The meme's iceberg: Post-irony, neo-decadentism and archetypal imagination

Abstract

This essay offers a symbolic and imaginal analysis of digital memes through the meme/metaphor of the iceberg. Structured in five layers of depth—from communicative use to archetypal expression—it argues that memes operate as condensers of affects, language, and cultural complexes. Drawing connections between post-ironic aesthetics, neodecadent sensibility, and the collective unconscious, the text proposes that memes are not mere vehicles of humor, but symbolic devices that reactivate narratives, traumas, and contemporary myths. As rhizomatic images, they stage psychic ambiguities and paradoxes, functioning as liminal figures between the collective and the singular, the banal and the sacred, laughter and grief. Memes thus emerge as performative artifacts of our cultural sensibility.