Postmodernist irony

I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s very difficult for Anglos to grasp postmodernism. Like everything in life, this comes as a surprise to me. I think the greatest difficulty they have with it is the irony. I recently listened to a short snip of a presentation, in video format, where Richard Dawkins makes a fool of himself quoting Luce Irigaray without any context. I mean quite literally, he had not bothered to look up a single sentence, even in a Wikipedia article, about why she wrote in that way. He reads from a book condemning postmodernism as unscientific and silly, followed by a text that isn’t trying to be scientific, but is an ironic critique of Lacan’s mystical and mystifying patriarchal pretensions and pseudo-science. His Hitler Youth audience then cheer him on as a great exposer of “feminism”, as if the text he read had actually been some silly drivel from some sophomore’s lips — that is, something actually and legitimately without context.

If the poor thing (Dawkins) had read anything about Irigaray, not just an isolated segment of one of her texts, he would have found that she is self-consciously Nietzschean, which means she desires to kill the old spirit of patriarchy by evoking laughter — although not the uncomprehending idiotic laughter that comes from Dawkins and his disciples:

http://www.literaturepage.com/read/thusspakezarathustra-202.html

[the old gods] did not “begloom” themselves to death–that do people fabricate! On the contrary, they–LAUGHED themselves to death once on a time!
With the old Deities hath it long since come to an end:–and verily, a good joyful Deity-end had they!
That took place when the unGodliest utterance came from a God himself–the utterance: “There is but one God! Thou shalt have no other Gods before me!”–
–An old grim-beard of a God, a jealous one, forgot himself in such wise:–
And all the Gods then laughed, and shook upon their thrones, and exclaimed: “Is it not just divinity that there are Gods, but no God?”
He that hath an ear let him hear.–