Another note on postmodern irony

I read that one philosopher-blogger declared that everything he says is a joke. A declaration which would itself be a fairly predictable self-cancelling philosophical joke, no sooner made than evaporating in a question mark. Regardless, the remark reminded me of the empty, faux-ludic nihilism of contemporary ‘irony’ – serving no purpose, devoid of critical or satirical intent, endlessly putting its own speech in quotation marks and the world in brackets. Sometimes it poses as a Deconstructive provisionality, a radicalism so subtle & subjunctive as to leave things exactly as they were before; other times it is a paralysed mockery, its suspicion of seriousness, commitment or Causes merely the alibi of political compliance and withdrawal. (Such ‘philosophical’ versions are doubtless on a cultural continuum with the vacuous and smug sniggering of what k-punk calls Popism). The ‘ironical’ attitude, where it theorises, claims to be aware of contingency, limitedness, the possibilities of untruth. It claims to speak and act from a kind of meta-level. But this supposed meta-level is just one more stance within the world. Irony is no escape. And the only appropriate response to the endless reminders of contingency etc is ‘Well obviously, and..?’