The Rhetoric of Institutionalism: Thorstein Veblen’s Irony

Abstract

The article centers on the rhetoric of Thorstein Veblen, who combined economic, sociological and anthropological approaches in an organic way. The paper emphasizes the importance and heuristic significance of Veblen’s use of the trope of irony. An ironic stance buttresses his critique of the status quo and promotes an understanding of the socio-economic structure as complex, controversial and sometimes absurd. The article highlights the examples and themes that Veblen described with recourse to irony. Irony accompanies his criticism of the status quo, and it appears in his account of such phenomena as the leisure class, business culture, higher education, modern Western civilization as epitomized by America, and in his exposure of the postulates and hidden ideologies of mainstream economics.The author shows that Veblen’s followers took his irony as an idiosyncrasy typical for someone descended from Norwegian farmers, while the tropes themselves were usually unfavorably contrasted with serious research, i.e. that side of his heritage was regarded as a caprice that interfered with later recognition of Veblen’s merit. The article intends to demonstrate exactly the opposite by calling attention to irony in the social sciences and showing its significance for them. Irony as a negative and multifaceted characterization of reality better reflects the phenomena themselves with their inherent paradoxes and complexity. Irony assists us in keeping a proper distance from the intensity of a description and in revealing socio-economic processes with all their dynamics and contradictions. It is the ironic that makes Veblen’s heritage relevant after all.