranny of irony. Then, presumably, in the world absent irony we will find our true selves, honest ways of being in common and authentic solidarity. Yet, as we reach, sometimes too haltingly, sometimes too forcefully, for new political subjectivities to navigate the ongoing crises of the twenty-first century, we would do well to think about the politics of irony, or the irony of the political

中文翻译：

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历史，讽刺，身份

在这些极度绝望的日子里，自我描述似乎来得太容易了，而讽刺却供不应求。根据 OED 的说法，反讽是“通过使用通常表示相反的语言来表达一个人的意思，通常是为了幽默或强调效果[。. .] 使用肯定的语言来暗示谴责或蔑视”。它与谴责和蔑视的联系使得人们不那么惊讶地发现，真正了解自己真实自我的真诚尝试蓬勃发展，而讽刺似乎已经死了千人。Irony 最近的死亡发生在本世纪之交。例如，1999 年，刚从哈佛大学毕业的法律学者 Jedediah Purdy 去寻找“共同的事物”以回应“讽刺的时代”。对于珀迪来说，“讽刺已经成为我们世俗和成熟的标志。具有讽刺意味的个人的言谈和行为风格避免了天真——天真的奉献、信仰或希望”（1999：xi）。珀迪（Purdy）从讽刺和超然的认识中看到了社区的可能性。听起来有点像 19 世纪中叶困扰 Y2K 现代性的幽灵，Purdy 用真诚来纠正讽刺。如果在 1999 年有太多的讽刺，仅仅两年后，在 9/11 之后，我们被告知讽刺已经死了，它的死是灾难中转瞬即逝的欢乐的源泉。正如罗杰·罗森布拉特（Roger Rosenblatt，2001 年）在《时代》杂志上所写的那样，“这种恐怖可能带来一件好事：它可能预示着讽刺时代的终结”。如果我们跟随珀迪、罗森布拉特和公司，建立社会关系，亲密关系和真正的政治和道德希望，我们必须消除讽刺的暴政。然后，据推测，在没有讽刺的世界中，我们会找到真实的自我，诚实的共处方式和真正的团结。然而，当我们到达时，有时过于犹豫，有时过于有力，新的政治主体无法驾驭 21 世纪的持续危机，我们最好考虑反讽的政治，或政治的反讽。