Irony and self-parody as the era's only safe carapace
echoes
From: Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race in the Urban Present
- Early text: D. on how the pair finally got access to the Scene: "using the only fail-safe cultural carapace of the late ’80s, reliable old self-parody" [d-2a:p11] [e-text]; and on white money-talk: whites learned "to speak openly about American Dream as financial fantasy… especially to do so with irony, where the late-’80s eye-roll and elbow-nudge can keep a screen of self-mockery between Us and any genuine expression of self" [d-3g:p8]
- IJ echo: EUP's institutionalized-irony argument (the essay IJ executes) and IJ's hip-cynicism material — the anhedonia chapter's cynicism-as-mask, AA's ban on irony; see e-unibus-pluram.
- Weight: prefiguration