Illness and Irony

Theories of illness and therapy since Freud have included the possibility that sufferers are complicit in their conditions. The studies in this volume explore the ways in which illness and therapy may be characterized as sites at which ironies of the human condition are produced, encountered, acknowledged – or discounted in favor of more literal readings. They ask what these sites can teach us about questions of human agency and about the broader importance of irony for theory.

Encompassing a variety of perspectives, the contributors included in Illness and Irony apply theories of irony to a myriad of cultural contexts, ranging from Freud’s consulting room and the Lacanian clinics of Buenos Aires to fright illness in a Yemeni village and spirit possession on the island of Mayotte. An introductory chapter by Michael Lambek establishes a contextual viewpoint on irony, arising from the writings of Thomas Mann, Alexander Nehamas and others. Vincent Crapanzano concludes the volume by linking the contributions to current debates about irony in rhetoric, linguistics and comparative literature.

Michael Lambek is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto at Scarborough. He is the author of two books and numerous articles on the Malalgasy speakers of Mayotte, in the western Indian Ocean where he has conducted research since 1975. More recent work includes A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion. Together with Paul Antze he edited Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory. Lambek is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and president-elect of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion.