Introduction: Irish–Scottish Crosscurrents: Towards an Archipelagic Subaltern Aesthethics

Notes Introduction: Irish–Scottish Crosscurrents: Towards an Archipelagic Subaltern AesthEthics 1. For a detailed engagement with Levinas in relation to and through the literary, see Robbins (1999). See also Kearney (2002). 2. While Ireland’s current economic woes indeed ‘poke a hole’ into Salmond’s ‘arc of prosperity’, as Iain Gray, the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, suggests, Alan Cochrane (2010: n.p.) notes that instead of evoking Ireland, Salmond nowadays responds by substituting ‘Norway as the country he would much rather discuss’. See also Alex Salmond (2010) interviewed on ‘The Andrew Marr Show’. 3. See, for example, Jim Smyth (2005) for a nuanced comparative analysis of Irish and Scottish unionism before and after 1921. See also Walker (1995). 4. See Edward Said’s (1984: 16–20) distinction between filiation and affiliation as taken up by Kelly (2005a: 15), who argues that the way in which national (and, by extension, postnational) ideologies are constructed around filiative, supposedly natural forms of relationships (whose paradigm is the family), is designated to obscure the complex web of affiliations that exist along the lines of class, gender, etc. 5. For a detailed study of Gramsci’s conception of the state, see Buci- Glucksmann (1980). 6. For an astute critique of Spivak’s (mis)reading of Marx, see Larsen (2002). 7. In a later interview, Spivak (in Landry and MacLean 1996: 292) has explained that the dire conclusion of her essay refers to its implication in a speech act, which consists of both ‘speaking and hearing’. That means, according to Spivak, ‘that even when the subaltern makes an effort to speak, she is not able to be heard’. 8. Admittedly, Graham (2001: 110) does not relate this to Spivak’s conception of the subaltern, but instead uses her own arguments to criticise this purity. 9. Derrida’s initial serious engagement with Levinas was in his 1964 essay ‘Violence and Metaphysics’ (1978). The influence of Levinasian ethics on Derrida’s thoughts comes especially to the fore in his later works, such as Specters of Marx (1994) and Archive Fever (1995), which will be discussed in Chapters 2 and 4, respectively. See also Derrida’s Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas (1999), which was written in the light of Levinas’ death, for a moving and radical rereading of the latter’s work, in particular on the possibility of both an ethics and a politics of hospitality. 10. This perceived ‘turn to ethics’, which resonates through numerous publica- tions, is indeed a return to one of the founding branches of philosophy, dating back to the early Greeks. See, for instance, Marchitello (2001); Davis and Womack (2000); Garber et al. (2000). Many critics consider the Paul de Man affair in the late 1980s – concerning his support of Nazism in his 190 Notes to Chapter 1 191 early career – as a crucial factor for bringing ethics back on a deconstructive agenda (see Harpham 1995: 389–90). 11. Levinas’ notion of ‘the Other’ is usually capitalised in the translations of his work; however, it is not always the case. When referring to the singular Levinasian ‘Other’ I shall henceforth apply this spelling, but generally use lower case. 12. I base this definition on the spatial metaphoric inherent in the Greek word ethos, which denotes, as Nedra Reynolds (1993: 327–8) notes, in addition to its meaning as character (commonly within or in relation to a community or polis, but also of an age, a society or culture), ‘an accustomed place’. In ‘Ethos as Location’, Reynolds (325) accordingly argues for understanding ethos as ‘one’s place or perceived place in the world’. 13. This notion of ‘mapping’ is conceived in affiliation with Fredric Jameson’s (1988: 353) concept of ‘cognitive mapping’, which he extrapolates from Kevin Lynch’s description of the mapability of cityspaces to ‘the realm of social struc- ture’ through Louis Althusser’s formulation of ideology as ‘the Imaginary repre- sentation of the subject’s relationship to his or her Real conditions of existence’. For an incisive critique of some of the masculinist assumptions underpinning Jameson’s concept from a feminist perspective, see Kirby (1996). 14. Kelly (2009: 86) astutely exposes the telling contradictions upon which Docherty’s aesthetic democracy is based: namely that art becomes here a privileged – as indeed exceptional – site in which ‘genuine democracy’ hap- pens. This in itself is an oxymoronic negation of the most fundamental principle of democracy. 15. The term ‘imagiNation’ draws on Benedict Anderson’s (1983) understanding of the nation as an ‘imagined community’. Hence, it suggests that the imagined nation is generated by a specific national imagination, which, in turn, motivates and substantiates the political movement of nationalism. 16. The coinage ‘herstory’ expresses the gender specificity of historical experience and has thus distinctly subaltern as well as feminist credentials. