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Études irlandaises
40-2 | 2015 La crise ? Quelle crise ?
Martine Pelletier et Valérie Peyronel (dir.)
Édition électronique URL : http://journals.openedition.org/etudesirlandaises/4727 DOI : 10.4000/etudesirlandaises.4727 ISSN : 2259-8863
Éditeur Presses universitaires de Caen
Édition imprimée Date de publication : 15 décembre 2015 ISBN : 978-2-7535-4366-9 ISSN : 0183-973X
Référence électronique Martine Pelletier et Valérie Peyronel (dir.), Études irlandaises, 40-2 | 2015, « La crise ? Quelle crise ? » [En ligne], mis en ligne le 15 décembre 2017, consulté le 23 septembre 2020. URL : http:// journals.openedition.org/etudesirlandaises/4727 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/etudesirlandaises. 4727
Ce document a été généré automatiquement le 23 septembre 2020.
Études irlandaises est mise à disposition selon les termes de la Licence Creative Commons Attribution - Pas d’Utilisation Commerciale - Partage dans les Mêmes Conditions 4.0 International. 1
SOMMAIRE
Introduction Une crise, oui, mais quelle crise ? Martine Pelletier et Valérie Peyronel
La crise et l'après-crise : enjeux politiques, économiques et sociaux
The Irish Economic Crisis: The Expiry of a Development Model? Vanessa Boullet
Les entreprises irlandaises : nouveau moteur de la croissance économique nationale au lendemain de la crise ? Anne Groutel
Irish Post-crisis Migratory and Demographic Patterns Catherine Piola
The Vulnerability of the Northern Ireland Settlement: British Irish Relations, Political Crisis and Brexit Jennifer Todd
Educate that You May be Free? Religion and Critical Thinking in Post-Boom Ireland Michael Cronin
Les Arts et la crise
Crisis and the Visual Arts in Ireland Pat Cooke
Hearth Lessons: Paula Meehan’s Ecofeminist Economics Amanda Sperry
Tigre celtique et roman « gothique » : Claire Kilroy, The Devil I know Claude Fierobe
“The Lost and the Lonely”: Crisis in Three Plays by Enda Walsh Patrick Lonergan
Comptes rendus de lecture
A Chastened Communion: Modern Irish Poetry and Catholicism Eamon Maher
Irish Culture and Wartime Europe Bertrand Cardin
Essays on James Clarence Mangan Claude Fierobe
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Hooleygan: Music, Mayhem and Good Vibrations Tim Heron
Undoing Time: The Life and Work of Samuel Beckett Thierry Robin
East German Intelligence and Ireland Christophe Gillissen
Ireland’s Harp Erick Falc’her-Poyroux
Traditional Music and Irish Society Erick Falc’her-Poyroux
Sexual Politics in Modern Ireland Nathalie Sebbane
A Formative Decade: Ireland in the 1920s Steven O’Connor
After the Titanic David Charles Rose
Études irlandaises, 40-2 | 2015 3
Introduction Une crise, oui, mais quelle crise ?
Martine Pelletier et Valérie Peyronel
1 Dans un article intitulé « De quoi la crise est-elle le nom », le journaliste Georges Streiff écrivait en 2013 « La crise est partout. Le mot est utilisé jusqu’à l’overdose. Curieusement, plus on en parle, moins on dit de quoi il retourne. C’est LA crise. Comme une rengaine anxiogène qui se suffirait à elle-même1. » Dans La crise sans fin. Essai sur l’expérience moderne du temps, Myriam Revault d’Allonnes explique : On ne parle plus aujourd'hui d'une crise succédant à d'autres crises – et préludant à d'autres encore –, mais de « la crise », et qui plus est d'une crise globale qui touche aussi bien la finance que l'éducation, la culture, le couple ou l'environnement. Ce constat témoigne d'un véritable renversement : si à l'origine la krisis désignait le moment décisif qui, dans l'évolution d'un processus incertain, permettait d'énoncer un diagnostic et donc une sortie de crise, tout se passe comme si la crise était devenue permanente. Nous n'en voyons pas l'issue : elle est la trame même de notre existence. La crise, plus qu'un concept, est une métaphore qui ne rend pas seulement compte d'une réalité objective mais aussi d'une expérience vécue. Elle dit la difficulté de l'homme contemporain à envisager son orientation vers le futur. La modernité, dans sa volonté d'arrachement au passé et à la tradition, a dissous les anciens repères de la certitude qui balisaient la compréhension du monde : l'homme habite aujourd'hui un monde incertain qui a vu s'évanouir tour à tour l'idée de temps nouveaux, la croyance au progrès et l'esprit de conquête2.
2 Antonio Gramsci avait offert dès les années 30 une définition poétique passée à la postérité : «La crise consiste justement dans le fait que l'ancien meurt et que le nouveau ne peut pas naître3. » Dans les années 50 Hannah Arendt parlait de « La crise générale qui s’est abattue sur tout le monde moderne et qui atteint presque toutes les branches de l’activité humaine4 ». Aujourd’hui, l’anthropologue américaine Janet Roitman s’interroge et constate : How did crisis, once a signifier for a critical, decisive moment, come to be construed as a protracted historical and experiential condition? The very idea of crisis as a condition suggests an ongoing state of affairs. But can one speak of a state of enduring crisis? Is this not an oxymoron? Crisis is an omnipresent sign in almost all forms of narrative today; it is mobilized as the defining category of our contemporary situation. The recent bibliography in the social sciences and popular press is vast; crisis texts are a veritable industry5.
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3 Face à l’omniprésence de cette crise aux multiples visages, à la saturation du discours médiatique et politique par ce terme/concept/métaphore, il a paru légitime de s’interroger sur la nature de la crise qui affecte l’Irlande depuis 2008. Ou pour le dire simplement, en Irlande, de quoi la crise est-elle le nom ?
4 Il faut se rappeler que du milieu des années 1990 à 2007, l’Irlande a connu une évolution économique et sociale d’autant plus spectaculaire qu’elle succédait à des décennies de difficultés économiques majeures encourageant l’émigration et contraignant les Irlandais à demeurer les citoyens du pays le plus pauvre de la Communauté européenne lors de son accession en 1973. Les très nombreuses entreprises américaines, asiatiques, européennes investissant en Irlande, particulièrement dans les secteurs hautement technologiques de l’informatique, de la pharmacie et de la biologie, attirées tant par les perspectives de pénétration du marché européen que par les taux d’imposition incitatifs, allaient dynamiser peu à peu le marché de l’emploi irlandais jusqu’au tournant des années 1990 quand l’Irlande devint le Tigre Celtique. C’est ainsi qu’allait, dans un premier temps, être endiguée l’hémorragie de population qui avait caractérisé l’Irlande jusque là et s’inverser la courbe migratoire : non seulement les irlandais exilés pouvaient « revenir au pays » et y travailler mais, de surcroît, le marché du travail en pleine expansion attirait des non-irlandais, de toutes catégories socio-professionnelles, en quête de travail et d’opportunités de carrière. Pour accueillir cet afflux massif, le marché immobilier allait également exploser, tant en volume qu’en valeur, tandis que parallèlement, la circulation des capitaux s’intensifiait. Certes l’Irlande ne faisait pas figure d’exception, une grande partie du monde industrialisé connaissant des circonstances tout aussi favorables au cours de cette décennie en or. Mais pour l’Irlande, il s’agissait d’une première. La conjonction de l’amélioration notoire du marché de l’emploi, d’une part, et de la disponibilité de produits en abondance (fabriqués sur place ou importés), d’autre part, encourageait le consumérisme, tandis que la saveur nouvelle d’une vie plus facile fragilisait les valeurs traditionnelles de la société irlandaise, notamment le catholicisme et le nationalisme. Devenue désormais l’élève modèle de la classe Europe, en raison de sa croissance économique et du respect des critères de Maastricht6, l’Irlande triomphait, forte d’une économie 2.0, d’un investissement direct étranger massif, et d’un secteur financier en plein essor, au point que d’aucuns étaient tentés de parler d’un « American dream » à l’européenne7. Comme l’explique Fintan O’Toole, « The Celtic Tiger wasn’t just an economic ideology. It was also a substitute identity. It was a new way of being that arrived just at the point when Catholicism and nationalism were not working anymore8. »
5 La crise financière de 2007, soudaine et brutale, n’en fut que plus dévastatrice non seulement en raison de la remise en cause les paradigmes économiques mêmes sur lesquels s’était fondé l’essor accéléré de la décennie précédente et des répercussions économiques et financières s’abattant sur la population, mais également en raison de la crise morale qu’elle allait susciter. Le libéralisme, le capitalisme, la prédominance de l’économie de marché, tout comme l’individualisme et le consumérisme allaient être vigoureusement dénoncés, mais la négligence coupable, l’imprévision, voire même les malversations des gouvernants et de certains dirigeants d’entreprise (dans le secteur bancaire notamment) furent tout autant pointés du doigt, faisant ressortir le fait que cette crise n’était pas seulement technique (c’est-à-dire financière et économique) et conjoncturelle, mais bien également le résultat d’une dynamique structurelle incontrôlée et d’une sociologie nouvelle. La mise sous tutelle par la troïka (Union
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européenne, Banque Centrale Européenne et Fonds Monétaire International) pendant trois ans de 2010 à 2013, l’effondrement du marché de l’emploi, les plans d’austérité imposés aux Irlandais, allaient générer une profonde crise de confiance dans un pays où l’indépendance et la souveraineté nationales sont encore des sujets brûlants moins d’un siècle après la guerre d’indépendance et à peine 60 ans après la proclamation officielle de la République d’Irlande.
6 Si l’Irlande ne fut pas et de loin le seul pays touché, le contraste entre la période précédente, au cours de laquelle le Tigre Celtique avait été flamboyant, et la quasi- faillite de l’Irlande à partir de 2008, fut d’autant plus flagrant que l’Irlande avait été citée comme modèle de développement économique, même si des analystes avisés soulignaient déjà sa trop grande dépendance aux investissements étrangers, la fragilité de son secteur bancaire, le fossé croissant entre les tranches plus aisées et les tranches plus modestes de la population et les turbulences générées par la nécessaire intégration d’une population immigrée, phénomène auquel les Irlandais n’avaient pas été habitués, plus familiers de l’expérience de l’émigration que de celle de l’immigration.
7 Avec quelques années de recul, on peut s’interroger sur les raisons pour lesquelles l’Irlande a été si rudement affectée et poursuivre l’analyse judicieusement proposée dans Transforming Ireland. Challenges, critiques, ressources de Debbie Ging, Michael Cronin et Peadar Kirby9 et plus récemment dans From Prosperity to Austerity de Eamon Maher et Eugene O’Brien10. De quelle crise parlons-nous ? Car s’il y a bien crise économique généralisée, en République d’Irlande celle-ci a entraîné de multiples remises en cause dans les domaines politiques et sociaux. Au premier rang de ceux qui, en Irlande, ont depuis 2007 pensé et réagi à la crise figure indéniablement Fintan O’Toole, auteur de plusieurs ouvrages sur le sujet, ainsi que de multiples articles, notamment dans l’Irish Times. Dans Enough is Enough. How to Build a New Republic il donne une nouvelle et sombre déclinaison de la célèbre exceptionnalité irlandaise:
Very few banking crises have ever been as severe as Ireland’s. And no developed society since the Second World War has faced to quite the same extent Ireland’s combination of an internally generated crisis of these proportions and an external global crisis in which financial, environmental, economic and political uncertainties run so deep. […] The banking collapse of 2008 didn’t just kill off the arrogance and acquisitive mania, it also swept away the hopefulness and the sense of possibility11.
8 Le propre d’une crise est que sous des apparences conjoncturelles, elle met souvent en lumière des défaillances structurelles, récurrentes et cycliques. Elle conduit à une nécessaire restructuration (des défis à relever quoi qu’il arrive), à des rééquilibrages et engage à explorer de nouvelles voies de remédiation. Le terme de « crise » est issu du terme « crisis » qui en latin médiéval désignait la manifestation brutale d’une maladie, et plus anciennement du terme grec « krisis » qui signifie « jugement, décision ». La crise est ainsi le point culminant d’un cycle, le miroir réfléchissant des travers d’une société ou d’un système dont elle permet de ou dont elle oblige à prendre conscience. C’est également un moment critique, qui doit amener à une évaluation, un jugement et une décision. Une crise peut ainsi être porteuse d’améliorations à condition, toutefois, que la remise en question qu’elle suscite soit acceptée et puisse être transformée en
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dynamique positive. Les perceptions d’une même crise peuvent cependant être très diverses, et par là même les réactions qu’elle entraîne.
