Putting a Queer Shoulder to the Wheel: Irony, Parody, and National Devotion

This article surveys the ironizing and the parody of national devotions in the world today, as these rhetorical strategies refer to what we can think of as “anthem quality”—that soul-stirring effect that certain combinations of music and lyrics achieve, most typically in the service of national affiliation. Anthem parodies, anti-anthems, and antinational anthems are distinguished in order to understand the rhetorical nature of anthems and the alternative texts to which they give rise. Although anthems of the national kind are (like their religious predecessors) combinations of lyrics and music, the interest of this article is confined to lyrics and, in some cases, unaccompanied words, that relate ironically or parodically to national devotions and the affect inspired by them. This article considers how the parody of anthems and the ironizing of “anthem quality” may be an expression of devotion to nations with pluralist democratic traditions or pretensions.