Irony makes the world new by putting the world that exists in question. Its strength lies in its destabilizing power—it is the politics of art, the art of politics, and the language of dissent. By enabling critical representations of the world as it is known, but from within and against the familiarity of our own expectations, irony gives art and discourse special kinds of access to the public sphere, especially by mining beneath the given, the actual, and the known. A talk from Pierre Schoentje, Universiteit Gent, presented in French.

Part of the series The Art and Politics of Irony presented by the Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas.