Irony in Action Anthropology, Practice, and the Moral Imagination

The first group of essays explores the limits to irony's liberating qualities from the constrained use of irony in congressional hearings to its reactive presence amid widening disparities of wealth despite decades of world development. The second section presents irony's more positive dimensions through an array of examples such as the use of irony by Chinese writers and Irish humorists. Framed by the editors' theoretical introduction to the issues posed by irony and responses to the essays by two literary scholars, Irony in Action is a timely contribution in the contemporary reinvention of anthropology.Irony, no longer simply a figure of speech, is increasingly viewed as an integral and pervasive force that shapes our understanding as well as our behavior. This idea of irony as one of the major modes of human experience is at the center of this provocative book. The result of a meeting where anthropologists were invited to explore the politics of irony and the moral responsibilities that accompany its recognition, this book looks at both the positive and negative aspects of irony and lends an anthropological perspective to this contemporary phenomenon, both within anthropology and without.BR