9 La première partie du présent volume porte sur les aspects économiques, sociaux (voire sociologiques) politiques et éthiques de la crise et de ses conséquences, et s’interroge sur les nouvelles dynamiques à l’œuvre en cette période encore critique de retour fragile à la croissance12 sur des bases financières plus saines.
10 Après un rappel des circonstances de la crise financière puis économique irlandaise et de ses effets dévastateurs, Vanessa Boullet pose la question de la fin du modèle du Tigre Celtique, en particulier si le gouvernement irlandais se voit contraint de renoncer aux incitations fiscales mise en place depuis la fin des années 1980 pour attirer un investissement direct étranger que la crise n’a que momentanément détourné de l’Irlande.
11 La pérennité et l’ampleur de l’investissement direct étranger posent néanmoins la question de la place et du rôle de l’entrepreneuriat local. Ainsi Anne Groutel livre-t-elle une étude de la dynamique entrepreneuriale irlandaise et du soutien, qu’elle conclut avoir été trop timide jusqu’à présent, des politiques publiques aux entrepreneurs irlandais, alors même que dans la perspective d’un désinvestissement direct étranger évoquée par Vanessa Boullet, la dynamisation de l’entrepreneuriat irlandais s’avérerait indispensable.
12 La question de la dynamique entrepreneuriale et, plus largement, de la dynamique économique de l’Irlande est cependant étroitement liée à celle de sa population et, plus particulièrement, à celle des mouvements migratoires. L’analyse que fait Catherine Piola des mouvements migratoires de la République d’Irlande montre bien dans quelle mesure la crise a conduit, à partir de 2010, à l’inversion du solde migratoire, alors même que, pour la première fois de son histoire, la République d’Irlande avait connu une période de solde migratoire positif de 1997 à 2009. Toutefois, l’auteure s’attache à démontrer que les conditions économiques ne sont pas les seuls facteurs d’évolution des courbes migratoires.
13 Michael Cronin, dans une contribution engagée et résolument tournée vers l’avenir et la recherche de solutions, pose un regard critique sur la façon dont il est devenu courant en Irlande d’opposer dans le discours médiatique et public les laïcs libéraux et progressistes aux tenants de la religion, chrétiens en particulier dans une version caricaturale de la querelle des Anciens et des Modernes ; le résultat est l’effacement de tout ce que ces courants de pensée ont en commun, notamment le rejet de ce qu’il nomme le « Totalitarisme du Marché ». Etablissant des parallèles éclairants avec la situation de l’Europe centrale avant la chute du Communisme et aux prises avec un mode idéologique non seulement dominant mais totalitaire, il appelle à une alliance objective de ceux qui défendent des valeurs opposées au darwinisme social que le néo- libéralisme promeut, et à une réhabilitation d’une culture du dissensus, productive et empathique, qui doit être nourrie à tous les niveaux y compris dans le cadre des politiques éducatives qui forment à la critique et n’encouragent ni le consensus mou ni la peur, toujours mauvaise conseillère.
14 En élargissant le cadre pour inclure l’Irlande du Nord, on constate que la crise financière et économique a éclaté dans un contexte politique encore instable en raison de la mise en œuvre difficile des termes de l’Accord du Vendredi Saint du 10 avril 1998. Selon Jennifer Todd, la crise financière, puis la crise économique, ont en effet détourné
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l’attention des gouvernements britannique et irlandais de la question nord-irlandaise, alors même que l’engagement des deux gouvernements était indispensable dans l’application de l’Accord. Les tensions entre unionistes et nationalistes qui perdurent malgré les dispositions de l’Accord (ou parfois en raison même de ces dispositions) ont contraint les deux gouvernements à intervenir à nouveau pour finaliser un accord entre les partis nord-irlandais fin 2014. Toutefois, Jennifer Todd insiste sur le péril que représenterait pour l’Irlande du Nord la sortie du Royaume-Uni de l’Union européenne (Brexit) : mise à mal des relations nord-sud sur l’île d’Irlande (qui ont fortement contribué non seulement au développement économique de l’île mais également à la pacification des zones frontalières), regain des tensions entre unionistes et nationalistes, fin de l’aide européenne aux programmes tels que PEACE et INTERREG.
15 Une fois la réalité économique, politique, sociale et sociétale de la crise explorée, la seconde partie de ce volume s’intéresse aux représentations, et plus particulièrement à la relation entre les arts et le phénomène de crise en Irlande. Alors même que dans le domaine culturel, les institutions ont subi le contrecoup de la crise économique avec la diminution des subventions publiques, dans quelle mesure et comment les artistes ont- ils ou non réagi à la crise ? En quoi des formes esthétiques spécifiques ont-elles été développées ou investies pour permettre une lecture critique directe ou indirecte de ces changements radicaux ? Quelles ont été les représentations de la crise dans les productions artistiques récentes ?
16 C’est bien la question duale de l’implication de l’artiste et de son engagement à travers son art, d’une part, et de l’impact des crises sur le travail de l’artiste, d’autre part, que soulève Pat Cooke en examinant les œuvres visuelles de Anthony Haughey et de Deirdre O’Mahoney. Il souligne l’importance des questions éthiques et politiques dans la conception qu’ont les deux artistes de leur travail. Son dialogue avec eux sur leur pratique s’inscrit dans le cadre d’une réflexion plus large sur l’intervention artistique, sur l’esthétique relationnelle et la nature globale et transnationale d’une crise vécue fortement à l’échelle des territoires sur lesquels ils ont élu de travailler, en particulier des zones rurales pour lesquelles « la crise » a des déclinaisons spécifiques.
17 S’appuyant sur l’étude des représentations artistiques de la crise, Amanda Sperry analyse, quant à elle, comment Paula Meehan, dans sa série de poèmes Painting Rain, met en scène les impacts socio-économiques de l’effondrement du Tigre celtique à travers le double prisme des perspectives féministes et environnementales. L’engagement de Paula Meehan dans le mouvement « Occupy Dame Street » s’inscrit dans une trajectoire également perceptible dans son œuvre : le refus de l’exploitation, que ce soit de la langue par l’usage destructeur qu’en font les discours préconstruits et trompeurs, de certains groupes sociaux, des femmes dans un monde patriarcal ou bien sûr de la terre, asservie aux exigences exponentielles d’un système économique déconnecté des besoins des personnes et de l’environnement.
18 Claude Fiérobe livre, pour sa part, une étude du roman de Claire Kilroy, The Devil I Know, publié en 2012. Confrontant le héros, Tristam, à l’éclatement de la bulle immobilière, l’œuvre qui joue sur tous les codes du roman gothique brosse le tableau terrifiant d’une Irlande dévastée par une crise économique alimentée en amont par l’appât du gain, par une course effrénée à la consommation et à l’ostentation et par la perte de tout repère moral. On y note aussi la dénaturation, littéralement, de toute relation à l’environnement, faune, flore, paysage, amplifiant une préoccupation partagée par Paula Meehan et Deirdre O’Mahony : la crise environnementale est là également, qui
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interroge la place de l’homme dans le monde et sa capacité destructrice sans précédent. Claude Fiérobe démonte les mécanismes de ce roman efficace et drôle, une sombre fable où les forces démoniaques entraînent le protagoniste dans une chute vertigineuse, véritable chronique d’un désastre annoncé dont le lecteur tour à tour amusé et mal à l’aise reconnaît les étapes.
19 Patrick Lonergan enfin,se tourne vers le théâtre dont les praticiens – tout comme les romanciers – ont été accusés de trop ignorer cette crise à l’époque et dont on voit comment leur intervention bien réelles, ont été décalées, et non immédiates, qu’elles soient très directes (Guaranteed (2013) et Bailed Out! (2015) de Colin Murphy par exemple) ou plus subtiles13. Patrick Lonergan propose une lecture de la crise au travers de trois pièces du célèbre dramaturge Enda Walsh. Il analyse comment la pièce Penelope, écrite en 2010 par Enda Walsh, met en scène un parallèle symbolique entre l’Irlande en crise et la mythologie grecque, pour décrire la fin brutale d’une période d’excès et de débauche incontrôlée, où la quête de l’abondance et de la possession (la conquête de Pénélope symbolisant le capitalisme et Pénélope devient une figure du marché) prend le pas sur toute discipline et tout système de valeurs. Il revient alors sur deux pièces antérieures d’Enda Walsh qui, moins directement offraient une transposition théâtrale d’autres crises contemporaines auxquelles l’Irlande a été, ou demeure confrontée: le contrôle de la sexualité féminine dans The New Electric Ballroom, l’émigration et la crise identitaire ainsi que la question de la citoyenneté dans The Walworth Farce.
20 Si répondre à la question posée par le titre du volume « La crise, quelle crise ? » relevait bien sûr de la gageure, les différentes contributions aident à mieux cerner les multiples enjeux pour les acteurs sociaux, politiques et culturels autant qu’économiques de cette mise en crise de l’Irlande depuis la mort du Tigre celtique. Ce volume brosse le portrait d’une Irlande encore fragile, creuset de profondes remises en question et sur laquelle, en dépit de nouvelles dynamiques et d’améliorations sensibles en cette période de lente sortie de crise économique, planent encore de nombreuses incertitudes. Parmi les réactions les plus notables à ces événements récents et à la crise de confiance envers des institutions politiques qui n’ont pu faire la preuve de leur solidité, de leur indépendance, voire de leur intégrité, on note la demande forte d’une refondation de la république irlandaise portée notamment par Fintan O’Toole dans son ouvrage collectif Up the Republic! (2012). Gageons que le prochain numéro thématique d’Etudes Irlandaises, placé sous le signe du centenaire de 1916 permettra, entre autres, de penser la République irlandaise à l’épreuve de la crise.
NOTES
1. Georges Streiff, « De quoi la crise est-elle le nom ? » Médiapart, 14 mars 2014. [http:// blogs.mediapart.fr/edition/la-revue-du-projet/article/130313/de-quoi-la-crise-est-elle-le-nom- par-gerard-streiff]. Consulté le 10 septembre 2015. 2. Myriam Revault d’Allonnes, La crise sans fin. Essai sur l’expérience moderne du temps, Paris, Seuil, 2012, 4e de couverture.
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3. Dans la traduction française des Cahiers de prison parue aux Éditions Gallimard sous la responsabilité de Robert Paris, Cahier 3, §34, p. 283 selon [https://fr.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Antonio_Gramsci]. 4. Hannah Arendt, La Crise de la culture, Paris, Folio-Gallimard, 1993, p. 223. 5. Janet Roitman, Political concept: a lexicon, [http://www.politicalconcepts.org/issue1/crisis/] Consulté le 10 septembre 2015. 6. Les critères de Maastricht, également nommé critères de convergence, furent établis par le Traité européen de Maastricht signé le 7 février 1992. Il s’agissait de fixer cinq indicateurs économiques à respecter par les signataires au sein de l’Union européenne : l’inflation, la dette publique, le déficit public, le taux de change et les taux d’intérêt. 7. « Aller simple pour l'Irlande », Le Monde Magazine, 22 mai 2008. [http:// www.lemonde.fr/le-monde-2/article/2008/05/22/aller-simple-pour-l- irlande_1048453_1004868.html]. 8. Fintan O’Toole, Enough is Enough, London, Faber & Faber, 2010, p. 3. 9. Debbie Ging, Michael Cronin et Peadar Kirby (eds.), Transforming Ireland. Challenges, critiques, resources, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2009. 10. Eamon Maher and Eugene O’Brien (eds.), From prosperity to austerity. A Socio-cultural critique of the Celtic Tiger and its aftermath, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2014. 11. Fintan O’Toole, op. cit., p. 3-4. 12. En 2014, le taux de croissance du Produit Intérieur Brut de l’Irlande était de 4,8 %. Les prévisions pour 2015 se situent à 6 % (Commission européenne). 13. Voir [ http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/was-the-demise-of-the-celtic- tiger-the-saviour-of-irish-theatre-1.2109647] et sur Guaranteed en particulier, le commentaire de Patrick Lonergan : [https://patricklonergan.wordpress.com/2013/07/02/ colin-murphys-guaranteed/].
AUTEURS
MARTINE PELLETIER Université François-Rabelais de Tours
VALÉRIE PEYRONEL Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3
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La crise et l'après-crise : enjeux politiques, économiques et sociaux Crisis and Post-crisis: Poloitical, economic and Social Stakes
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The Irish Economic Crisis: The Expiry of a Development Model?
