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The Republic THE REPUBLIC A JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY AND HISTORICAL DEBATE No 4 Spring 2005 Editors: Finbar Cullen Aengus Ó Snodaigh Published by the Ireland Institute, 2005 Copyright © The Republic and the contributors, 2005 ISSN 1393 - 9696 Cover design: Robert Ballagh The Republic aims to provide a forum for discussion, debate and analysis of contemporary and historical issues. Irish and international matters across a range of disciplines will be addressed. Republican ideas and principles will shape and inform the contents of the journal. Our aim is to serve a general rather than a specialist readership. The opinions expressed in the articles do not necessarily represent those of the Ireland Institute. Correspondence to: The Editors, The Republic, The Ireland Institute, 27 Pearse Street, Dublin 2 or e-mail [email protected] Visit the journal's web site at http://www.republicjournal.com Cover photograph by Robert Ballagh 1916 Monument at Arbour Hill, Dublin, with Proclamation carved by Michael Biggs Layout and design by Éamon Mag Uidhir Printed by CRM Design & Print, Dublin CONTENTS Editorial 5 In Praise of ‘Hibernocentricism’: Republicanism, Globalisation and Irish Culture 7 P. J. MATHEWS Multiculturalism, Secularism, and the State 15 TARIQ MODOOD Why France, Why the Nation? 31 JULIA KRISTEVA Cultúr an Phoblachtánachais faoi Léigear 46 TOMÁS MAC SÍOMÓIN The Cultural Turn versus Economic Returns: The Production of Culture in an Information Age 60 PASCHAL PRESTON Peadar O’Donnell, ‘Real Republicanism’ and The Bell 80 LAWRENCE WILLIAM WHITE Exploding the Continuum: The Utopia of Unbroken Tradition 100 RAYMOND DEANE ‘Our songs are our laws …’—Music and the Republic (Part 2) 116 PATRICK ZUK Debate Culture, Politics and Civil Society: The Role of the Critical Journal 133 ROY JOHNSTON The Contributors 151 CULTURE IN THE REPUBLIC (PART 2) EDITORIAL EASY ASSUMPTIONS about Ireland’s sense of itself and Irish exceptionalism have not stood up well to recent developments. If we believed that Ireland’s experience of colonisation and emigration had given us a special and benign outlook on the world, the great difficulties that have been encountered in making space for a relatively small number of immigrants have disabused us of our illusions. These illusions were based on another myth: the idea that problems in dealing with the ‘other’ were somehow unknown to the oppressed and colonised. Far from Irish society finding itself in solidarity with others who find themselves in predicaments that are familiar in the story that we tell ourselves about ourselves, there has instead been a willingness to turn our backs, block off loopholes, close doors, and wish that ‘they’ would just go away. If this generalisation seems unjust, there is much evidence to support it. The large majority who voted to restrict citizenship rights in the referendum; the seemingly innocuous assertions that we cannot have an open door policy; Mary Harney’s casual linkage of difficulties encountered by women returning to the workforce with competition from immigrants; the unshakable and mistaken belief that immigrants are taking jobs, housing, and opportunities from Irish people and receiving preferential treatment from government bodies; official policies that include dawn raids and mass round-ups, forced expulsions, and refusal of entry to our country—these are part of the story. They are not the whole story. In our society, we exploit immigrant workers, deny them rights and protections that our laws provide for others, pay them poorly and often below the legal minimum wage, deduct disproportionate sums for accommodation that is tied to work contracts, and grant work permits to employers not workers, thereby creating conditions for exploitation; we allow a young immigrant woman to lose her job, to lose her home, and ultimately to lose her legs; we expel the parents of Irish children from our country and are indifferent to the 6 EDITORIAL consequences for either children or parents; we segregate and discriminate against immigrants through government policies of dispersal and direct provision. The truth is that throughout our society there has been an ungenerous and narrow-minded approach to the minimal amount of adjustment that is needed to accommodate our new neighbours, friends, and fellow-citizens. But, it is not the purpose of The Republic to curse the dark, and the articles in this issue argue that other responses are possible. While the authors are aware of the realities and challenges, they suggest that we can move forward towards an exciting and positive future. P. J. Mathews argues that a republican vision can accommodate different cultures and that we should think in terms of cultural possibility rather than cultural conflict—he warns against the twin parochialisms of blanket embracing or rejection of tradition. Tariq Modood challenges republicans to go beyond policies of private freedom and public assimilation to recognition of the place of different groups within our collective culture and community. In a similar