Justice-Seeking Irony

This chapter sets out to introduce and analyse the first form of irony discussed in this book, justice-seeking irony. The chapter shows that justice-seeking irony is a self-critical articulation that challenges the liberal vocabulary, which represents ‘us’ as heroes and ‘them’ as enemies. In the post–Cold War era, justice-seeking irony has been employed by self-proclaimed liberal democrats who are disappointed that the ideal of liberal democracy has not been achieved in practice. These ironic articulations specifically emphasise that we pretend to be a normative power but act like a colonial power, which underlines our complicity in the suffering of distant others. However, our self-image as a normatively triumphant political community prevents us from seeing this incongruity. Irony is used not only by citizens but also by political actors to make this hidden weakness visible and to push the collective liberal democratic self to narrow the gap between the ideal and the actual. The chapter shows that there is a therapeutic function in justice-seeking irony as it is used to cope with the painful recognition of our evil in international politics.