Vanessa Boullet
1 Ireland is one of the European countries that was hit hard by the 2008 crisis: the Irish State had to nationalize several banks and then had to be rescued by the Troika formed by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund in 2010. It took only two years for the country to go nearly bankrupt after the fifteen years of prosperity under the Celtic Tiger period. Irish people had tobear the brunt of the reforms whereas they had thought that such times were over after being the euro area’s fastest-growing country in terms of GNP per capita and having a net inflow of workers.
2 What is the reality of the crisis for Ireland? How did the country rise and fall? Was the crisis only the implosion of a real estate bubble or does it mark the end of Ireland’s economic development? What does the future of Ireland look like, what could its new development model be and what should its ambition be?
The Rise and Fall of the Celtic Tiger
3 In September 2008, Ireland was the first country of the euro zone to enter recession1. It happened after fifteen years of exceptional growth and fast economic development, often called the Celtic Tiger. During that period, Ireland had been the euro area’s fastest-growing and one of the richest countries in terms of GNP per capita2. The crisis occurred after decades of political and economic efforts to catch up with the EU member states.
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Figure 1 : GNP per capita3 - Ireland and EU Core Countries (adjusted for inflation and at purchasing power parity)
(calculations based on Eurostat: AMECO [Annual macro-economic database] of “Total population [National accounts] [NPTD]” and “Gross national income at current market prices per head of population [HVGNP]) The GNP per capita is adjusted for inflation and at purchasing power parity, which is usually considered as an acceptable proxy for the development of a country. The vertical scale of this graph is logarithmic, as a consequence a set of data with constant growth rate shows on this graph as a straight line.
4 From the 1960s to the 1980s, the Republic of Ireland lagged behind EU core countries (Austria, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and the UK) as shown in graph 14. Slowly but steadily, the policies implemented since 19585 enabled Ireland’s GNP per capita to grow, with a clear acceleration around 1994, to the point of catching up with the other EU member states in the early 2000s and exceeding the EU’s core countries in 2003 in terms of GNP per capita at constant prices. Between 2001 and 2007, GNP growth rates averaged 5.6%6. At the end of the Celtic Tiger period, in 2007, only three countries of the European Union (Luxembourg, Sweden and the Netherlands) had a GNP per capita higher than Ireland’s7. Ireland also managed to reduce its public debt from 110% of economic output in 1987 to 24% in 2007, then the second-lowest in the euro zone8. Finally in 2007, at the end of the Celtic Tiger period, the general government balance was marginally positive9.
5 In a nutshell, within four or five decades, Ireland was transformed from a poor country into a highly successful economy. Its development model was praised, studied and copied by many emerging economies like the eight countries of Central Europe which joined the EU in 200410. After this period of fast growth, in the mid-2000s, several world financial institutions forecast a soft landing for the Celtic Tiger within 5 to 10 years: The view of the [Central Bank of Ireland] was that Irish economic growth would continue, albeit at a lower rate, and that, despite the incipient downturn in the property sector, there would be a soft landing for the Irish economy. This benign assessment mirrored those made by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Union (EU), and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) around the same time11.
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6 Not all economists did agree with the point of view of such worldwide financial institutions. In 2007, Morgan Kelly wrote: The expected fall in average real house prices is in the range 40 to 60 per cent, over a period of around 8 years. […] Given the unusual reliance of the Irish economy on building houses, the effects of any such fall on national income may be somewhat larger than that experienced at the end of other housing bubbles12.
7 Indeed, the Republic of Ireland suffered a rather hard landing, sooner than expected. On September 15, 2008, the financial services firm Lehman Brothers collapsed. The Irish housing bubble burst shortly afterwards, triggering a cascade of events: the Irish banking system was endangered to the point that the Irish government had to announce an unconditional guarantee of €440 billion for most liabilities of Ireland’s seven major banks; unemployment more than tripled to 14.4% in 201113; the Irish GNP per capita shrank by almost 10% in 2008 and by another 12% in 200914. The State’s balance sheet was also hit hard: tax revenue receded as, according to Antoin E. Murphy, “government revenue had become hugely over-dependent on taxes related to property transactions – including stamp duty, capital gains tax, VAT, and direct taxes levied on the property sector15”. The public debt of the Republic, which stood at 24% in 2007, steadily rose during the crisis to 123% of the GDP16. On November 21, 2010, Ireland petitioned the EU for a bailout. A financial rescue plan of €90 billion, almost 60% of Ireland’s 2010 GDP, in the form of a three-year loan, was negotiated with the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund (the “Troika”).
8 Between 2008 and 2010, nobody in Ireland was untouched by the crisis. Irish families had to make many sacrifices as public services budgets were cut down: “Over the course of the adjustment period, the combined effects of the cuts in welfare rates and increases in taxes meant that most people experienced a fall in income of around 10 per cent17.” Moreover, net emigration which had stopped in 1995 with the rise of the Celtic Tiger started increasing again on a very sizeable scale in 2010, (the net migration balance amounting to -27,500 people18). Thus, Manfred Gärtner, Björn Griesbach, and Giulia Mennillo concluded that “the achievements of 20 years of economic reforms, budgetary discipline and consensus under the Celtic Tiger had been lost in as little as four years19”. Finally, the self-confidence that Ireland had during the Celtic Tiger was all but gone: All of that confidence has ebbed away. Ireland today seems a vulnerable and anxious place, its uncertain future tied to borrowing and bailouts, the sheer size of which set the head reeling. Suddenly, too, the spectre of the old, pre-Celtic Tiger Ireland looms large, a place defined not by hope and optimism but by high unemployment, poverty and mass emigration20.
9 Since 2012, however, Ireland has been recovering. The GNP per capita has risen again21 and Ireland is back, close to the EU15 average (graph 1). In June 2015, unemployment was still high at 9.7%22 but was nevertheless below the euro-zone average (11.1%23), tax revenues were rising. More importantly the 2014 budget deficit fell below 4% of GDP24.
10 So the crisis sent Ireland backwards, but does not seem to have wiped out the progress made in recent decades. The trendline on Graph 1 shows that to a large extent the crisis “only” cancelled out the additional growth that happened after 1994, that is to say above the trendline. So was the crisis that Ireland went through only the correction of some excesses of the Celtic Tiger or was it more fundamentally the end of Ireland’s economic development model? What kind of crisis was it?
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The end of Ireland’s economic development model?
11 The starting point of the crisis is often identified as the bursting out of the real estate bubble. However, it was only a trigger and the crisis was deeper and multi-faceted: a housing bubble by itself would hardly cause the near-bankruptcy of several banks, a sharp economic contraction, rising unemployment, a reduction of the standard of living of Irish people and a ballooning state debt which led to austerity measures that aggravated the crisis for a while.
12 Indeed, excesses in Ireland under the Celtic Tiger were not all directly linked to the real estate sector. The banking sector also participated as it fuelled the bubble: private sector credit more than doubled over the bubble years25. The problem is that the banking sector financed the boom by borrowing amounts abroad above their capacity to pay them back. Early warnings of an impending bubble were ignored26. Therefore, Ireland was rapidly contaminated by the US subprime crisis. Beyond the correction of excesses, exemplified by the real estate bubble, did the crisis reveal a fundamental weakness in Ireland’s development model?
13 Since 1958, Ireland has mainly implemented an export-led development strategy backed by Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). The Irish state has been very successful in attracting FDI thanks to a combination of factors. Some factors are the basic enablers of FDI: the Irish economy is open to international trade, its infrastructure is of a reasonable quality, it offers opportunities to export to an attractive region – the European Union. Additionally, Ireland has leveraged four specific factors: its overall low costs, its skilled workforce, a favourable tax structure and the critical mass it has reached in some industries. As Ireland is recovering from the crisis, are these four specific factors still a competitive advantage for Ireland?
14 Before becoming the Celtic Tiger, Ireland always had sold itself as a low-cost country. After the recession of the 1980s, Irish labour costs were low compared to other EU countries, all the more since the government had implemented social partnership agreements between business leaders, labour, and the government to keep wages under control. However, with the Celtic Tiger, employees felt they deserved a larger share of the new wealth and wages rose significantly27. How can a country claim on the one hand to be a low-cost country and on the other hand to have one of the highest GNPs per capita of the EU, as it was during the early 2000s?
15 Business costs increased considerably during the Celtic Tiger period to the point that Ireland was no longer perceived as a low-cost country: some multinationals even decided to relocate their manufacturing facilities to cheaper countries (Dell for example transferred PC assembly from Limerick to its new plant in Łódź, Poland in 2008/09; Aviva Hibernian relocated its back office and support services to India in 2008). During the crisis, overall Irish labour costs stagnated28 and commercial property values collapsed by up to 67% from the peak years in 2006-0729. Thanks to the crisis, Ireland now compares favourably with other EU core countries. However, there are now 28 member states within the EU, and compared to EU Eastern countries, Ireland is expensive, even after the crisis.
16 Since the mid-1960s, the Irish government has been investing in education, understanding the need for a skilled and trained workforce to develop its economy and
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attract FDI. Ireland has emphasized the quality of its education system and especially its third-level education for years. The problem is that with the crisis, Ireland suffered a brain-drain of its skilled workforce as young people emigrated to find jobs worldwide30. Senior research and policy officer with the National Youth Council of Ireland Marie-Claire McAleer said: Many of [Irish emigrants] are highly skilled and educated. This represents a brain drain and will inhibit our economic recovery. We need a pool of well-educated people to attract investment and stimulate and sustain economic growth31.
17 The Irish low corporate tax rate is often cited as a key success factor for attracting FDI in Ireland32. Since 1958, Ireland has implemented a generous fiscal policy. It was initially a zero corporate profits tax on manufactured exports. In 1980, the zero rate was replaced by a flat rate of 10% on all manufacturing. Then in 2003 as a consequence of many pressures from the European Union, it rose to 12.5%. However as all the EU member states compete to attract the same FDI (R&D and high-tech FDI), Ireland’s particularly favourable rate is an increasing bone of contention.
18 However, Ireland’s low tax rate is not the part of the Irish fiscal system that is most challenged. Ireland is considered as a tax haven by some countries, like the United States33 because after the tech bubble burst in 2000, Ireland seems to have moved from a high-tech to a tax avoidance country in some companies’ views. Some American firms have indeed set up branches in Ireland to reduce their tax bills. The tax avoidance system enables companies to send their profits to zero-tax island havens like Grand Cayman or Bermuda through Ireland. Those Irish subsidiaries sometimes have virtually no employee and pay no income tax. This mechanism was called the “double Irish” corporate tax mechanism34. Ireland was forced by the OECD35, the EU and the US to put an end to it. In October 2014, Minister for Finance Michael Noonan introduced a new regime for corporate taxation with the abolition of the corporate tax mechanism that enabled the “double Irish” scheme36. In the new tax code, multinational firms registered in Ireland will have to be tax resident. The old taxation scheme will be closed to new entrants from 2015 and phased out for existing multinational firms by 202037. To carry on attracting inward investment, the Irish government announced the introduction of different measures. The most important (and controversial) one is the establishment in 2016 of a new incentive, on top of R&D tax break schemes, to encourage companies to locate research in Ireland by offering them a lower tax rate on profits derived from intellectual property activity. It would be similar to the UK patent box, introduced in 2013 and restricted in 2015 following tax scrutiny by the EU and the OECD38. Will it be another Irish tax loophole? So far, Irish leaders have commented that tax policy was Ireland’s “sovereign right39”. However, the recent publicity around the cases of profit-shifting of high-technology firms such as Apple, Google, Facebook or LinkedIn and cases of “corporate inversions40” increased the intensity at which European and American policy makers put pressure on the Irish and Dutch governments.
19 Finally, over the years, Ireland has built strong innovative industrial clusters, based on the theory of Michael Porter41, in the main FDI sectors: ICT / software, pharmaceutical / chemical and international financial services. Industrial clusters in Ireland date back to the Culliton Report in 199242, which recommended the promotion of industrial clusters focused on niches of national competitive advantage. Since then, the IDA (the Irish agency in charge of attracting FDI) and Enterprise Ireland have worked to target sectors that are “experiencing international growth and that are thought to provide a
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good fit for Ireland’s resources and development aims”43. Now, the IDA tries to sell Ireland as an RDI location (Research, Development & Innovation) with the aim of creating new clusters: IDA believes a range of sectors present opportunities for Ireland over the period of the strategy, including: internet of things, big data, security biometrics, smart ageing, portable services and financial technology44.
