zeitgeist-bound syndrome

from IM with apropos (hope you don´t mind I am reproducing this, B!)

pasapropos: hey i guess you haven't seen the new cartoon 'american dad'
LafemmNica: um...no...
pasapropos: it was on after the superbowl yesterday, i think it was
the first episode
pasapropos: by the poeple who do 'family guy'
pasapropos: it's weirdly subversive and not at the same time
LafemmNica: ooh!
LafemmNica: I LOVE family guy
pasapropos: the dad works for the cia and is a paranoid republo-freak
LafemmNica: nice
pasapropos: and he sets up boobie traps all over the house to catch bin laden
LafemmNica: !!!
LafemmNica: oh my god that sounds amazing
pasapropos: it's weird
LafemmNica: I HAVE to see it
pasapropos: they must have balanced things pretty well to get it on
after the superbowl
pasapropos: but you know, he's got a long-hair hippie feminist liberal
daughter, and she's the butt of most of the jokes
LafemmNica: ahh
LafemmNica: lovely
pasapropos: "do you like shaving your armpits, missy? cuz that'll be
the FIRST TO GO if the terrorists win"
LafemmNica: *eye roll
LafemmNica: or maybe it´s funny
LafemmNica: I don´t know!
LafemmNica: I think I have a new condition
LafemmNica: it´s, like, I can´t tell if I am being ironic or not
LafemmNica: and also I can´t always tell if I am being real-ironic or
Alanis-ironic
pasapropos: haha
LafemmNica: it´s a Zeitgeist disorder
LafemmNica: a temporal version of a culture-bound syndrome^*
LafemmNica: a disorder that is a neurolinguistic consequence of
weltschmertz in the context of total postmodernism
LafemmNica: like some weird aphasia or variation on aphasia

I have thought about it and I think ironiagnosia is a good diagnosis. The first representation of ironiagnosia in pop culture occurred in that episode of The Simpsons, you know, with Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins / Homer Simpson, smiling politely. With the disaffected teenagers. I think this also relates to Gregory Bateson´s largely linguistic-based definiton of schitzophrenia as a condition where the subject cannot differentiate between "real" and "metaphoric." An analogous collapse of "framing" happens to me (and probably to you) daily as I read The Associated Press and then The Onion and find that not only am I incapable of telling the difference, but also the same perception/comprehension centers in my brain are mobilized to process both of them. It´s like rods and cones have become redundant in day vision vs. night vision, or the same taste buds started registering sweet and sour. It´s a consumption disease (haha! consumption!), but with time it advances to regurgitation, which is what happens when I make with the ironic and then pause, thunderstruck, all my modernism totally prolapsed, unsure if I meant it. I remember how it started, and I remember how it progressed

STAGES OF IRONIAGNOSIA:

STAGE 1

Familiar categories are becoming fluid. You think of a joke. Your reaction is: "it´s not funny anymore, it´s just true." (a particularly prescient QED may be found here)

STAGE 2

You are propelled into a world where everything is perfectly and demonically equivalent to each other. There is no qualitative difference between The New York Times, The Onion, The Daily Show, CNN, your granfather´s grumbling, the Tom Skerritt TV special "Homeland Security," the neü-tro desktop cuckoo clock and your own hysterical interior monologue. Everything is data. You feel like Data. Second-order nuances have been bled out of semiotic consturctions. You feel like an Oliver Sacks patient.

STAGE 3

The equivalency of everything is preserved but revivified with zombie irony juice. Everything is the same and everything is ironic. Zombie irony is not the sharp, incisive coping mechanism you are used to. It is a slow-moving total eclipse that eats your brain. It´s un-irony (pronounced, Nacirema-style, as "ooni-roni"). This is not a sustainable phase, and eventually it breaks, like a fever, at which point you proceed to

STAGE 4

This is the chronic stage. Your categories of perception and epistemological tentacles have been demolished and rendered useless, respectively. You are like one of Pavlov´s Pets destabilized by a lack of correlation between stimulus, reward and punishment. You are like a passenger in the NYC subway a week after 9/11 when the train suddenly stops in the tunnel and the lights go out and you check the faces of your fellow passengers to see if you should be scared, and they are checking your face. You can´t assign a proper mental emoticon. You cry more. You become an asshole. Reality feels like you are trapped in one continuous neverending calculus problem and you failed precalculus. You hear something and you are not sure whether it´s ironic or not. You say something and you are not sure whether it´s ironic or not. Your interlocutor is infected by your ironiagnosia and so it reproduces, like a discursive retrovirus, unstoppable as ice-9, a narrative-bound disaster of a fiction that shook off its fictional status like a lizard leaves its tail behind.


^*Culture-bound syndrome is a term used in psychology and medical/psychological anthropology referring to a nuanced symptom cluster that is repeatedly observed within specific cultural contexts. It is also sometimes referred to as "folk illness." As in, "Smile darn ya smile/that´s all folks!" Repressive desublimation is a culture-bound syndrome characteristic of Late Capitalism at the End of History. Also next week we will discuss blogorrhea as an epiphenomenal metasyndrome.

[On Edit: in the interests of metonymy please also see Pimp: The Backhanding. Please pay attention to both

THE DESCRIPTION
Forget growing up to be a fireman, cop or doctor. Join the profession so highly regarded for its virtues — become a pimp! Mack some ho’s and put them to work. Make the biggest roll of dough and be declared the Mack-Daddy. Just watch out for other pimps as they try to put a beatdown on you and your ho’s. A ho in the hospital don’t earn you no dough!

and

THE DISCLAIMER
Please note: Arthaus Games does not condone or support the illegal sex trade industry. Pimp is a fictional game about the humorous stereotypes created by television and film and is in no way representational of the true horrors of the sex trade. If you would like more information on organizations focused on Women’s Rights and support groups, please visit: http://www.amnestyusa.org/women/ ]