Guingrich, r. e.

Irony is a tool that opens up a black hole in space that cultivates a tumultuous, dynamic relationship between information giver (or source) and information seeker. In terms of a simple definition, irony is saying what you don’t mean, and in literature, irony refers to an author making a purposefully inaccurate statement, oftentimes for the sake of communicating a larger truth. The rhetoric of irony is an integral part of my research philosophy, and here’s why.

In order to figure out what someone, like the author of what you’re reading, means, you can’t just assume that they mean the opposite of what they said if they’re being ironic. This is because there is not a binary relationship between what is said and what is meant in irony – there is no one “what they really meant” for every “what they said ironically.” This is where the void opens: for every ironic statement are infinite possible intended meanings. By saying what they don’t mean, the author opens up a void of possibilities from which to choose. What the author of the ironic statement meant may exist at the center of the black hole of infinite possibilities, and in the process of tip-toeing around the black hole to find the intended meaning, you the reader may venture too close to an unintended alternative meaning and get sucked into the wrong side of the hole. Approach it from another angle too closely, and you arrive at a different side of the black hole and disintegrate before arriving at the true center.

In some use cases of irony, the author’s intent is to have the reader arrive at a particular point, at that center. With other uses of irony, the author’s intent is to have the reader engage in a dance around the periphery without ever getting too close to one point. Through this dance, the reader accumulates many possibilities of what the author meant, and this opens a void of potentials that forces the reader to think critically and expansively about the meaning behind the statement. Consequently, a dynamic, tumultuous-but-intimate relationship between the author and reader is created: now, the reader may attempt to understand the perspective of the author, or find themselves thinking more about the context in which the author made that statement. What personal biases or perspectives did the author make this statement through, and what period of history influenced the author? What perspective of their readers did the author have when wielding irony instead of being direct? All these questions fuel irony’s unquenchable fire and its strength as a literary tool.

If someone told you “This thing ‘A’ is red” unironically, you would have nowhere to go but there. A is red. (Let’s assume this is a truth.) The author has given you factual information, and you read “‘A’ is red” and don’t have to do any critical thinking to arrive at the truth about A. Now, what if the author of a statement said, “This thing ‘A’ is not red.” Well, maybe then A is blue, black, green, white, or even fuchsia. Maybe A is not even a color. Now, the task of understanding what the author meant is vastly more complicated than when the author was being unironic, straightforward, and truthful (or rather, “factual”). I hesitate to call irony untruthful, because sometimes, irony is closer to the truth than a factual statement. Irony can be more truthful because irony yields critical thinking via relating author to reader to other information that requires interpretation, and this more accurately reflects how the world works. With many topics, this is the closest form of truth in making statements, because irony reflects the complicated nature of truth, in that truth is relative, subjective, and inherently relational. One person’s truth may be another’s lie, so by engaging irony, the relativity of truth from each person’s perspective is opened up for evaluation, and a dynamic between the author and reader is formed.

Irony became one of my favorite rhetorics thanks to a course on religious studies, philosophy, and literature that I took my junior year in undergrad at Indiana University (taught by Prof. Cooper Harriss). We examined uses of irony in literature from Jane Austen’s novels to the christian bible, attempting to uncover meaning by examining when and why irony was used, the perspectives and intentions of the authors, and the history and context of the writing. I became enamored by the infinite void of possibilities that irony cultivated, and appreciated irony’s nod toward subjectivity and relativity and its playful but powerful dismissal of the idea of absolute truths.

I like to apply the dynamics of literary irony to my work. Irony and its consequences are central to my approach. A large part of my research is sitting and thinking, collecting a wealth of questions that pop up in my mind even when I’m not actively seeking them, and being critical about the information and ideas I produce and consume. There are infinite ways of approaching the big question mark that is human-AI interaction and its social consequences, which exists under an even bigger question mark that is human social dynamics. Other colleagues of mine have raised these important considerations for psychological research on people: We exist in a vast web of complicated interactions and environments and individual differences, and to claim from our piecemeal research that we have something akin to an answer or truth is, well, unironic (in being ironic).

I have many questions I want answers to, but I’m not exactly seeking big, capital-T “Truths.” I know I won’t find those, and that’s in large part because I don’t believe they exist (and how wonderful is that!). When thinking about human-AI interaction and its social consequences and doing research on the relationship between machines and humans, I enjoy swimming around in the void. I’m simply a seeker, with the whole world and all its information and nuances being the giver. It’s comforting to exist in the realm of endless possibility, because this realm is chaotic, which makes it all the more intriguing and worthwhile to explore.