20 To that end, on top of the abovementioned intellectual property tax scheme, the Irish State now offers a 25% R&D tax credit to “encourage companies to undertake new or additional RDI activity in Ireland45”.
21 Thus, the crisis may have slightly improved Ireland’s cost position, but the Republic is no longer a low-cost country. Its workforce is still highly educated, but the demon of its past, emigration, is back. The tax system is still very attractive but beleaguered and will most likely lose at least part of its appeal. Ireland has become a mature FDI country: it has lost some of its edge, but it has gained a track record, tangible in its industrial clusters which can reassure investors.
22 Since some pillars of the Irish economic development model have all but disappeared, what does Ireland’s economic future look like? Will the Irish growth rate simply equal the other EU mature economies’ or can it slightly or significantly outperform that of the EU core countries? If its current model has lost its edge, can Ireland invent a new development model?
Will the Irish Tiger roar again?
23 The first question is whether Ireland still has significant potential to raise its GNP per capita? By 2013, Ireland had nearly caught up once more with some EU core countries46 (such as France or the UK). Still, several EU core member states had a better position. First, Luxembourg stood on its own with a GNP per capita (in thousands of units of purchasing power standard) of 43 in 2013 (compared with 29.4 for Ireland 31.3 for core countries on average). Luxembourg’s favourable position was possibly related to its fiscal policies that some compared to those of a tax haven. Then, there was a group of countries with a GNP per capita approximately 10% higher than the one of Ireland’s: Sweden, the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, and Germany. So, unless Ireland is ready to embark further on the risky path of a tax haven country, it could possibly expect to gain another 10% of GNP per capita.
24 The ESRI (Economic and Social Research Institute) clearly states that Ireland’s future is tightly linked with the one of the European Union. How can a country whose economic future depends on the EU do more than mere catching up?
25 The pillars of Ireland’s economic development paradigm are based on Ireland’s competitive advantages over its neighbours to attract FDI. The cost of labour is – or used to be – one or Ireland’s competitive advantage, however in the 2000-2013 period, average annual wages in Ireland grew faster than in other European countries (they exceeded Belgium’s and the Netherlands’ and in 2013 Luxembourg was only 18% more expensive than Ireland while it was 32% in 2000)47 It may be only a matter of time before the competitive advantages of lower wages and costs disappear or worse, become a liability. It would also be difficult for Ireland to claim that it has a more qualified workforce than other EU core countries. Ireland can only insist on the English
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language or the investment made on third-level education over the years. Finally, Ireland has developed industrial and financial clusters, but even if the ICT or pharma- chem clusters are well-established in Ireland, all the EU countries are trying to create clusters in key FDI sectors, and it will be difficult for Ireland to keep its primacy. This only leaves Ireland with its tax advantage. This policy is very effective (12.5% in Ireland versus 20% in the UK for example), but the Irish corporate tax rate and its tax credits are increasingly challenged by the EU and the USA.
26 The comparison with more recent EU member states (in particular in the Eastern part of Europe) also has to be qualified. Ireland is more expensive but could possibly claim a more qualified workforce and a better track record. The main differentiator is again the tax policy but having copied the Irish development model, Eastern EU countries are just above the Irish corporate tax rate with rates ranging from 15% to 25% except for Bulgaria with 10%48. If Ireland were forced to raise its corporate tax rate to 15%, it would reach the same level as Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania (16%). So, Eastern countries appear to be weaker rivals than EU core countries. Compared to Eastern countries, high-tech companies will be reassured by Ireland’s qualified workforce (including the English language skills, since many high-tech firms are based in the United States), its track record and – in a sector with potentially sky-high and intellectual property-based profit margins – its tax system.
27 Nevertheless, attracting inward FDI into Europe appears to be more and more competitive and difficult. It seems unlikely that Ireland would be able to carry on attracting the lion’s share of FDI destined to Europe during the next decade. It is true that during the 2009-2013 period Ireland received more FDI compared to the previous period (2004-2008). But it was exactly the same situation for Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, and also Spain and Italy.
28 Thus, it seems that Ireland is no longer a fast-growing country. It now has many characteristics of a mature country. The Republic of Ireland could possibly try to play this game, with an Irish twist that would give it some extra growth compared to the rest of EU core countries. In this case, the main extra ingredient would be its tax policy, combined of course with Ireland’s other competitive advantages: the language, the close relationship with the US and the EU, and the industrial clusters on IT & chemical products. This is summarized – possibly in an optimistic way – by Ireland’s Ambassador to the United States A. Anderson who declared: After the difficulties we experienced in the aftermath of 2008, our economy is back on its feet again – with buoyant foreign investment, rising exports, very healthy tourism, and reducing (even if still much too high) unemployment. The mix we provide – highly skilled workforce, very competitive corporate tax rate of 12.5%, an English speaking gateway to the European Union – continues to demonstrate its attractiveness49.
29 How does this translate into GNP projections? The Medium Term Review 2013-2020 of the Economic and Social Research Institute considered three economic scenarios for Ireland. Even more interesting than the scenarios themselves is the fact that the ESRI clearly states that Ireland’s future is tightly linked with the one of the European Union. In the “Recovery” scenario of the ESRI, the EU15 growth rate is to return to about 2% between 2015 and 2020 and Ireland will manage to almost double this growth rate over the same period if it addresses domestic issues such as the solidity of Irish banks, thus enabling Ireland to fully benefit from improved export outlets. In the “delayed recovery” scenario, the EU 15 growth rate is also at about 2%, but Ireland will not
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manage to fix its domestic issues. In the third scenario entitled “stagnation”, the EU 15 growth rate will remain lower than 0.5% but having addressed its domestic issues, Ireland will still reach 1.4%50. Interestingly, the ESRI does not dare consider the scenario where the EU 15 growth rate will remain slow and Ireland will not manage to fix its financial sector.
Figure 2: GNP per capita (PPS) - Ireland and Core EU Countries with projections by the ESRI for 2014-202
(Eurostat, AMECO, op.cit. & John FitzGerald and Ide Kearney [eds], op. cit.)
30 Projecting these figures on graph 1, with some simplification hypotheses51, it seems that the ESRI takes the catching up of Ireland with EU core countries as a key hypothesis. We can see these scenarios would lead to two possible outcomes by 2020 on graph 2. Outcome “A” corresponds to the “Recovery” and “Delayed recovery” scenarios of the ESRI: in this case, Ireland will catch up with the EU core countries and even outperform them. In outcome “B”, corresponding to the “Stagnation” scenario, Ireland and the EU core countries share the same dire future.
31 It is also interesting to note that both “recovery” scenarios (outcome A) more or less follow the trendline of ca. 4.3% growth per annum (from 1990 on graph 1) that Ireland may have followed without the excesses of the Celtic Tiger, since corrected by the crisis. Thus the crisis could be seen as a harsh regulator of the Irish economic development. Having veered off its traditional position, Ireland was hit more than its neighbours to finally return to a path similar to that of the EU core countries.
32 To conclude, the crisis stopped or paused 15 years of exceptional Irish growth. It cancelled out the excesses of the Celtic Tiger and revealed the weaknesses of the development model policies. Now that the worst years of the crisis are probably behind us, the question is whether the Celtic Tiger is going to be able to roar again. The development model on which Ireland has based its development model for the last 60 years is clearly running out of fuel as many of the competitive advantages that Ireland could boast in the early 1990s have disappeared one after the other. Ireland is no longer a peripheral developing economy but a developed one, economically close to the EU core countries. Nonetheless, so far Ireland has managed to preserve its most important
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competitive advantage to carry on attracting FDI: its tax system. But how long will it take for the EU and possibly the US52 to force Ireland to stop undercutting them thanks to its fiscal policy. Moreover two new threats are looming. The first one is the UK’s possible exit from the EU. If the UK leaves the EU, tariffs will have to be collected on British exports entering the Republic. Therefore, both countries will be hit as they have integrated economies. Secondly, the European Union and the United States are trying to secure a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The aim is to create a virtually single market between the US and the EU. Full studies of the impact of the TTIP in Ireland have not been published yet and most observers and proponents of the TTIP tend to take an overall view: what is good for the EU as a whole is necessarily good for Ireland. Unfortunately, if Ireland has benefited from previous European developments so far, it does not mean that it will always be the case. The problem for Ireland is that the TTIP is likely to break the status quo and give US firms direct access to the European Union, which may rapidly undermine Ireland’s position as an easy entry point into the EU market. This is even truer given the importance of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries in Ireland (58% of Irish exports)53, most of which FDI- backed, very protected against US exports54 and focused by TTIP.
33 There is no obvious “new development” model for Ireland, but the country will have to learn how to promote its competitive advantage with investors, despite its position as a near-core EU country (from a GNP per capita point of view). The country will also have to build a new model for its society, since it can no longer hope to receive a windfall similar to the one of the Celtic Tiger years.
NOTES
1. OECD, “Quarterly Growth Rates of real GDP, change over previous quarter”: -2% for Q2 2008 and -0,8% for Q3 2008, http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=350#, retrieved on 8 March 2015. 2. Eurostat, “Total population (National accounts) (NPTD)” and “Gross national income at current market prices per head of population (HVGNP), AMECO (Annual macro- economic database). 3. Traditionally GNP provides a better measure of economic activity in Ireland because of income flows to non-residents, especially profits and dividends of foreign direct investment enterprises. For example, while in most EU countries the difference is just a couple of percentage points, in Ireland in 2007, GDP was as much as 23% higher than GNP. Even if we are aware that even GNP is now distorted because of the profit flows of redomiciled public limited companies (such as Accenture), in this article, GNP at constant price (adjusted for inflation and at purchasing power parity) is used to enable comparisons between EU countries. [http://econproph.com/2010/11/26/gdp-vs-gnp/], [http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1025998.shtml], retrieved on 10 March 2015.
