Examining Irish Nationalism in the Context of Literature, Culture and Religion

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Mary Immaculate Research Repository and Digital Archive EXAMINING IRISH NATIONALISM IN THE CONTEXT OF LITERATURE, CULTURE AND RELIGION A Study of the Epistemological Structure of Nationalism by Eugene O’Brien i Examining Irish Nationalism in the Context of Literature, Culture and Religion by EUGENE O’BRIEN University of Limerick Ireland Studies in Irish Literature Editor Eugene O’Brien The Edwin Mellen Press Lewiston • Queenston • Lampeter ii iii iv For Áine, Eoin, Dara and Sinéad v vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface ix Acknowledgements xi INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: THE AETIOLOGY OF NATIONALISM - DEFINITIONS 9 CHAPTER 2: NATIONALIST REFLECTIONS AND MISRECOGNITIONS 45 CHAPTER 3: MAPPING NATIONALISM – LAND AND LANGUAGE 71 CHAPTER 4: NATIONALISM AND FAITH 97 CONCLUSION 133 NOTES 139 WORKS CITED 147 BIBLIOGRAPHY 157 INDEX 165 vii viii PREFACE It seems appropriate, as the island of Ireland is about to enter a fresh and as yet unpredictable phase in its collective history, that this book should appear. Politically, the stalled Northern Ireland peace process is about to be restarted; while socially, the influx of refugees and economic migrants from Eastern Europe and the African continent is forcing us as a people to reconsider our image of ourselves as welcoming and compassionate. By isolating and interrogating the nationalist mythos, Eugene O’Brien’s book problematises the very basis of our thinking about ourselves, yet shows how that thinking is common to nations and nationalist groups throughout the world. O’Brien’s strategy in this book is an important departure in the study of Irish nationalism. Not only does he eschew the normative imperatives of Irish nationalist discourse, but he constructs a very compelling model from poststructuralist theory, which enables an Irish writer, for perhaps the first time, to stand outside the conflict. Earlier, more politically committed writers were, like Schrödinger’s cat, altered by the process of scrutiny. The theoretical framework constructed by O’Brien circumvents this problem. In particular, his use of Jacques Lacan’s notion of the imaginary order as a paradigm of the processes of nationalism explains, in intellectually compelling terms, the peculiar and often violent effects of nationalism and its enunciations. In producing a coherent schema of nationalism, he exposes the myth at the centre of Irish nationalism, and, indeed of all nationalisms. It is mythic in two senses – it represents the imaginary source of the values by which a nation establishes its identity, but it also represents the untruth at the centre of such nationalistic constructs when they are used to oppress the ‘other’. Both are major themes of ix O’Brien’s book. The book is a logical sequel to his first full-length work, The Question of Irish Identity in the Writings of William Butler Yeats and James Joyce, which explored the relationship between ethical nationalism and its expression in twentieth-century Irish literature. The present volume is a political work of some originality and importance. O’Brien has remarked, in this book and elsewhere, that, unlike the French Revolution and the American War of Independence, the Easter Rising of 1916, cradle and touchstone of modern Irish nationalism, had no intellectual underpinning. While the present work does not aspire to validate the Rising, it is an important step in the maturation process of the Irish, when the myths of our origins can finally be abandoned. Anthony G. Corbett University College, Cork March, 2001 x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost I would like to thank my wife, Áine McElhinney, who has lived with this book from its late night inception as an article, through its growing pains as it developed into book form, and through the final stages of its completion. Her support, both academic and otherwise, has proved to be an inspiration. Her accurate proofreading and acute comments have made the book a lot better. She remains my most discriminating critical audience. From an academic standpoint, Dr Tony Corbett has shared many discussions on this subject with me, and I thank him for his opinions, his ideas and his occasional devil’s advocacy. His ongoing support, intellectual and otherwise, is much appreciated, as is his friendship. To Sinéad Corbett, I owe heartfelt thanks for her precise and painstaking proofreading (at the level of both signifier and signified), her many insightful comments, and her humour in the midst of dense pages and looming deadlines. I would also like to thank her for her unstinting help in solving computer problems at odd hours of the day and night. Marie Kirwan provided the initial opportunity for this book to come into being, and I remain in her debt for that, and much else. Desmond McCafferty of Mary Immaculate College facilitated the printing of the final draft of this book, and for this I