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{"id":992,"date":"2009-08-03T01:33:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-03T01:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2009\/08\/992\/"},"modified":"2009-08-03T01:33:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-03T01:33:00","slug":"992","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2009\/08\/992.html","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

ANTI-IRONY CHARMS: Some rambling thoughts on \u201csincerism\u201d and why it\u2019s no fun.<\/strong> So a couple times here I\u2019ve growled at sincerism<\/a>, without ever telling you what it is! Which\u2026 is certainly not the sincerist way, so props for consistency, but I do think at some point I might <\/em>explain myself. Here are some partial notes.<\/p>\n

Sincerism means\u2013probably among other things\u2013requiring a sincere, authentic<\/a>, honest accounting of one\u2019s thoughts and emotions. It opposes irony, misdirection, self-protection (which, to be fair, I also oppose in most cases!), exaggeration, agent-provocateur<\/em> behavior, unspoken understandings, WASPish complicity in one another\u2019s secrets, and your mouth writing checks your ass can\u2019t cash.<\/p>\n

Think of it as American newspapers\u2019 claim to \u201cobjectivity,\u201d by which we mean mainstream conformity, vs. European newspapers\u2019 tabloid partisanship. Think of it as realism vs. \u201cgenre<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sincerity, as a mode, has its good points. If anything, I think I tend to be much <\/em>more sincere than I should be! The world does not care about the sparklyhearts authenticity of my feelings; nor does it really need every idea chewed into obviousness and pablum. But there are times when withholding sincerity from another person is prideful and\/or cruel. If they need you to say, blatantly and without regard for your own self-image, \u201cI love you,\u201d or, \u201cI think you\u2019re amazing,\u201d you should do that. You don\u2019t always have to disclaim it or quote it (\u201cI\u2019ve known you longer than anybody<\/em>, Eddie, and anything <\/em>you do is all right by me\u2013can I borrow the car?\u201d) or make them work for it.<\/p>\n

But here are just a few of the many<\/a> problems with sincerism.<\/p>\n

* It\u2019s a genre which thinks it\u2019s the whole of art; it\u2019s a perspective which won\u2019t acknowledge its contingency.<\/strong> If I speak in aphorisms or jokes or provocations, I am actually conveying something about both myself and my view of the truth, just as much as if I *~*bared my heart*~*. <\/p>\n

* It\u2019s the privilege of those whose beliefs are basically mainstream to think that \u201crealism\u201d and sincerity are good ways of conveying the truth.<\/strong> Only those whose experiences and interpretations line up with mainstream culture can be guaranteed that their sincere heart-baring tales will be believed<\/em>; and they\u2019re the ones for whom this language of sincerity was made. To take the boringly obvious example, if I want to talk about Gay Catholic Whatnot, I need to somehow entice or bully straight people (and non-Catholics, for that matter) into learning my <\/em>language; I can\u2019t convey what I need to say in theirs. And I strongly suspect this is also true of other kinds of privilege, which is why Invisible Man<\/em> is one of the greatest American artworks ever created.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s never joking all the way down.<\/p>\n

* Sincerism is the opposite of camp.<\/strong> Camp, as far as I can tell, only works if the thing parodied has some real emotional and personal resonance. Camp is never loveless or rationalist. Sincerism divides the world into \u201cserious\u201d and \u201coh but you don\u2019t really <\/em>mean that\u201d\u2026 when our actual hearts and lives are much more conflicted, complex, and complicit than that.<\/p>\n

If I can think of more to say, I\u2019ll say it; and I do apologize for the deeply sincerist nature of this post! It\u2019s a Mobius strip of ridiculous.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"