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4. Graph 1 is based on the 28 countries of the EU. The author compares the Irish situation with EU core countries (Austria, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and the UK). Calculations based on Eurostat, AMECO, op. cit. 5. In the late 1950s and 1960s, T.K. Whitaker and S. Lemass opened Ireland to the world through 3 schemes: trade barriers were removed, FDI was attracted, the EEC membership was secured, and investments in education were made. Vanessa Boullet, La planification en Irlande (1958-1972), méthodologies et mythologie de la modernisation économique, 2008, Université de Paris Ouest-Nanterre-La Défense, Thèse. 6. OECD, “Quarterly Growth Rates of real GDP, change over previous quarter”, op. cit. 7. Calculations based on Eurostat, AMECO, op.cit. 8. Arthur Beesley, “National debt and its servicing still weigh heavily on State”, The Irish Times, 16 November 2014. 9. Eurostat, “General government deficit and surplus – annual data”. http:// ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do? tab=table&plugin=1&language=en&pcode=teina200, retrieved on 8 March 2015. 10. “The Irish economy, a model of success”, The Economist, 14 October 2004. 11. Antoin E. Murphy, “The Fall of the Celtic Tiger, Ireland and the Euro Debt Crisis”, Presentation of the authors’ book, p. 3. https://www.qub.ac.uk/home/ ResearchandEnterprise/BusinessNetworks/FileStore/Filetoupload,442419,en.pdf, retrieved on 08/03/2015. 12. Morgan Kelly, “On the likely extent of falls in Irish house prices”, Quaterly Economic Commentary, Special Article, July 2007, Dublin Economic and Social Research Institute, p. 53. 13. Unemployment rose from 4.6% to 6.1% in 2007, to 11.8% in 2009, to 13.7% in 2010 and 15.1% in 2012. CSO, Seasonally Adjusted Standardised Unemployment Rates, http:// www.cso.ie/en/statistics/labourmarket/principalstatistics/ seasonallyadjustedstandardisedunemploymentratessur/, retrieved on 8 March 2015. 14. Calculations based on Eurostat, AMECO, op.cit. 15. Antoin E. Murphy, op.cit., p. 6. 16. Eurostat, “General government gross debt - annual data" http://ec.europa.eu/ eurostat/web/products-datasets/-/teina225>, retrieved on 08 March 2015. 17. John FitzGerald, “Where Did the €30bn in Cuts Go?”, The Irish Times, 17 February 2015. 18. CSO, Annual Population Change (Persons in April) (Thousand) by Component and Year,
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21. GNP per capita: +0.5% in 2011, +3.6% in 2012, +2.8% in 2013, +5.2% in 2014. Calculations based on Eurostat, AMECO, op. cit. 22. CSO, “Live Register, June 2015”, [http://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ er/mue/monthlyunemploymentjune2015/ (retrieved on 25 July 2015). 23. Eurostat, “Unemployment statistics”, http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics- explained/index.php/Unemployment_statistics, retrieved on 25 July 2015. 24. Richard Barley, “Ireland's Economy Returns to the Core of Europe”, The Wall Street Journal, 11 September 2014. 25. John FitzGerald and Ide Kearney (eds.), Medium-Term Review, 2013-2020, Dublin, ESRI, p. 6. 26. The banking industry did not pay attention to “conventional early warning indicator of domestic imbalances, the current account of the balance of payments [because of the] membership of monetary union”. Ibid, p. 6. 27. Sarah Voitchovsky, Bertrand Maitre & Brian Nolan, “Wage Inequality in Ireland’s ‘Celtic Tiger’ Boom”, The Economic and Social Review, Vol. 43, No. 1, Spring, 2012, p. 103. 28. Between 2001 and 2008, labour costs rose on average by 4.8%. During the crisis, Irish labour costs rose by 0.01%. Eurostat, “Labour cost index, nominal value – annual data”,
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37. Suzanne Lynch, “Abolition of ‘double-Irish’ in Budget 2015 welcomed by EU tax commissioner”, The Irish Times, 14 October 2014. 38. To avoid transfer pricing, the UK patent box relief would be restricted “to profits generated from IP that was initially developed in the UK”. “A fresh start for the UK’s patent box scheme”, LexisNexis PSL tax, 28 November 2014, http://www.mmp-tax.co.uk/ pdfs/A_fresh_start_for_UK_patent_box_28112014.pdf, retrieved 26 July 2015. 39. Anne Anderson quoted in “Investment in Ireland: A Success Story”, op. cit. 40. The US firm buys a foreign firm (avoiding paying tax on repatriated benefits since they were spent to buy the foreign company) and transfers its headquarters to the recently bought company, thus avoiding paying US tax in the future. Accenture moved its HQ in 2009 or Endo in 2014. “Tax avoidance: the Irish inversion”, The Financial Times, 29 April 2014. 41. Michael Porter, The Competitive Advantage of Nations, New York: Free Press, 1990. 42. The Industrial Policy Review Group, A Time for Change: Industrial Policy for the 1990s, Dublin, Stationery Office), 1992. 43. Frank Barry, “Foreign Direct Investment, Industrial Policy and the Emergence of an Irish Indigenous Software Cluster”, p. 4. http://www.tcd.ie/business/staff/fbarry/ papers/FDI, %20Industrial%20Policy%20and%20the%20Emergence%20of%20an%20Irish%20Indigenous%20Software%20Cluster.pdf,retrieved on 11 March 2015. 44. IDA Ireland, http://www.idaireland.com/en/newsroom/ida-strategy/index.xml, retrieved on 11 March 2015. 45. IDA Ireland, Research, Development and Innovation, http://www.idaireland.com/ en/business-in-ireland/activities/research-development-and-innovation/, retrieved on 11 March 2015. 46. 31.1for Ireland vs 32.1 for core countries. Eurostat, AMECO, op. cit. 47. OECD.Stats, “Average annual wages 2000-2013” http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx? DataSetCode=AV_AN_WAGE, retrieved on 26 July 2015. 48. List on http://www.kpmg.com/global/en/services/tax/tax-tools-and-resources/ pages/corporate-tax-rates-table.aspx, retrieved on 11 March 2015. 49. Anne Anderson, “Ireland, Europe and the US: A Road to Recovery and Renewed Partnership”, 29 May 2014. https://www.dfa.ie/irish-embassy/usa/news-and-events/2014/ireland-europe-and- the-us/, retrieved on 11March 2015. 50. With the slight increase in the population (+16,500 in April 2014 and the population is forecast to grow). CSO, “GNP per capita will increase a bit less”. http://www.cso.ie/ en/releasesandpublications/er/pme/populationandmigrationestimatesapril2014/ #.VPjV_HzF-, http://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/er/rpp/ regionalpopulationprojections2016-2031/#.VK6p48n2QqE, retrieved on 11 March 2015. 51. All long-term planning exercises have intrinsic limitations. For instance, the ESRI considered that oil price would be around 100 USD per barrel in the period, while it is currently priced at ~60 USD, so we took the liberty to make some shortcuts so as not to overcomplexify the analyses. GNP growth rates are applied to GNP figures, assuming that population growth rate will not differ significantly between Ireland and EU core countries. GNP growth rates for 2019 and 2020 are not given by the ESRI for the delayed
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recovery scenario, so they are assumed to be the same as for 2018. GNP growth rate for EU core countries is assumed to be the same as GDP EU 15 growth rate. 52. In 2013, US Congress investigated the use of Irish companies by Apple to avoid paying taxes in the US. In 2014, Barack Obama singled out Ireland for criticism. In 2015, US Congress introduced a bill to curb corporate tax inversions. Simon Carswell, “Ending Double Irish’ should be start of tax changes - US lawmaker”, The Irish Times, 21 January 2015. 53. “Irish goods export performance in 2013 back to 2008 level”, Finfacts Website, (retrieved on 10 October 2014). 54. “The second key industry in this regard is the chemical and pharmaceutical industry (including cosmetics). In this sector, the barriers to US exports to the EU are between 15% and 35%, depending on the sub-sector, and between 9% and 15% in the other direction. In particular, the divergent regulation of chemicals (REACH in the EU and the Toxic Substances Control Act in the US) have increased rather than reduced the barriers”. Klaus Günter Deutsch, “Atlantic unity in global competition”, Deutsche Bank Research, EU Monitor, 19 August 2013. http://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/ DBR_INTERNET_EN-PROD/PROD0000000000318466/ Atlantic+unity+in+global+competition%3A+T-TIP+in+perspective.PDF, retrieved on 10 October 2014.
ABSTRACTS
This article studies the impact of the 2008 economic crisis on the Irish development model. The Republic of Ireland has developed its economy thanks to an FDI-led strategy. This strategy was very successful during the Celtic Tiger period in the 1990s and 2000s. Will the crisis put an end to Ireland’s economic development? If Ireland manages to keep a low corporate tax rate, it appears that the country will be able to carry on with its development model. However, Ireland seems to have almost achieved its catching up with the EU core countries and it will be difficult to reach growth rates similar to those of the Celtic Tiger period.
L’Irlande a développé son économie à travers une politique d’ouverture économique et d’attraction des IDE dont le point d’orgue a été le Tigre celtique dans les années 1990 et 2000. Cet article étudie l’impact de la crise économique de 2008 sur le modèle de développement économique irlandais. Il apparaît que le modèle peut encore être valide, si l’Irlande parvient à préserver sa politique fiscale. Toutefois, il est peu probable que le pays puisse encore espérer des taux de croissance nettement plus élevés que le reste de l’UE car l’Irlande a fini son rattrapage économique.
Études irlandaises, 40-2 | 2015 24
INDEX
Mots-clés: crise financière, Tigre celtique, Union Européenne / CEE, Irlande - questions économiques et sociales Keywords: financial crisis, Celtic Tiger, Ireland - socio-economic issues, European Union / EEC
AUTHOR
VANESSA BOULLET IDEA, Université de Lorraine
Études irlandaises, 40-2 | 2015 25
Les entreprises irlandaises : nouveau moteur de la croissance économique nationale au lendemain de la crise ?
Anne Groutel
1 Depuis la fin des années 1950, période où les gouvernants irlandais optèrent pour l’abandon du protectionnisme et la mise en œuvre d’une politique visant à attirer des entreprises étrangères à vocation exportatrice, le poids des multinationales dans l’économie irlandaise est allé en augmentant. Elles ont constitué le moteur de la croissance économique exceptionnelle que l’Irlande a connue du milieu des années 1990 au début des années 20001. D’ailleurs, Michael Casey, ancien économiste en chef à la Central Bank of Ireland et ancien membre du conseil d’administration du Fonds Monétaire International se fait fort de démystifier le rôle joué par les entreprises irlandaises dans ce succès : « Le tigre celtique n’a jamais existé, c’était un tigre américain2. » Aujourd’hui les multinationales étrangères sont plus que jamais un pilier de l’économie irlandaise3.
2 Les entreprises irlandaises4 ont longtemps5 vécu dans l’ombre de ces géants qui étaient au cœur de la politique industrielle irlandaise6. L’attitude des autorités à leur égard ne commença à changer qu’à partir de la fin des années 2000, au plus fort de la crise financière et économique amorcée fin 20077. En 2008, Frank Ryan, alors directeur d’ Enterprise Ireland8, faisait alors montre d’optimisme et se déclarait convaincu qu’après une première phase de développement économique généré par les investissements directs étrangers (IDE)9, et une seconde caractérisée par l’essor du secteur de la construction, la troisième serait marquée par la croissance des entreprises « indigènes10 ». Les conditions sont-elles réunies pour que la vision de Frank Ryan devienne, à terme, réalité ?
Études irlandaises, 40-2 | 2015 26
Faire progresser l’économie irlandaise dans la chaîne de valeur mondiale à l’aube du nouveau millénaire : quel rôle pour le entreprises irlandaises ?
3 L’essor économique qu’a connu le pays à partir du milieu des années 1990 a certes permis d’élever le niveau de vie de la population irlandaise, mais il a, dans le même temps, entraîné la montée d’une spirale inflationniste. À mesure que les coûts augmentaient, l’Irlande perdait de sa compétitivité et de son attractivité pour les investisseurs étrangers. En 2004, le Enterprise Strategy Group, chargé par Mary Harney11 de préconiser une stratégie pour encourager la croissance et promouvoir l’emploi, estima que faire progresser l’économie dans la chaîne de valeur mondiale s’imposait pour faire face à la concurrence grandissante des pays d’Asie et parer aux risques de délocalisations des multinationales déjà installées en Irlande. L’objectif était désormais d’inciter les multinationales non seulement à fabriquer des produits à plus haute valeur ajoutée en Irlande mais également d’y mener des activités de recherche et développement. Faire de l’économie irlandaise une économie du savoir et promouvoir l’innovation devaient permettre à l’Irlande de rebondir.
4 Dans le cadre de son étude, ce groupe de réflexion se pencha sur le rôle que pouvaient jouer les entreprises irlandaises dans ce scénario. Son rapport révéla qu’à l’exception de quelques entreprises très dynamiques, piètres étaient les performances du secteur indigène dans son ensemble12.
5 En juillet 2005, Micheál Martin13 chargea donc le Small Business Forum14 de proposer des mesures concrètes afin de remédier aux obstacles auxquels les petites entreprises étaient confrontées15. L’objectif était de faire en sorte qu’elles puissent améliorer leur productivité et leurs performances en général. Elles pourraient alors croître et être en mesure d’exporter.
6 Le rapport du Forum contient une étude exhaustive des points faibles des entreprises irlandaises et des obstacles qui inhibaient leur croissance. Ses auteurs estimèrent qu’une action gouvernementale s’imposait car les entreprises irlandaises seraient appelées à jouer un rôle plus important dans l’économie irlandaise du futur16. Outre une batterie de mesures destinées à permettre aux entreprises de croître et de devenir plus innovantes, le Forum appela le gouvernement à élaborer une politique ciblée sur la promotion de l’entrepreneuriat, une politique qui avait jusqu’alors fait défaut17.
7 En septembre 2007, à la demande du gouvernement irlandais, Forfás18 publia « Towards Developing an Enterpreneurship Policy19 », un document qui devait servir de plan directeur pour l’élaboration de ladite politique. En premier lieu, ce document synthétisait les retombées positives de l’entrepreneuriat pour ou sur la croissance, la compétitivité et l’innovation mais également pour le développement régional et l’inclusion sociale. Il fixait un objectif ambitieux, celui de faire de l’Irlande l’une des nations les plus entrepreneuriales au monde : L’Irlande se distinguera par sa forte culture entrepreneuriale, elle sera saluée pour ses entrepreneurs innovants et reconnue par les entrepreneurs comme étant l’un des meilleurs environnements au monde pour créer et développer une entreprise20.
