Double-Talking: Essays on Verbal and Visual Ironies in Contemporary Canadian Art and Literature

Dennis Denisoff teaches English at McGill University and is the author
of Dog Years.

The work of Linda Hutcheon, the editor of this collection of essays, is
well known to most people who are interested in postmodernism and the
arts. The precise language, sharp insights, and clear use of examples
that characterize Hutcheon’s work are apparent again in this
collection. Her introduction establishes the basic definition of
contemporary irony that is used in most of these essays, while offering
some suggestions for further reading. It also ensures that nobody begins
reading the essays with the expectation that they will be led to a
definitive version of contemporary irony.

Since the concept of a nationally defined version of irony is dubious,
it is appropriate that the first essay in the collection is Jamie
Dopp’s “Who Says that Canadian Culture is Ironic?” While Dopp
reasserts Hutcheon’s claim that there can be no definitive Canadian
irony, he does argue that “‘irony’ has a place within the
‘dominant ideology’ of Canadian culture.” Though this may be the
case, most of the essayists who wrote for this collection chose to
analyze irony not primarily as a Canadian phenomenon, even if they used
texts written by Canadians for their examples. Instead, they generally
discuss irony as a sociopolitical strategy of infiltration and
contamination practiced by individuals who associate themselves with
oppressed groups, such as homosexuals, women, and racial minorities.

The fact that the text’s differentiation between postmodern irony and
earlier versions of the trope is cursory is not a major flaw, since the
collection is clearly not intended to be a study in the history of
irony. Double-Talking is an interesting collection of essays that
discusses contemporary uses of irony, and suggests various routes for
further analysis.