Post-Ironic Existentialism

后反讽存在主义

• 批准号: 2599854
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: CARDIFF UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2599854
• 关键词: Post; Ironic; Existentialism

AbsurdityLife's absurd. Whenever we have to make a decision in life, we can only depend upon what we value from our particular circumstance. Acknowledging this contingency, there is no absolute reason to suppose that we should undertake this project rather than another. Meanwhile, we have to choose. Even if we fail to do so, this amounts to an implicit decision against action and toward passivity. The absurdity of life, in other words, stems from a conflict between the contingency of reasons and the necessity of choice.How should we respond to this existential absurdity?TragedyHistorically, many philosophers and literary authors, such as Albert Camus and Fyodor Dostoevsky, have evaluated the Absurd in predominantly bleak terms. They have centered the experience of the Absurd around, for example, anxiety, despair or nausea, calling for an equally earnest response. It is a tragedy - and it should be approached as such. For, if we cannot but desire that there be absolute reasons to rely on, then our reality, in which those reasons are lacking, can only result in disappointment.IronyHypocrisy, according to Thomas Nagel, is at the heart of this evaluation, for if there is no ultimate foundation to our reasons, then there exists no such foundation for the negative valuation of this condition either. Rather than raising one's fist to the sky, Nagel proposes a form of humorous irony. This enables one to act as if one's reasons had an unshakeable foundation, with an implicit supposition that there is none.Since the second half of the twentieth century, irony has burgeoned as a trait of postmodernity, visible from Jeff Koons' Überkitsch sculptures, Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five to nihilistic internet memes and parodies in Saturday Night Live. It is a sensibility very much present in our age - and for good reason. Irony can, for instance, relativize hardship, circumvent taboo, and undermine dogma. Meanwhile, authors like Dave Eggers and David Foster Wallace have expressed dissatisfaction with the ironic approach to life, focusing on the lack of engagement and affirmation as well as the tyrannical potential of irony. Parallel to this critique, they have suggested an alternative: post-irony.Post-ironyThrough the ironization of irony itself, post-irony synthesizes the ironic and the sincere. It is the sincere expression of value with ironic undertones, thus acting as if the expression or action is not meant sincerely, while it in fact is. Take, for example, someone who is head over heels and says to her lover "I love you so much", accompanied with ironic signals like exaggerated intonation and gestures of quotation marks. The expression is likely intended as suggesting an absence of infatuation with her companion - a suggestion employed ironically, through which the actual intention of the speaker is to say that she does love her lover. The relatively novel and unexplored potential of post-irony provokes the central question of this research: to what extent can it be justified to respond to the absurdity of life with post-irony? There are several reasons why post-irony might offer a viable response. Without abandoning commitment, post-irony contests the grounds for that commitment, thanks to its ironic signals. It stays true to the fact that one is radically free to do otherwise, by suggesting alternative readings of one's utterances or actions. Still, the indirect sincerity, established through post-ironic subversion, stresses the necessity of commitment in the face of absurdity. One of the problems, however, is that indirect sincerity may approximate good faith, more than plain irony, but it remains further away than direct sincerity.

AbsurdityLife是荒谬的。每当我们在生活中必须做出决定时，我们只能依赖于我们所处的特定环境所看重的东西。承认这种偶然性，没有绝对的理由认为我们应该承担这个项目而不是另一个。同时，我们必须做出选择。即使我们没有这样做，这也等于暗含了反对行动、走向被动的决定。换句话说，生活的荒谬源于理性的偶然性和选择的必要性之间的冲突。我们应该如何回应这种存在主义的荒谬？历史上，许多哲学家和文学作家，如阿尔贝·加缪和费多尔·陀思妥耶夫斯基，都用凄凉的语言来评价荒谬。他们把荒诞的体验集中在焦虑、绝望或恶心等方面，要求同样认真的回应。这是一场悲剧——我们应该这样对待它。因为，如果我们不得不渴望有绝对的理由可以依靠，那么我们的现实，缺乏这些理由，只能导致失望。讽刺的是，根据托马斯·内格尔的说法，虚伪是这种评价的核心，因为如果我们的理由没有最终的基础，那么对这种情况的负面评价也就没有这样的基础。内格尔提出了一种幽默的讽刺形式，而不是向天空举起拳头。这使得一个人的行为，好像他的理由有一个不可动摇的基础，与隐含的假设，没有。自20世纪下半叶以来，反讽作为后现代主义的一种特征迅速发展，从杰夫·昆斯的Überkitsch雕塑、菲利普·格拉斯的《海滩上的爱因斯坦》、库尔特·冯内古特的《五号屠宰场》到《周六夜现场》中的虚无主义网络表情包和模仿都可以看到。这是我们这个时代非常普遍的一种情感——而且是有充分理由的。例如，讽刺可以使困难相对化，避开禁忌，破坏教条。与此同时，戴夫·埃格斯（Dave Eggers）和大卫·福斯特·华莱士（David Foster Wallace）等作家表达了对讽刺生活方式的不满，他们关注的是缺乏参与和肯定，以及讽刺的暴虐潜力。与这种批评并行，他们提出了另一种选择：后讽刺。后反讽通过反讽本身的反讽化，将反讽与真诚结合起来。它是一种带有讽刺意味的真诚的价值表达，因此表现得好像这种表达或行为不是真诚的，而实际上却是真诚的。例如，某人神魂颠倒地对她的爱人说：“我非常爱你”，并伴随着夸张的语调和引号手势等讽刺信号。这个表达很可能是暗示她对她的伴侣没有迷恋——这是一个讽刺的暗示，通过这个暗示，说话者的实际意图是说她确实爱她的爱人。后反讽的相对新颖和未开发的潜力引发了本研究的中心问题：在多大程度上，用后反讽来回应生活的荒谬是合理的？后讽刺或许是一种可行的回应，原因有几个。后反讽在不放弃承诺的情况下，凭借其讽刺的信号，对这种承诺的依据提出了质疑。它坚持这样一个事实，即一个人完全可以自由地做其他事情，通过对自己的话语或行为提出不同的解读。然而，通过后讽刺颠覆建立起来的间接真诚强调了面对荒谬时承诺的必要性。然而，其中一个问题是，间接的真诚可能更接近真诚，而不是纯粹的讽刺，但它仍然比直接的真诚更远。