8 Par ailleurs, certaines personnalités internationales du monde économique et politique exprimèrent publiquement leur scepticisme quant à la pérennité du modèle économique irlandais basé sur le « tout-multinationales ». Ainsi Robert Shapiro21 mit-il
Études irlandaises, 40-2 | 2015 27
l’Irlande en garde. Celle-ci serait bien avisée de « se sevrer » de sa dépendance envers les investissements directs étrangers (IDE) qui, affirmait-il, ne doivent constituer qu’une étape dans le développement économique. Les Irlandais devaient selon lui, prendre leur destin en main et devenir une nation d’entrepreneurs. Le pays pourrait ainsi, à terme, disposer d’entreprises compétitives, têtes de file mondiales dans leurs secteurs. Venant de la part d’un conseiller de Barack Obama, ancien sous-secrétaire chargé du commerce et des affaires économiques, ces déclarations avaient de quoi interpeller les autorités irlandaises.
9 À ce coup de semonce, vinrent s’ajouter les critiques de Dan Breznitz22, expert international en matière de politique d’innovation. Il affirma sans détour que les efforts de l’État irlandais pour encourager la création d’entreprises innovantes à fort potentiel de croissance dans le secteur des nouvelles technologies n’étaient pas suffisants. Les autorités devaient, d’une part, encourager plus énergiquement toutes les entreprises irlandaises à se lancer dans la recherche et le développement et, d’autre part, opter pour des mesures qui limiteraient les risques financiers, inhérents à cette activité, pour les petites sociétés23.
10 Cependant, malgré ces appels à l’action, la politique de l’entrepreneuriat tant attendue ne fut pas élaborée par le gouvernement Fianna Fáil. En revanche, quelques mois plus tard il rendit public un projet24 plus global visant à stimuler l’innovation et dynamiser faire monter en gamme l’économie irlandaise. Force est de constater que si l’importance de développer l’entrepreneuriat y était reconnue, le rôle attribué aux entreprises irlandaises n’était donc qu’un rôle accessoire. Il ne s’agissait a priori pas d’en faire le prochain moteur de croissance mais plutôt qu’elles participent à la création d’un environnement milieu susceptible d’attirer les multinationales et les entrepreneurs étrangers : Au cœur de l’économie intelligente, il y a un écosystème exemplaire en matière de recherche, d’innovation et de commercialisation. L’objectif est de faire de l’Irlande un pôle d’innovation et de commercialisation en Europe, un pays qui combine les caractéristiques d’une terre d’accueil attrayante pour les multinationales innovantes qui investissent lourdement dans la recherche et le développement tout en représentant un environnement d’incubation très attractif pour les meilleurs entrepreneurs en Europe et au-delà25.
11 En 2008, l’Irlande venait d’entrer en crise et ses dirigeants n’avaient pas encore, semble-t-il, pris la mesure de la gravité de la situation. Les autorités avaient jusqu’alors préparé la transition de l’économie irlandaise dans des conditions relativement favorables, sans qu’il n’y ait vraiment de sentiment d’urgence. Le pays jouissait d’une croissance économique stable26 et du taux de chômage le plus bas de la zone euro avec des taux annuels compris entre 4,4% et 4,6%27. Mais, la crise allait changer complètement la donne et le début des années 2010 représenter véritablement une période charnière.
Le tournant des années 2010
12 Au début des années 2010, l’Irlande, après avoir été encensée pendant plus d’une décennie, était devenue l’un des maillons faibles de l’Union européenne. Outre les conséquences découlant directement de la crise dans le secteur bancaire, le gouvernement eut également à gérer la hausse spectaculaire du nombre de demandeurs d’emplois, qui passa à 14,5 % en 2011. Remettre les finances du pays en bon
Études irlandaises, 40-2 | 2015 28
ordre, faire en sorte que l’économie reparte sur des bases saines et lutter contre le chômage devinrent des priorités nationales. Ceci impliquait un retour aux fondamentaux c’est-à-dire promouvoir les exportations, moteur de croissance des années 1990.
13 Certes, les auteurs de Making it Happen, Growing Enterprise for Ireland, rapport publié par Forfás en 2010, réaffirment le rôle clé que jouent les multinationales dans la mesure où elles participent à l’implantation et au développement de nouveaux secteurs d’activité en Irlande tournés vers l’exportation et servent à la fois de caution et de vitrine à l’économie irlandaise28. Mais, ce document atteste dans le même temps de la volonté grandissante de cet organisme de faire prendre conscience aux gouvernants de l’urgence de promouvoir l’entrepreneuriat et de renforcer la contribution des entreprises nationales à l’économie : La question de la trop grande dépendance de l’Irlande envers les multinationales étrangères et leurs exportations en particulier fait débat. En outre, la nature des activités menées en Irlande par les entreprises étrangères est en train de changer. Ces activités créent moins d’emplois. Étant donné le changement de dynamique qui est en train de s’opérer chez les entreprises nationales et la concurrence de plus en plus féroce à laquelle se livrent les pays pour attirer les investissements directs étrangers, l’heure est venue de prêter une attention nouvelle à l’optimisation du potentiel de croissance des entreprises indigènes. L’objectif global est d’augmenter la contribution des entreprises indigènes à la croissance future de l’Irlande29.
14 Il apparaît de plus en plus évident que s’en remettre aux multinationales étrangères ne peut suffire à résorber le chômage. Trouver des alternatives s’impose. Partant du constat que les entreprises créent le plus d’emplois dans les cinq premières années de leur existence, il est, selon ce rapport, impératif d’encourager la création d’entreprise. Promouvoir l’entrepreneuriat de croissance est aussi primordial afin que les entreprises irlandaises puissent accroître leurs exportations et ce d’au moins 33% (pour la période 2011-2015)30.
15 En 2012, Richard Bruton, ministre du Travail, des entreprises et de l’innovation au sein de la coalition associant le Fine Gael et le Labour Party, semblait avoir admis qu’un recadrage de la politique industrielle était inévitable : Pour sortir de cette crise, nous devons nous efforcer de créer un moteur de croissance indigène. Même si les investissements directs étrangers en Irlande sont et resteront d’une importance cruciale, il est vital que nous trouvions la façon de permettre à nos entreprises indigènes d’améliorer leurs performances et d’exploiter au maximum les débouchés à l’export. Comme je l’ai dit précédemment, notre politique industrielle ne doit pas simplement avoir pour objectif d’attirer le prochain Google ou Microsoft en Irlande. Nous devons nous ingénier à créer le prochain Google ou Microsoft ici en Irlande31.
16 Un groupe de réflexion, le Entrepreneurship Forum, fut donc de nouveau chargé de formuler des propositions pour l’élaboration d’une stratégie ciblée sur l’entrepreneuriat. En effet, cette vision d’ensemble, exposant de façon claire ce qui devait être accompli et fixant des objectifs quantifiés, faisait cruellement défaut.
17 Par ailleurs, les conclusions du rapport d’évaluation, livré par Forfás32, des divers programmes gouvernementaux destinés à aider les entreprises nationales révèlent un certain nombre d’anomalies. En premier lieu, les agences chargées de la mise en œuvre des programmes destinés à développer l’entrepreneuriat avaient jusqu’alors fixé elles- mêmes les objectifs à atteindre, des objectifs qui manquaient parfois de clarté33. Dans ces conditions, estiment les rédacteurs du rapport de Forfás, il est difficile d’évaluer si le
Études irlandaises, 40-2 | 2015 29
potentiel entrepreneurial a été exploité de façon optimale34. Les auteurs de l’évaluation notent également des chevauchements entre les différents programmes. Enfin, comme l’avait déjà noté le Small Business Forum, la complexité de la répartition des responsabilités confiées à la multitude d’agences chargées de gérer ces programmes avait de quoi décourager le potentiel créateur d’entreprise35.
18 Malgré la pléthore de programmes destinés à aider à la création et à la croissance des entreprises, Dan Breznitz qui avait déjà porté un jugement sévère sur la politique gouvernementale irlandaise quelques années auparavant, ne se montra guère plus indulgent à l’égard de cette dernière en juin 2014 : Les résultats de l’Irlande en matière de création d’entreprises indigènes innovantes et performantes sont médiocres, surtout dans le secteur technologique et sont à l’opposé du succès qu’elle remporte dans la promotion des investissements directs étrangers. Attirer des multinationales est positif et a permis de créer beaucoup d’emplois en Irlande […] Mais la fragilité du secteur des entreprises indigènes est alarmante36.
Irlandais : levez-vous et entreprenez !
19 À l’analyse, le rapport élaboré par le Entrepreneurship Forum reprend les thèmes déjà présents dans le rapport du Small Business Forum comme par exemple la nécessité de développer le réseautage et le mentorat d’entreprise. En 2006, il était déjà question de promouvoir la création d’entreprise particulièrement auprès des femmes et de la communauté immigrée. Désormais, les demandeurs d’emploi, les seniors et les jeunes, diplômés ou non, font également partie de ceux qu’il faut pousser à s’engager dans cette voie.
20 Le rapport du Entrepreneurship Forum se démarque toutefois sensiblement de l’approche de ses prédécesseurs dans la mesure où il préconise que l’État limite son rôle à celui de « facilitateur », et s’abstienne de mettre en œuvre de nouvelles initiatives privilégiant l’amélioration de programmes déjà mis en œuvre. Veiller à ce que les entreprises puissent obtenir aisément les financements dont elles ont besoin, faciliter l’accès à l’information, mettre en place un régime fiscal incitatif, faire en sorte que le système éducatif inculque l’esprit d’entreprise à tous les niveaux et que le système de protection sociale ne désavantage pas les créateurs d’entreprises, telles sont les tâches auxquelles l’État doit s’atteler. Car il revient aux citoyens en général et aux entrepreneurs de prendre en main leur destin : L’entrepreneuriat en Irlande commence avec une culture de citoyenneté engagée […] Des citoyens engagés sont responsables de leurs réussites et de leurs échecs, et s’engagent à en tirer les leçons […] Une Irlande vraiment entrepreneuriale dépend d’entrepreneurs solides et autonomes, qui sont dévoués à leurs clients, leurs équipes et leurs réseaux. Les entrepreneurs doivent se tourner plus vers leurs pairs et attendre moins du soutien du gouvernement pour atteindre leur objectif37.
21 Plus d’autonomie pour les entrepreneurs et d’entraide, un discours quelque peu inhabituel en Irlande mais qui s’explique peut-être par le fait que le Forum ait été présidé par Sean O’Sullivan38, un célèbre entrepreneur touche-à-tout, américain d’origine irlandaise, revenu vivre « au pays ».
Études irlandaises, 40-2 | 2015 30
Aperçu de l’action gouvernementale destinée à aider la création et la croissance des entreprises irlandaises
22 Une petite phrase d’introduction : « Il semblerait que le gouvernement irlandais ait bien pris acte de certaines des recommandations émises dans les rapports précédemment cités. »
23 En 2014, le gouvernement a enfin accédé à une demande récurrente des entreprises, à savoir, simplifier le parcours des créateurs d’entreprise et des entrepreneurs. Dans le cadre de son programme, Action Plan for Jobs 2014, le ministère du Travail a créé les Local Enterprise Offices (LEOs) en avril 2014, des guichets uniques désormais chargés de renseigner et d’aider les petites et très petites entreprises en offrant subventions et formations39.
24 Le gouvernement a également publié sa stratégie pour promouvoir l’entrepreneuriat40. Ce document constitue en soi un pas en avant. Les deux avant-propos, l’un du Premier ministre l’autre du ministre du Travail, sont de bon augure puisque l’importance de l’entrepreneuriat y est clairement soulignée tout comme l’est l’objectif de faire de l’Irlande l’un des pays les plus dynamiques au monde en matière d’entrepreneuriat. Le gouvernement irlandais estime qu’il serait ainsi possible de créer 93 000 emplois d’ici à 201941. Mais pour atteindre cet objectif les créations d’entreprises devront augmenter de 25 % (plus 3 000) par an. Il devra en aller de même pour le taux de survie des entreprises de moins de cinq ans (plus 1 800 par an). Enfin, le potentiel de développement des entreprises, une notion quelque peu vague, devra aussi augmenter de 25 %42.
25 Cependant, force est de constater que le reste de ce document tant attendu est assez décevant. En guise de stratégie, le ministère du Travail a, en réalité, produit une synthèse contenant les différentes mesures qui existent déjà pour encourager la création d’entreprise et, hormis ceux qui viennent d’être cités, les objectifs ne sont pas quantifiés.
26 L’approche prônée par le Entrepreneurship Forum a été adoptée. Il est donc clairement spécifié dans le rapport que les autorités irlandaises comptent laisser les rennes aux entrepreneurs potentiels et aux chefs d’entreprise43. Le gouvernement veillera à ce que les programmes scolaires et universitaires intègrent la promotion de l’esprit d’entreprise afin qu’à terme la culture irlandaise en soit imprégnée44. Mais globalement l’action des autorités se cantonnera à instaurer l’environnement le plus favorable possible à l’entrepreneuriat, entre autres, par le biais de la politique fiscale45, de la simplification des procédures administratives et du droit des sociétés46.
