Understanding Irony in International Politics

The purpose of this chapter is to carve out a suitable definition of irony as a discursive strategy that can be recognised and analysed in the study of international politics. This book treats irony as a discursive strategy that provides a tool to articulate and cope with perturbing incongruities that are observed on the international level. These incongruities are often hidden or otherwise in the margins, buried in the language that articulates the ideal. Irony highlights that there is a gap between the ideal and the actual, but that the gap is not adequately recognised or acted upon in international politics. The chapter first reviews different definitions of irony to find a relevant framework upon which to build our understanding of irony. It shows that irony in international politics articulates various incongruities that come from different ideological directions, which means that irony is never the sole property of one ideological orientation. Instead, irony is employed by a wide range of political actors, which is reflected in the typology developed in this book.