ABSTRACT
Spaces of irony open out from within, and turn away from, the dominant public culture. They are to be found in media such as cartoons and literary works, as well as in everyday speech acts. Standard treatises on rhetoric inform their readers that the figure of irony consists in saying the opposite of what one really means. However, this commonplace definition is imprecise because irony comes about in a space between the said and the unsaid. It is hence a trope in which the border between said and unsaid is called into question. The ironic address becomes a site at which dominant truth claims are called to account. It is a rhetorical device which calls upon the audience to distance themselves from some commonplace notion. For the usual modes of interpellation an alternative idiom is substituted. This chapter engages with the strident discourses surrounding the execution of its first federal prisoner in four decades by the United States of America. The punitive subjects of this killing state are at present convoked through powerfully emotive images of national trauma, and promised closure through imposition of the death penalty. I demonstrate through analysis of some editorial cartoons how spaces of irony can effectively critique the state of unitedness of this vengeful 'America'.
