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Academic Abstract: Famous Performances examines the complications and struggles that people face attempting to maintain a sense of authentic humanity in the twenty-first century. Through various performances, the collection deals with how human-made phenomena like popular culture, technology, and consumer society, to name a few, affect identity formation, complicating the ways in which the self, as well as the world of today, is both similar and remarkably distinct from the world of only fifteen or twenty years ago. These stories run the gamut of the above mentioned interests, including a story about a television writer and his sister, a performance artist, who tour the country, acting in a bizarre, improvisatory show together, while debating the merits of commercial versus avant-garde art; as well as a story about a wealthy and emotionally unstable man who grapples with his famous activist mother's death, when her face is printed on a commemorative coin. General Abstract: Famous Performances is a short story collection that attempts to investigate the complexities of the modern world and the importance of performance in people's everyday lives. Each story dramatically examines a particular type of performance and its effects on people's inner and social lives. The characters in this collection are grappling with the various ways performance is presented to us in modern society, through technology, the media, pop culture, social media, and more. Throughout the collection the reader is forced to confront their own iterations of authenticity and performance. / MFA

The following thesis outlines Hegel’s interpretation of Socrates in order to prove that as a negative dialectician, Socrates constitutes both a world historic personality who met a fate (Schicksal) which was tragic and practiced a philosophy which was tragically ironic. In this undertaking, Hegel’s Theory of Tragedy takes central importance which defines tragedy as two equally justified opposing forces which clash and destroy one another. This Theory of Tragedy is extended to show that through Socrates’ absolutely free will he brought himself to a tragic clash with the Athenian Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), the Sophists’ arbitrary will, and the phenomenological will of uneducated Athenians. This clash is described in terms of a Hegelian Tragedy within which both Socrates and Athens were right and just in their actions against one another, but in the end were destroyed through those actions. His Method and Dialectic is then argued represent a negative dialectic which through the negation of negativity becomes positive as a midwifery of the consciousness. Next, because his Method and Dialectic begin in negativity and end in positivity, Socratic Elenchus is argued to not be representative of what has been termed “the Socratic Irony,” but instead only the negative moment of the Socratic Method. Finally, the Socratic Irony which Hegel argues is representative of both Socratic Philosophy and world history is defined as a Tragic Irony which sublates the finite consciousness of the phenomenological will, and the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), and the infinite arbitrary will of the Sophists in order to become a trans-subjective absolutely free will which becomes infinite itself like the Sophists’ will through reflection on the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Western Sydney, Macarthur, [Faculty of Education], 1997. / Bibliography: p. 219-226.

In my study on Barbara Pym's novels, the focus is first on the two basic ironies in love-marriage relations: irony of dilemma in which marriage is seen as the end of romantic love; and irony of situation in which excellent but plain-looking women are deprived of the chance to express their basic need for love. Chapter I of this study introduces the major themes and ironies in Pym's novels and the nature and functions of her irony. The following six chapters examine the two major ironies in six of Pym's twelve novels: Some Tame Gazelle, Excellent Women, Jane and Prudence, Less Than Angels, A Glass of Blessings, and A Few Green Leaves. While discussing the uniqueness of each of Pym's heroines, I also explore how Pym underwent changes in her views of love and marriage and how she attempted to keep a balance between her romanticism and her sense of irony. Pym's other six novels are discussed in Chapter VIII, the concluding chapter.

This dissertation explores the use of irony in networked wearable technology art as a strategy to emphasise the complexity of conjunction between techno-organic human and the techno-organic world. The research addresses the relationship between technologically enhanced human and networked hybrid environment, and speculates on the impact of technological enhancements to the subjective construction of Umwelt through ironic interventions. The project employs both artistic practice and critical theory. The practice-based part of the dissertation is comprised of three wearable technology artworks produced during the study. These concrete artefacts employ irony as a means to expose the techno-organic relationship between humans and their environment under scrutiny. The works highlight the significance of technological modifications of the human for the formation of subjective worldview in an everyday hybrid environment. The theoretical part navigates between the fields of art, design, technology, science and cultural studies concerning the impact of technology and networks on human experience and perception of the world. In the background of this research is biologist Jakob von Uexküll’s concept of the Umwelt, which is a subjective perception created by an organism through its active engagement with the everyday living environment. This dissertation focuses on the Umwelt that is formed in an interaction between hybrid environment and the technologically enhanced human, the Hybronaut. 4 Hybrid environment is a physical reality merged with technologically enabled virtual reality. The Hybronaut is an artistic strategy developed during the research based on four elements: wearable technology, network ability, irony and contextualised experience for the public. Irony is one of the prominent characteristics of the Hybronaut. Irony functions as a way to produce multiple paradoxical perspectives that enable a critical inquiry into our subjective construction of Umwelt. The research indicates that ironic networked wearable technology art presents an opportunity to re-examine our perception concerning the human and his environment.