27 L’autre grand défi réside dans la nécessité d’aider les entreprises existantes à se développer suffisamment pour qu’elles soient en mesure d’exporter. Aussi le ministère des Affaires étrangères et du Commerce a-t-il redoublé d’efforts pour organiser des missions de prospection commerciale à l’étranger afin d’aider les entreprises irlandaises à trouver de nouveaux débouchés en particulier dans les pays émergents et en Chine47.
28 Toutefois, le récent sondage mené auprès des entreprises exportatrices irlandaises par l’Irish Exporters Association48 est édifiant. En premier lieu, elles estiment que le soutien de l’État est soit moyen, (44,3 %) insuffisant (18,6 %) ou inexistant (9,8 %)49. Cela s’explique peut-être par le fait que la moitié des sondés ne connaissait aucun des programmes
Études irlandaises, 40-2 | 2015 31
destinés à aider les entreprises. Qui plus est, 68,9 % de ceux qui ont eu accès aux informations sur ces programmes déclarent avoir été mal informés50. Enfin, 65,5 % se plaignent que les lourdeurs administratives entravent la bonne marche de leur entreprise51.
29 Malgré cela, les entreprises irlandaises se développent et montrent des signes encourageants qui pointent vers une reprise de l’économie nationale.
La montée en puissance des entreprises irlandaises
30 En premier lieu, on estime à une vingtaine le nombre d’entreprises irlandaises qui sont parvenues à se développer et à accéder au rang de multinationales52. Certes, pour le moment aucune d’entre elles n’appartient au secteur de la haute technologie, secteur phare du dynamisme économique, mais cette évolution est un phénomène très positif qui marque une maturité grandissante de l’économie irlandaise53. Les investissements directs sortants54, qui avaient augmenté de façon spectaculaire (plus 325 % entre 2000 et 2005), ont fait preuve d’une grande résilience face à la crise55. Ceci est d’autant plus important que des études ont montré l’impact positif de ces derniers sur l’emploi en Irlande56. Aussi les autorités irlandaises encouragent-elles cette tendance57.
31 Par ailleurs, les entreprises irlandaises réalisent aujourd’hui une plus grande part de leurs ventes à l’export. De 37 % en 2003, elles sont passées à 52 % en 2012. Même si les produits manufacturés issus de l’industrie agro-alimentaire représentent toujours une part substantielle de ces exportations (41 %), on note une augmentation importante de la part des services informatiques, de communication et d’information (plus 20 % par rapport à 2003)58. Ce qui tend à montrer que l’économie irlandaise est progressivement en train de progresser dans l’échelle de valeur mondiale de monter en gamme. Les entreprises technologiques irlandaises sont actuellement au nombre de 806, un nombre qui continue d’augmenter. Qui plus est, une cinquantaine d’entre elles ont traversé l’Atlantique pour s’implanter dans la Silicon Valley. Certaines louent des bureaux au Enterprise Ireland Centre et bénéficient du soutien du Irish Technology Leadership Group, un groupe constitué de membres influents de la diaspora irlandaise très bien introduits dans les milieux d’affaires de la Silicon Valley59.
32 Brennan et Verma60 sont très optimistes quant au potentiel des entreprises irlandaises et aux chances de les voir véritablement stimuler la croissance nationale. D’ailleurs, Julie Sinnamon, directrice d’Enterprise Ireland, affirmait récemment que les exportations des entreprises irlandaises n’ont jamais été aussi élevées61. Il convient cependant de mettre ces signes encourageants en perspective. Certes, l’impact des entreprises irlandaises sur l’économie nationale62 est égal, si ce n’est légèrement supérieurn, à celui des multinationales, mais ces dernières représentent toujours 90% des exportations du pays.
L’Irlande : une nation d’entrepreneurs ?
33 Un certain nombre d’entreprises irlandaises se développent et s’internationalisent. Mais sommes-nous pour autant en présence d’une nation d’entrepreneurs ? En 2008, la population se caractérisait par un esprit entrepreneurial bien supérieur à la moyenne européenne selon le Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Report63. Mais la crise a eu un
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effet dévastateur sur la création d’entreprises en Irlande. Alors qu’en 2006, 16 700 nouvelles sociétés avaient été créées, ce nombre n’était plus que de 11 200 en 2010. L’Irlande, l’un des pays d’Europe les plus dynamiques en matière de création d’entreprises avant la crise, est brusquement devenue l’un des plus pusillanimes. Une prudence somme toute justifiée quand on sait que des entreprises créées en 2007, seules 48,4 % avaient survécu en 201264.
34 Il est à craindre que le traumatisme engendré par la crise n’ait inhibé l’esprit d’entreprise en Irlande. En effet, contrairement aux conclusions optimistes du rapport de 2008, le Global Entrepreneurship Development Index 2014 (GEDI), montre clairement que l’Irlande est un pays très frileux à l’égard du risque65. D’aucuns affirment que ce serait un trait caractéristique de sa population et qui serait doublé d’une tendance au défaitisme. Interrogé par les membres du Comité parlementaire mixte sur le travail, l’entreprise et l’innovation, lors de la présentation du rapport du Entrepreneurship Forum, Sean O’Sullivan lui-même reconnaissait que « regarder dans la mauvaise direction et regarder vers l’échec est une façon d’aller à l’échec. Nous faisons beaucoup cela, cela fait partie de notre culture66 ». Et le président du Comité d’ajouter : « Il y a une culture de la non-prise de risque. Les parents encouragent leurs enfants à choisir un emploi sûr comme comptable ou avocat ou quelque chose du même genre67. » Michael Casey partage cette opinion dans le portrait sans concession qu’il dresse de ses concitoyens68. Pourtant, faute de recherche suffisante en la matière, il n’existe aucune certitude quant à l’influence exacte de la culture sur l’entrepreneuriat69.
35 D’ailleurs, un climat économique, national et mondial, favorable peut se révéler être l’élément qui va déclencher le passage à l’action. La période de croissance et de prospérité que connut l’Irlande pendant un peu plus d’une décennie contribua certainement à engendrer cette forte propension à créer des entreprises. On note d’ailleurs une reprise sensible de la création d’entreprises depuis un an, signe que la confiance en l’économie nationale est en train de revenir. Deux études, l’une menée par la Irish Exporters Association70, l’autre par la Irish Software Association71, confirment une tendance à l’optimisme.
36 Des exportations en hausse, un retour de la confiance, des créations d’entreprises en augmentation, certaines conditions semblent réunies pour que les entreprises irlandaises contribuent dans une plus large mesure à l’économie nationale. Il est néanmoins difficile d’imaginer qu’elles puissent devenir le prochain moteur de la croissance dans un avenir proche. D’ailleurs même si le discours des gouvernants irlandais a indiscutablement changé, ils semblent douter que les entreprises irlandaises puissent former à elles seules une masse critique, un écosystème, puisqu’ils continuent de chercher à attirer des entrepreneurs étrangers. Et de s’interroger sur le rôle de l’État en tant que simple « facilitateur ». Est-ce vraiment l’approche la plus appropriée ? Quoi qu’il en soit, l’objectif de faire de l’Irlande le pays le plus propice à la création d’entreprise n’a pas encore été atteint, loin s’en faut. En témoigne le Global Entrepreneurship Index 2015 qui n’a classé le pays qu’au douzième rang des pays européens72.
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NOTES
1. Entre 1995 et 2000, l’Irlande a connu un taux moyen de croissance de 9 % du produit national brut et de 9,8% du produit intérieur brut. Central Statistics Office,
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12. Les entreprises indigènes étaient peu productives, peu innovantes, souvent par manque de moyens, et n’avaient pas ou peu recours aux nouvelles technologies. Seule une minorité d’entre elles exportaient, principalement vers le Royaume-Uni. Enterprise Strategy Group, Ahead of the Curve: Ireland’s Place in the Global Economy, Juillet 2004. 13. Micheál Martin était alors ministre du Commerce. 14. Le Small Business Forum fut crée en juillet 2005 par Micheál Martin. Ce groupe était composé d’entrepreneurs, de membres des organisations irlandaises représentant les petites entreprises, de personnels des agences publiques chargées du développement économique et d’universitaires. Il reçut pour mission de proposer des solutions pour améliorer les conditions dans lesquelles les petites entreprises opéraient en Irlande. 15. De fait, 97% des entreprises présentes en Irlande emploient moins de cinquante employés. 16. Small Business Forum, The Report of the Small Business Forum : Small Business Is Big Business, Mai 2006, p. VIII.
17. Ibid., p. XVII. 18. Forfás est un organisme indépendant investi par l’État d’une mission de conseil en matière de développement industriel, de politique économique et d’innovation. 19. Forfás, Towards Developing an Enterprise Strategy, septembre 2007. 20. « Ireland will be characterized by a strong entrepreneurial culture, recognised for the innovative quality of its entrepreneurs, and acknowledged by entrepreneurs as a world-class environment in which to start and grow a business ». Ibid., p. 5. 21. Robert Shapiro était en visite en Irlande, en novembre 2008, pour participer à un séminaire sur les IDE organisé par la University College Dublin Business School. « Obama advisor says “Ireland must wean itself from dependence on FDI" - Foreign Direct Investment », [http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1015171.shtml], page consultée le 8 décembre 2014. 22. Dan Breztniz, co-directeur du Innovation Policy Lab à la Munck School of Global Affairs de l’Université de Toronto, est l’auteur d’un ouvrage dans lequel il compare la politique d’innovation menée par Israël, Taiwan et l’Irlande. Innovation and the State: Political Choice and Strategies for Growth in Israel, Taiwan and Ireland, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2007. 23. Nicole Matthews, « Leading the Way to Success », Business & Finance, 26 mars 2009. 24. Government of Ireland, Building Ireland’s Smart Economy, A Framework for Sustainable Economic Renewal, Dublin, Stationery Office, 2008, http://www.taoiseach.gov.ie/ BuildingIrelandsSmartEconomy_1_.pdf, page consultée le 15 décembre 2014. 25. « The Smart Economy has, at its core, an exemplary research, innovation and commercialisation ecosystem. The objective is to make Ireland an innovation and commercialisation hub in Europe – a country that combines the features of an attractive home for innovative R&D-intensive multinationals while also being a highly-attractive incubation environment for the best entrepreneurs in Europe and beyond. » Ibid., p. 8. 26. Dans les années précédant la crise financière de 2008, le taux de croissance annuel de l’Irlande se situait autour 5%, [http://www.statistiques-mondiales.com/ taux_de_croissance.htm], page consultée le 8 janvier 2014. 27. Statistiques mondiales, [ http://www.statistiques-mondiales.com/ ue_chomage.htm], page consultée le 8 janvier 2014.
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28. Forfás, Making it happen, Growing Enterprise for Ireland, septembre 2010, p. 79. 29. « At the same time, there is a contention that Ireland remains overly reliant on FDI in terms of its contribution to exports in particular. In addition, the nature of FDI being attracted to Ireland is changing, particularly in terms of its reduced employment intensity. Given the changing dynamic within indigenous firms, and in the context of an increasingly competitive global environment for the attraction of FDI, a renewed focus on accelerating the growth potential of the indigenous base is timely. », Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. « If we are to get out of this crisis, we must work hard to create an indigenous engine of growth. While multinational investment in Ireland is and will remain crucial, it is vital that we find ways of enabling our indigenous firms to perform better and take full advantage of export opportunities. As I have said before, our industrial policy must not just be aimed at attracting the next Google or Microsoft to Ireland – we must strive to create the next Google or Microsoft here in Ireland. » Richard Bruton cité dans un communiqué de presse d’Enterprise Ireland. Enterprise Ireland, « Call for applicants for next round of Enterprise Ireland’s Competitive Start Fund », press releases, 26 janvier 2012, [http://www.enterprise- ireland.com/en/News/PressReleases/2012-Press-Releases/], page consultée le 15 janvier 2015. 32. Cette évaluation porte sur la période 2004-2010, Forfás, Forfás Evaluation of Enterprise Supports for Start-ups and Entrepreneurship, 14 avril 2014. 33. Ibid., p. 17. 34. Ibid., p. 17-18. 35. Ibid. p. 18. 36. « Ireland has done very poorly on creating innovative and successful indigenous companies, especially in the technology sector, as opposed to being very successful at attracting in multinationals. Attracting foreign direct investment is also positive and has supplied many Irish jobs […] But Ireland’s indigenous sector is alarmingly weak. » « Ireland could learn the lessons of social entrepreneurship », The Irish Times, 9 juin 2014. 37. « Entrepreneurship in Ireland starts with a culture of engaged citizenship […]. Engaged citizens take responsibility for their own progress and failure, and commit themselves to learning […]. A truly entrepreneurial Ireland is dependent on strong and self-reliant entrepreneurs, who are focused on their customers, their teams and their networks. Entrepreneurs must look more toward their peers and less to government support to achieve their goal. » Entrepreneurship Forum, Strengthening the Start-up Community, Report of the Enterpreneurship Forum, janvier 2014, p. 5. 38. Sean O’Sullivan est tout à la fois un entrepreneur en série, un inventeur et un investisseur. [http://www.rte.ie/tv/dragonsden/profile_seanosullivan.html]. 39. Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Action Plan for Jobs 2014, février 2014, p. 18. 40. Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, National Policy Statement on Entrepreneurship in Ireland, septembre 2014. 41. Charlie Taylor, « Government outlines plans to create 93,000 new jobs », The Irish Times, 9 octobre 2014. 42. Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, National Policy Statement on Entrepreneurship in Ireland, op.cit., p. 6.
