Book excerpt: What is it about irony - as an object of serious philosophical reflection and a literary technique of considerable elasticity - that makes it an occasion for endless critical debate? This book responds to that question by focusing on several key moments in German romanticism and its afterlife in twentieth-century French thought and writing. Rather than provide a history of irony, it examines particular occasions of ironic disruption, thus offering an alternative model for conceiving of historical occurrences and their potential for acquiring meaning.