Irony Is A Trap Essay

Irony as a device and its political potential
“Is there any way to get hold of any corner of this large slippery subject (irony) with precision enough to allow two readers to agree and to know how they have agreed?”7
Irony is not an easy term to define within specific limits. The fact that the notion of irony has been extensively discussed and used in several fields in various ways is not accidental. Irony is used, inter alia, in various forms of art such as literature, performance art, theater, film, It is also frequently used in activism, politics and philosophy. Irony has been characterized as a rhetorical device, a philosophical tool, a narrative method and a political concept.8
As irony is not always used in a concrete way, it is more
In order to construct a ‘trap’, a multilayered study is required. The hunter has to be fully aware of their quarry’s behavior, its environment and accordingly he builds up a device that is ‘invisible’ (to the quarry) in order to capture it. The trap has to be camouflaged in order to merge with its surroundings and pass unnoticed by the animal. So the trap is a system composed of an expert, a disguised landscape and an innocent [ ?/innocent ‘victim’]. This resembles the schema of irony, as analyzed at the beginning of this article. The hunter and the ironists seem to share a methodology for constructing their devices: trap and irony. The authoritarian model is clearly common to both irony and trap in terms of the intention. However, there is a possibility of a successful outcome as well as an unsuccessful one. Whatever the outcome, what is the agency65 of the device ?

To answer this question, we have to turn to an anthropological approach to the notion of a trap. In his text “Vogel’s Net: Traps As Artworks” Alfred Gell explains66:
“a trap is a device that embodies ideas and conveys meanings (therefore, an artwork), since by its very nature it is a transformed representation of its maker, the hunter, and the prey animal, its victim and of their mutual relationship. The trap embodies a scenario as the dramatic nexus binding together the hunter and the victim, thus aligning them in time and space.67 The trap is a quintessential
Indeed irony is a social complex providing information about the people or sides involved and their social, political and cultural context. Analyzing the way irony happens (or not) and the gap between the intention of the ironists and the perception of the recipient could provide important information about their mutual relationship seen in their social context. So in that sense, irony could be perceived as autonomous in relation to this gap. The gap itself constitutes a gauge, testing the social relation between the ironists and the recipient(s) and their potential social dynamic. More specifically, irony as ‘trap’ could provoke a wide range of reactions: people could react with repugnance, neutrally or positively. In any case, this wide field of reactions could constitute a platform for survey/research, which could be perceived as indicative of these people’s social dynamics, tolerance and perception of the ongoing socio-political situation. To what extent could our socio-political awareness and standpoint be influenced by adopting the aforementioned perspective as a way of perceiving and dealing with the