Irony can function as a performed disavowal of one’s own actions
Evidence
Look at Williams: his whole body is afflicted with reflexive tics, an egoarmoury of grimaces, gurns and grins designed to disavow any action even as he performs it. He is the “as if” pop star — he dances as if he is dancing, he emotes as if he is emoting, at all times scrupulously signalling — with perpetually raised eyebrows — that he doesn’t mean it, it’s just an act. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1200
Categorization
- XREF: The ‘as if’ performer echoes earlier chapters on glam’s parodic embrace of status signs and the self-foregrounding of style over sincerity. — connects to: Some persons embody pure negation while irony posits and denies within one act.; Self-criticism becomes performative ritual rather than operative change — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 951; A person can act virtuously and inhumanely at once while preserving self-image — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 530 (+1 more)
- CANDY: Robbie Williams as ‘the as-if pop star’ who dances as if dancing, emotes as if emoting, signalling he doesn’t mean it — a compact image of total irony.
Broader Connections
- Some persons embody pure negation while irony posits and denies within one act.
#expands(0.85) - Self-criticism becomes performative ritual rather than operative change
#expands(0.80) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 951 - Expressions of narrow self-interest are rhetorical performances rather than literal self-reports
#expands(0.78) — Nina Eliasoph, “Close to home”, 3 - A person can act virtuously and inhumanely at once while preserving self-image
#expands(0.75) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 530