fashion, Julia Kristeva ‘dreams’ of a public space that upholds the general spirit but does not erase the reciprocal ‘foreignness’ of the different groups within society— one that neither neutralises difference nor ruptures the general spirit, but respects and unifies society’s different components. Larry White insists that for the republican ‘everything and everyone in Ireland is Irish’—while respectful of tradition, the republican vision does not recognise or privilege any essentialist cultural community. In all of these approaches, there is recognition of the choice between open and closed definitions of ourselves and of others; and recognition that how we define ourselves and others will have real consequences for the type of society we create and the lives of the people who inhabit it. The clear option is for an open approach, confident of our own place in the world, neither ashamed of our traditions nor afraid of opening them up to new influences, welcoming of newcomers, not expecting them to become like us or us like them, but that we may all change a little in our meeting and interaction. It will be to the benefit of everyone in Ireland to create this future and eradicate the shameful practices that have occurred in recent years. In Praise of ‘Hibernocentricism’: Republicanism, Globalisation and Irish Culture P.J. MATHEWS IN THE SPRING of 2004, RTÉ TV advertised a competition for an Irish family to take part in a new television history series and ‘to avail of an extraordinary opportunity to relive a chapter in Irish history’.1 The chosen family, according to the advertisement, would travel to Australia to take part in The Colony—a living history series, co-produced with SBS Australia, which would ‘recreate the experience of the thousands of Irish and British free settlers and convicts who were transported to New South Wales in the early 1800s’. At the time of writing, this series has not yet been made, but the prospect that it will appear on our television screens soon might prompt some reflection on issues of national identity, globalisation and popular culture as we enter the twenty-first century. Without wishing to prejudge the programme, certain observations can be made. The programme being proposed here is, clearly, another mutation of the global reality TV format—if not quite Big Brother then Survivor in nineteenth-century garb. The ‘reality’ genre has become the postmodern TV format par excellence with its relentless focus on the ‘now’ and its endless possibilities for role play and parody. The Colony, however, intends to cater to ‘historical and educational purposes’ as well as ‘entertainment value’. While some critics might view such a manoeuvre as another dumbing-down exercise, others might applaud the innovative harnessing of pop culture for educational purposes. Perhaps more significantly, the programme appears to mark a developing interest on the part of the national broadcaster in a more globally recognisable Irish historical experience rather than one which is purely home-focused. This may have something to do with the taking hold of an enlarged and more complex notion of Irish historical trajectories over the last couple of decades, whereby an increasing interest in the formation and evolution of the Irish diaspora has challenged ‘Hibernocentric’ conceptions of Irish history. More attention than before 8 P. J. MATHEWS is being paid to the historical experiences of the Irish who emigrated and contributed to the making of the New World, as opposed to the Irish who stayed at home and attempted to make something of the old country. This is not, in itself, a bad thing. However, the fact remains that the current appeal of the Irish immigrant story may have a lot to do with the economics of global television production, whereby generic scenarios and narratives are easily transferable and marketable, while material of a more culturally specific nature is not. At the financial core of these projects, where co-production is the order of the day, trans-national appeal and cultural generalisation exert a relentless pressure. These are issues that should concern anyone interested in the evolution of an Irish republican cultural critique. As Philip Pettit reminds us, ‘republicanism stands in contrast to [libertarianism and communitar- ianism] in so far as it equates freedom with not having to live under the threat of arbitrary power, private or public’.2 It would appear that the recent dominance of the market in the global production and circulation of Irish culture represents such an arbitrary power-threat, given the strength of global media monopolies and the powerlessness of a minuscule Irish population to influence them. Furthermore, classical republicanism has always promoted the idea of a shared public culture ‘at the heart of society and as the basis of politics’.3 Historically, in the Irish context, culture (in the sense of shared creative output) has been central to the articulation of social ills and an important basis for political action, as well as an expression of collective celebration.
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