Dialectical Irony. Literary Form and Sociological Theory

Abstract

Throughout her life Hannah Arendt sought to define a mode of thought and discourse that would not lend itself to the instrumental manipulation of human beings, but would of its own nature be illuminating and liberating. Having lived close to the barbarization of reason in Nazi Germany, yet committed still to the Enlightenment ideal of the power of reason in the world, Arendt's work explores the relationship between thought and politics and expresses the hope that a humanizing form of reason could be discovered to support a humanizing political practice. This essay is a contribution to Hannah Arendt's project. In it I advance dialectical irony as a literary mode of sociological theory, a form of intellectual action that can help liberate us from the one dimensional thought of conventional sociology and of oppressive social conditions. After discussing the background of irony, I show how it came to be seen as a uniquely dialectical trope, one that demands participation and completion by its publics and that, in so doing, enlightens them. I then suggest that sociological theory, when it is good theory, illuminates its audience and its subject matter with dialectically ironic insights. I conclude that such a mode of awareness is appropriate not merely for social scientists, but for all who presume to intervene in the conduct of human affairs, that is, for all true citizens of modern states.