L’ironie dialogique, favorisée par plusieurs genres littéraires à l’époque des Lumières, est-elle un simple produit de l’esprit du temps ou l’adjuvant tactique nécessaire au progrès des idées ? Sous l’enjouement et le bel-esprit conversationnel des ironistes, comment ne pas discerner le masque rhétorique et ludique d’un examen critique qui, de l’esthétique à la morale et aux mœurs, n’épargne aucun domaine de l’autoréflexivité ? La thèse se place dans cette perspective en observant qu’au-delà de la topique narrative et fictionnelle, au-delà de la satire sociale et psychologique, les cibles cachées des ironistes sont souvent des paravents intellectuels forgés au siècle précédent : la défense raffinée du statu quo par la morale de l’honnêteté et la civilité de la politesse ; l’abstraction du commerce des sexes au moyen du langage de l’amour galant et des bienséances internes et externes; la quête du sublime tragique censé gratifier le sacrifice héroïque du bonheur au devoir d’état ; la comédie comique des vices individuels occultant le débat sur les vices institutionnels, etc. / The rhetorics of Irony in Enlightenment’s written dialogues are no mere by-products of the then prevalent social mode of conversational interplay. Their careful perusal indicates that Irony and Humour were instrumental in the vast reshuffling of moral values, religious and political obedience, aesthetic codes, social behaviours that are a legacy of the period. This dissertation focuses on the four main literary areas where dialogical Irony plays an active role in textual topics: parody, comedy, philosophical dialogue and libertine novels. The hypothesis here offered is that ironic subversion is mostly aimed at mental and behavioural compliances made consensual during the Classical period, i.e.: politeness and “honesty” as paramount signs of social fitness; exaltation of the dramatic sublime as benchmark for excellence in Tragedy; allegory and propriety in the written rendition of love-making; linkage of social hardships to individual violation of Christian rules and not to collective/institutional failures; etc.

For the purpose of this study, Poe's tales were read and considered carefully in chronological order, the idea being to discover growth and development. Poe's literary career was relatively brief (1832-1849), and there are no dramatic or definite breaks or periods. Though his production shows growth in sophistication and artistry, it has been deemed more instructive to group Poets first-person narrators according to the part they play in the story, that is, (1) main actor or protagonist, (2) minor character, (3) observers and (4) combinations of the foregoing three. An attempt will be made to note both variation and pattern, and hence artistic skill, in Poe Is handling of each particular type of narrator.

Against the backdrop of a possible US military attack on Iran, this report examines a film that advances the case for independent political reform from within Iran’s borders. The case study analyzes the cultural and political instrumentality of satire in Kamal Tabrizi’s film, The Lizard (2004). By determining the socio-political restrictions that inform Iran’s society and film industry, it demonstrates that The Lizard uses satire to transgress the value-system that the Iranian theocracy is upheld by. The study draws on narrative analysis to explore the film’s satiric devices of parody and masquerade and discusses their significance in creating new images of clergy that combine to build an alternative reality to the one portrayed in mainstream Iranian media. The report argues that this utopian space undermines the established order by redefining or rejecting the terms and dichotomies communicated through its official channels.

As Memórias de um Sargento de Milícias são reconhecidas pela crítica especializada como um marco na literatura nacional, pelo êxito que tiveram em tratar de forma cômico-irônica das circunstâncias socioculturais do Brasil da primeira metade do século XIX. Ao tecer seus elogios à obra, não é incomum que os críticos comparem seu autor com Machado de Assis. No entanto, as comparações costumam se restringir a comentários genéricos, sem o escrutínio analítico. Assim, o presente trabalho de pesquisa parte do questionamento sobre os pontos de convergência, similaridades e diferenças entre os autores. Notamos que ambos recorrem ao humor, à caricatura e à ironia em seus textos e que estes elementos estéticos servem a propósitos satíricos em suas obras. Portanto, buscamos analisar, a princípio, como estes componentes se manifestam nelas. No recorte comparativo, optamos por analisar a novela O Alienista no cotejo com as Memórias de um sargento de milícias, uma vez que é nesta obra machadiana que o humor, a caricatura e a verve satírica se encontram mais destacados. Sendo ambos os textos satíricos, tratamos de determinar quais os estilos deste gênero a que se filiam, o que os define, como se manifestam nas obras estudadas, quais são os objetos de motejo e de que modo são escarnecidos. Finalmente, examinamos se estes textos se prestam ao julgamento e à condenação moral da conduta de suas personagens, se são distanciados e como se dá esse distanciamento. / Memórias de um Sargento de Milícias are acknowledged by specialized critics as a milestone in Brazilian literature, for the novel was greatly successful in tackling the socio-cultural circumstances of the first half of the 19th Brazil in a comic-ironic way. When complimenting this work, it is not uncommon that critics compare its author to Machado de Assis. However, these comparisons tend to be restricted to general comments, without the analytical scrutiny. Thus, this research work questions at first how these authors are similar and converge and what differs them. We have noticed that both recur to humor, caricature and irony in their texts and that these aesthetic elements lend themselves to satire. Therefore, our starting point is to analyze how these aspects manifest in their narratives. We have opted, as a research focus in relation to Memórias de um Sargento de Milícias, to analyze O Alienista, once this is the narrative by Machado de Assis in which humor, caricature and the satirical verve outstand the most. Being both texts satirical, we set out to determine which style of this genre they abide by, what defines them, how they manifest in the narratives studied, what the objects of mockery are and by what manner they are derided. Finally, we examined if these texts engage in moral judgements and condemnation of their characters, if they are detached and how this detachment takes place.