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term denotes the kind of history which emphasises ‘the role of women or [is] told from a woman’s point of view’. 1 (D)evolutions? Transformations in the Scottish, Irish and Northern Irish ImagiNation 1. In the Scottish context, these debates revolve around Scotland’s parliamen- tary union with England in 1707, whereby it maintained not only autonomy over key institutions such as church, law and education, but also started to play a significant role in the British imperial project itself. For a refutation of designating Scotland’s historical relation with England as colonial, see, for example, Connell (2004). On whether and how Ireland can be considered as a colony, see Cleary (2002; 2007). 2. See also Anderson (1983: 33f.), Brennan (1990) and Jameson (1986), amongst others. 3. In the field of postcolonial studies, the entanglement of postcolonialism in a postmodern discourse has generated a hefty debate. For an important attempt 192 Notes to Chapter 2 to dissociate these terms, see Appiah (1991; 1992: 137–57). For an astute critique of the postmodern turn of the postcolonial more generally, see Ahmad (1995). 4. The codification of the feminine as a national symbol will be elaborated on in Chapters 5 and 6. For a, in my view, rather problematic argument about the female figuration of Ireland as a clandestine means of resistance under colonialism, see Gibbons (1996: 18–22, 129–33). 5. The term ‘Celtic Tiger’ was coined in 1994 by Kevin Gardiner of the Morgan Stanley investment bank in London to characterise Ireland’s nascent economic boom in comparison to the ‘tiger’ economies of South-East Asia (see Coulter 2003: 3). 6. The notion of Ireland reinventing itself stems from Rory O’Donnell and has influenced a recent collection of essays, Reinventing Ireland (Kirby et al. 2002: 1). 7. This argument is inspired by Patrick Williams’ and Laura Chrisman’s (1994: 12) innovative usage of Benjamin with regard to postmodernism and postcolonialism. 8. For the context of the Celtic Tiger, see Kirby (2002); Allen (2000); for the context of New Labour (as illustrative for Scotland), see Monbiot (2000); and for specifically Scotland-related policies after devolution, Mooney and Poole (2004). On class politics in Northern Ireland, see Coulter (1999). 9. Gardiner takes his title from the opening speech of Scotland’s new parlia- ment by Donald Dewar. 10. Lyotard (1988: xi) defines the ‘differend’ as ‘a case of conflict, between (at least) two parties, that cannot be equitably resolved for lack of a rule of judgement applicable to both arguments’. 11. The Northern Ireland Cultural Traditions Group has operated since 1990 as part of the Community Relations Council and has become a major funding body. On their work, see the collection of essays edited by Crozier (1989; 1990) and Crozier and Sanders (1992). For a discussion and critique by sev- eral academics (such as Edna Longley and Seamus Deane), see Lundy and MacPóilin (1992); see also Finlayson (1997). 12. The OED lists as its fourth definition of the ‘interregnum’: ‘A breach of continuity; an interval, pause, vacant space’. The period after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the ensuing collapse of the socialist project has been recurrently associated with an ‘interregnum’; see Cox et al. (1999). 2 ‘Buried in Silence and Oblivion’: Subaltern Counter- Histories in the Scottish–Irish Archipelago 1. I will discuss some the political implications of the impetus of Irish revisionism with regard to McCabe’s The Dead School in Chapter 3. Kiberd (2005a: 199), for instance, discusses the tendency towards ‘communal amnesia’ within revisionist rewritings of history. Generally speaking, the revisionist enterprise seeks to demythologise nationalist versions of history that have become a ‘burden’, as suggested, for example by F.S.L. Lyons’ 1978 lecture in Belfast (see Lyons 1994). However, the endeavour to revise the ideological distortions of certain events – such as the Easter Rising and the Battle of the Boyne, for instance – and produce a ‘value-free’ history has led to a sharp critique from many nationalist-oriented scholars. Notes to Chapter 3 193 2. On the literary tradition of Scottish and Irish Gothic, see, for example, Punter (2002b). 3. The irony refers here to the fact that his rather nationalist-inspired argument about Scotland’s statelessness conflates in this subtitle the concept of the nation with the political entity of the state. 4. Cited from David Hume, History of England. Volume 1 (London, 1834), p. 1. 5. The capitalisation of history, which I will occasionally use throughout this book, is intended to emphasise what Jameson (2002a: 66, 87–8) calls the ‘inexorable form’ of History, that is, the ‘historical or ideological subtext’ that underpins, challenges and disrupts literary productions as ‘the experience of Necessity’. 6. Derrida’s spectral politics and, specifically, his endeavour to reconcile decon- struction with Marxism have generated various responses, which are collected in Ghostly Demarcations (Sprinker 1999).

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