Irony As A Political Weapon : Diamonds And Dogs


Irony, in the Socratic sense of this term, is the adoption of an attitude of pretended ignorance when talking to a person so as to to allow her to present her views on a certain matter in a relaxed manner. In this blog, however, I use the term 'irony' in a more political sense to mean a device through which I pretend to accept some of the dominant self-images of my generation precisely to expose their inner contradictions. (And to the extent that I have made it clear how I understand and use this term, I am a Transparent Ironist.) For example, you will often find me arguing against 'tolerance' not because I am an intolerant bigot who believes that atheists should be burnt at the stake but because atheism itself may sometimes become a disguised version of intolerance. Again, I occasionally argue against relativism (the view that no trans-cultural dialogue is possible) not because I believe that European values can be readily universalised and exported to the colonies, but because relativism itself may masquerade as a subtle form of universalism. Irony can turn out to be an especially powerful weapon when discussing gender issues, and to see how it can subvert/invert some established dualities between 'masculinity' and 'feminity', consider the following nest of ironies about Diamonds and Dogs.

We are regularly told that diamonds are a woman's best friend. Perhaps so. But rarely are we informed that a woman who buys this dictum is also the best friend of the diamond merchant in whose factory underpaid women labour from morning till midnight. So here is the cycle : A diamond merchant, usually a man, sells the idea that it is cool for women to buy diamonds, and women fall for this trap and buy them little realising that it is yet another 'male conspiracy'. And what about the menfolk? Well, dogs definitely are men's best friends. Dogs are so awwwwww, so cuuuute, and so cho chweet; they are indeed the most beautiful thing that God ever created (except, of course, the men themselves). Someone called Madame de Stael even remarked that the more she saw of dogs, the more they reminded her of men. With such nonsense being hurled at them, can we blame men for complaining that life is a bitch?