"The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed, "then" what do we do?"
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Wallace is pointing at irony's hangover: it can expose the con, but it can’t tell you what to build after the con is exposed. The line has that familiar DFW move of doubling back on itself - “diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed” - as if even the act of naming the sickness becomes another symptom. It’s funny in a bleak way: we’re so good at analysis that we start analyzing the analysis, and the loop feels like progress while it quietly replaces action.
The intent is less to dismiss irony than to indict its cultural monopoly. In the late-20th-century American moment Wallace was writing out of - post-Vietnam distrust, post-Watergate cynicism, a media ecosystem trained on selling and unmasking - “debunking” becomes a default posture. The rules of art get treated like PR; sincerity reads as naivete; any earnest claim is preemptively undercut by a wink. Irony’s power is negative: it dismantles authority, deflates bullshit, punctures sentimentality. Wallace grants that. His worry is what happens when the only shared language left is demolition.
The subtext is a moral dare. If you can’t hide behind inherited “rules,” and you can’t get your dopamine hit from seeing through everything, you’re left with the embarrassing, risky work of choosing values and making something that might fail without the shield of snark. “Then what do we do?” isn’t a rhetorical flourish; it’s the question irony tries to avoid, because answering it requires commitment, and commitment can be laughed at. Wallace is asking for a post-ironic adulthood: art brave enough to propose, not just expose.
The intent is less to dismiss irony than to indict its cultural monopoly. In the late-20th-century American moment Wallace was writing out of - post-Vietnam distrust, post-Watergate cynicism, a media ecosystem trained on selling and unmasking - “debunking” becomes a default posture. The rules of art get treated like PR; sincerity reads as naivete; any earnest claim is preemptively undercut by a wink. Irony’s power is negative: it dismantles authority, deflates bullshit, punctures sentimentality. Wallace grants that. His worry is what happens when the only shared language left is demolition.
The subtext is a moral dare. If you can’t hide behind inherited “rules,” and you can’t get your dopamine hit from seeing through everything, you’re left with the embarrassing, risky work of choosing values and making something that might fail without the shield of snark. “Then what do we do?” isn’t a rhetorical flourish; it’s the question irony tries to avoid, because answering it requires commitment, and commitment can be laughed at. Wallace is asking for a post-ironic adulthood: art brave enough to propose, not just expose.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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