ABSTRACT
Critics of irony in (post)modernity point to what they perceive to be its corrosive impact upon democratic life and politics. Irony, they argue, promotes frivolity, ambiguity, elitism, and dissemblance, undermining political debate and damaging both the ironist and his or her polity. Turning to the work of the American Nobel Laureate for literature, Bob Dylan, this essay seeks to rehabilitate irony by showing how it can function as a democratic pedagogy: cultivating a commitment to contingency and a critical ethos appropriate to a political system in which almost everything is up for discussion. Against the backdrop of Attic comedy and Ancient political thought, it traces the role and function of irony in Dylan’s work, from his first album in 1962 to his pseudo-documentary with director Martin Scorsese in 2019.
