What are the earliest examples of what we’d recognize as postmodern irony in the wild? (ie not academic theorizing, but in speeches, mainstream fiction, media etc)
I consider wrestling kayfabe to be a good modern representative example
Reference examples
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It's actually right up your alley. I think it is the rise of emergent complex technological systems that we think we created and have god-like agency over, but repeatedly confound our expectations of simple narrative causality.
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for sure. and the converse: we create subsystems that interact to produce unpredictable emergent behavior, but misinterpret the whole system's uncontrollability as indicating that we have no control of its component subsystems. bidirectional pomo irony.
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