am most grateful. I would like to thank my mother and father, Alice and Bill O’Brien, for their long-term encouragement of my reading and writing in this area. I would also like to record my debt to Paul and Katie, who have been an ongoing source of inspiration when the going got tough, while Dara was a constant presence during its writing. Additionally, I would like to thank my son, Eoin, for occasionally allowing me some ‘computer time’ in which to write this book! xi I would like to acknowledge Dr Stephen Thornton, and the Limerick Philosophical Society, for inviting me to speak on the subject of nationalism. Dr John Hayes gave me the opportunity to teach some courses in Communications in Mary Immaculate College, and these provided me with an opportunity to discuss some of the ideas raised in this book. I would also like to thank the students for their response to these issues. Articles dealing with the issues raised in this study were published in Minerva (http://www.ul.ie/~philos/), Kairos (http://129.118.38.138/kairos/), the Irish Studies Review, Number 17, Winter, pages 15-20, an article which was subsequently anthologised in Reviewing Ireland: Essays and Interviews from Irish Studies Review, edited by Sarah Briggs, Paul Hyland and Neil Sammells (Bath: Sulis Press, 1998), pages 273-284. I am grateful to the editors for permission to print material from these articles. xii INTRODUCTION The origins of this study can be traced to an article in the Irish Studies Review in 1996 by Willy Maley.1 His article, ‘Varieties of Nationalism: Post-Revisionist Irish Studies,’ made some interesting points in terms of mapping the territory of nationalism, or rather, different nationalisms. His point about the necessity for more study of this whole subject before moving on to the realms of ‘post- nationalism,’ is well taken, as is his notion that the differential facets of nationalism have not received sufficient attention. As he put it, there are as many varieties of nationalism there are varieties of Irishness, and he went on to deplore the tendency of critics to define nationalism as if it were some form of ‘flat homogenous whole’ (Maley 1996, 35). In a highly significant passage, Maley went on to problematise the status of nationalism by speaking of ‘all its overlapping multiplicity’ and by exemplifying a number of these multiples ‘Catholic, Celtic, colonial, constitutional, critical and cultural’ (Maley 1996, 35). Here, the issue is coming close to what I would see as the crucial point. Maley is undoubtedly correct in defining nationalism as plural; there are as many nationalisms as there are nations. However, in terms of the epistemology of nationalism, is it fair to say that, as Sandra Harding has argued in her recent book, Is Science Multicultural: ‘all knowledge, no matter how universally valid it is regarded to be, is local knowledge’? (Harding 1998, 72).2 Is there no connection between Irish nationalism and that of Serbs or Croats or ethnic Albanians? Can connections be made between the possessive attitude of the Serbs towards Kosovo, and that of the Orange Order towards the Garvaghy Road? Is there any connection to be made between nationalisms that have occurred in different temporal periods of history? These questions, it seems to me, are very much 1 begged throughout many of the discussions of nationalism that are current in political, literary and cultural discourses. I feel, then, that Maley is correct in asserting that, before we move into ‘post-nationalist’ discourse, nationalism itself must be subjected to a more detailed analysis. However, if we are to get beyond the ‘complex range of discourses, often contradictory and confused,’ we must, by analysing these different discourses, attempt to uncover the mode of knowledge that is pertinent to nationalism. I hope to develop my discussion of nationalism in this way, and to provide something in the nature of a theoretical organon whereby the concept of nationalism can be brought under examination, without becoming entangled in case histories. The unthought and unexamined assumptions of nationalism, what Gellner terms ‘citizenship-through-roots’ (Gellner 1997, 74), will be placed under examination here in an effort to tease out their epistemological position. At this juncture it is important to point out what this study is not. It is not an historical survey of Irish nationalism, nor is it meant to be a political commentary. What I am undertaking here is an attempt to explore, from a theoretical perspective, the epistemological structure of nationalism per se. Rather than take it as a given, I hope to uncover the specific mode of knowledge that is particular to the nationalist Weltanschauung. While I offer this critique of nationalism sui generis, the structure of this study will be underpinned, given my own background and interests, by examples from the Irish experience of nationalism, both historically in terms of the British- Irish connection, and from a contemporary perspective.

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