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43. Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, National Policy Statement on Entrepreneurship in Ireland, op.cit., p. 8. 44. Ibid., p. 20-23. 45. Ibid., p. 24-27. 46. Ibid., p. 28-29. 47. Houses of Oireachtas, Dáil Éireann, Joint Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, 15 juillet 2014. 48. Irish Exporters Association, Export Ireland Survey and International Trade Finance Review 2014. 49. Ibid., 74. 50. Ibid., p. 75. 51. Ibid., p. 76. 52. Noelle Donnelly, « The Emergence and Internationalization of Irish MNEs », International Studies of Management and Organization, vol. 43, no. 1, printemps 2013, p. 26-51. 53. Louis Brennan et Rakhi Verma, « Outward FDI in Ireland and its Policy Context », Columbia FDI profiles, Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Development, 12 février 2013, [http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac%3A158995], page consultée le 11 janvier 2015. 54. Les investissements directs sortants sont les investissements des entreprises irlandaises à l’étranger. 55. Excepté en 2011, année marquée par une chute brutale, les investissements directs sortants des entreprises irlandaises ont bien résisté et sont aujourd’hui de nouveau en phase de croissance. Ils s’élevaient à presque 23 milliards de dollars en 2013. Unctad, World Investment Report 2014, p. 205. 56. Louis Brennan et Rakhi Verma, op. cit., p. 6. 57. Ibid., p. 5. 58. Forfás, Business Survey of Economic Impact 2012, mars 2014, p. 14-15. 59. Barbara McCarthy, « The successful entrepreneurs who have moved to Silicon Valley and are taking on the tech world », The Irish Independent, 31 août 2014. 60. Louis Brennan et Rakhi Verma, op. cit., p. 6. 61. Houses of Oireachtas, Dáil Éireann, Joint Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, 15 juillet 2014. 62. Prenant en compte les salaires versés et les achats de matières premières et de services, Julie Sinnamon estime cet impact à 18 milliards d’euros. 63. En 2008, le taux de création d’entreprises était de 4,3% alors que la moyenne européenne n’était que de 2,7%. Paula Fiztsimmons et Colm O’Gorman, Entrepreneurship in Ireland, Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, The Irish Annual Report, 2008. 64. Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, National Policy Statement on Entrepreneurship in Ireland, op. cit., p. 14. 65. Ibid., p. 17.
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66. « Looking in the wrong direction and looking towards failure is a way to get towards failure. We do that a lot as part of our culture. » Houses of Oireachtas, Dáil Éireann, Joint Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, 23 février 2014. 67. « There is a culture of not taking a risk. Parents encourage their children to get a secure job as an accountant or solicitor or whatever. » Ibid. 68. « The evidence, such as it is, suggests that the Irish gene pool does not produce entrepreneurs in great numbers and that our culture does not nurture them. » Michael Casey, op. cit., p. 67. 69. Erkki Audio, Pathak Saurav et Karl Wennberg, « Consequences of Cultural Practices for Entrepreneurial Behaviors », Journal of International Business Studies, vol. 44, no. 4, p. 334-362. 70. 71 % des sondés ont déclaré que leurs exportations avaient augmenté et pour un quart d’entre eux de plus de 15 %. 85 % s’attendent à une augmentation de leurs exportations en 2015 et 83 % comptent développer de nouveaux produits dans un avenir proche. Irish Exporters Association, op. cit., p. 15. 71. 81,5 % des sondés avaient confiance en l’avenir de leur entreprise en juin 2014. Un pourcentage qui n’était que de 62,5 % en août 2013. 94,4 % pensaient que leurs revenus allaient augmenter et 87 % s’attendaient à une hausse de leurs exportations. Irish Software Association, ISA Digital Technology Index, juin 2014. 72. Michael Hannigan, « Global Entrepreneurship 2015: Ireland in 12th Rank in Europe, 17th in World for Business Startups », http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/ article_1028465.shtmlpage consultée le 20 janvier 2015.
RÉSUMÉS
Éclipsées pendant des décennies par l’écrasante contribution des multinationales étrangères à l’économie, les entreprises irlandaises font, tout particulièrement depuis la crise, l’objet d’un regain d’attention de la part des autorités. Certains spécialistes prônent d’encourager l’entrepreneuriat pour lutter contre le chômage ou placent leurs espoirs dans ces entreprises qui s’internationalisent et pourraient bien stimuler la croissance économique nationale. Les conditions pour que les entreprises irlandaises en deviennent le prochain moteur sont-elles réunies ?
Dwarfed for decades by the overwhelming contribution of foreign multinationals to the economy, indigenous companies are now the focus of the Irish authorities’ attention. Some experts call for nurturing entrepreneurship to fight unemployment and hope those Irish companies which internationalise will drive national growth. Are the conditions now prevailing in Ireland conducive to making Irish companies the next growth engine of the economy?
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INDEX
Mots-clés : crise financière, entreprises et monde du travail, Irlande - questions économiques et sociales Keywords : financial crisis, business and labour, Ireland - socio-economic issues
AUTEUR
ANNE GROUTEL Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
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Irish Post-crisis Migratory and Demographic Patterns
Catherine Piola
1 This article intends to outline the impact of the 2008 economic crisis on the population of the Republic of Ireland by introducing the main migratory features and challenges of the post-crisis period and by analyzing outlining its effect on the population as a whole. Several questions can indeed be asked to measure the changes the economic crisis has brought about in within the Irish population, the growth and nature of which had already noticeably transformed during the boom period. Most of these changes focus on population flows, their size and composition. Have new patterns emerged in the wake of the economic downturn? Who has been most affected by the crisis and in what ways? Who left the country and who intends to remain? In order to answer these questions, migratory patterns between 2008 and 2015 are considered thanks to the data available in collected by the censuses of the population and the regular Central Statistics Office figures on population flows. They are presented in the form of 12 tables.
2 This paper tackles migration issues as it is naturally and logically assumed that any economic crisis triggers population out-flows due to a contracted labour market resulting in fewer jobs or other opportunities. In the case of Ireland, where emigration has been part of the history of the country for so long and where immigration had only recently come into existence, the scale of such population flows needs to be measured to determine what effect the crisis has had. It is also expected that immigrants having settled in the Republic during the Celtic Tiger era, may have decided to look for more economically attractive prospects somewhere else. These assumptions need to be questioned with the most recent data available. Finally, the long term impact of such changes will be considered, issues such as naturalisation or cultural diversity will be explored outlined in the uncertain context of a recovery period.
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The pre-2008 migratory patterns: the persistence of departures and the large in-flow of non nationals and returnees
3 While The Republic of Ireland enjoyed several years of extraordinary economic expansion, from the mid-1990s to 2008, its demography recorded an equally major change as not only an unprecedented inflow of non-national migrants developed, mainly to suit the labour market’s increasing needs, but also because a number of Irish emigrants decided to avail themselves of the opportunity of a thriving economy to return to the motherland. Table 1 illustrates the scale of such flows. Emigration figures are also indicated as they varied in direct connection with the economic outlook.
Table 1: Immigration to and emigration from the Republic (000 persons), 1995 to 2006
Year 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
Imm. 31.2 39.2 44.5 46 48.9 52.6 59 66.9 60 58.5 84.6 107.8 151.1
Emi. 33.1 31.2 25.3 28.6 31.5 26.6 26.2 25.6 29.3 26.5 29.4 36 46.3
Population and Migration Estimates, Dublin, Central Statistics Office, September 2012, p. 4.
4 In the mid-1990s, migratory flows in the Irish Republic were almost balanced, resulting in a net migration which became positive during the year 1995 and remained so until 2010. Immigration volumes tripled between 1995 and 2006 and peaked in 2007. The 2004 European Union enlargement and the Republic’s non-restrictive policy on new European Union citizens’ circulation largely explain this surplus, mostly made of workers attracted to the then thriving Irish economy. Returning Irish migrants were enumerated as part of the immigrants, with figures ranging from 16,000 to 21,000 a year in the period 2000 to 2007. They accounted for less than a quarter of the total number of immigrants for the 2005 to 2008 period. This modest share nonetheless increased the volume of in-coming population, contributing to the positive net migration balance.
5 The table also shows that even during the peak immigration years, emigration flows did not dry up as between 1995 and 2007 close to 370,000 persons left the country. Emigration was nevertheless at its lowest in the early 2000s, representing an annual loss of 0.7% at its lowest levels. Up to the 1990s, it is assumed that most of the emigrants were Irish citizens, but the data available not being precise enough as to the nationality of emigrants, it is impossible to quantify their share up to 2002. Regardless of the nationalities of emigrants, it needs to be remembered that, in 2007 for example, when the country attracted a large number of residents from abroad, one resident was leaving for every three newcomers.
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The most visible effect of the crisis: out-migration flows
6 The following graph shows the volume of emigrants to the Republic in the post-crisis period. As can be expected, the Irish economic downturn triggered a new wave of emigration. This is quantified first and then analysed further and in relation to previous years and other criteria.
Table 2: Emigration from the Republic (000 persons) and net migration (000 persons), 2006 to 2014
Year 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Emigration 36 46.3 49.2 72 69.2 80.6 87.1 89 81.9
Net migration 71.8 104.8 64.3 1.6 -27.5 -27.4 -34.4 -33.1 -21.4
Measuring Ireland’s Progress 2013, Dublin, Central Statistics Office, February 2015, Table 1.3 and Population and Migration Estimates, Dublin, Central Statistics Office, August 2014
7 The scale of the out-going flow is the first feature which has to be highlighted. Indeed, emigration, which had remained below the threshold of 30,000 from 1997 to 2005 (except for 1999 and its 31,500 emigrants), reached almost 50,000 in 2008 and has remained in the 80,000 range since 2011, with a record high of 89,000 in 2013. The correlation between economic downturn and emigration is unsurprisingly strong. The net migration balance has turned negative since 2010 as a result of the re-emergence of such patterns. However the scale of such out-flows remains below what was recorded in the late 1980s. Indeed, with losses reaching about 43,000 in 1988 and 1989, the 2014 net migration rate is not the worst ever recorded as it accounts for 0.4% of the 2014 total population, whereas the figure was 1.18% in 1988.
8 Beyond figures, the early 21st century emigration calls for a qualitative analysis. In order to refine this profile, let us consider the origins, age groups and occupations of those who have left the Republic since the crisis.
Table 3: Emigration by nationality and area of origin, 2006 to 2014, classified by sex for 2014 (000’s and % of total)
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Male/Female
15.3 12.9 13.1 19.2 28.9 42 46.5 50.9 40.7
Irish 22.7/18 42.5% 27.8% 26.7% 26.6% 41.7% 52.1% 53.3% 57.1% 49.7%
3.7 3.7 3.9 3 4.6 3.5 3.9 2.7 2.2 British 6.1% 1.6/1.1 7.9% 7.5% 5.4% 4.3% 5.7% 4% 4.3% 3.3%
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8.9 6 7.4 9 10.2 11.2 9.9 14 5.1 Rest EU15 14.1% 5.7/8.3 19.2% 12.2% 10.2% 13% 12.6% 12.8% 11.1% 17%
7.2 12.6 17.2 30.5 19 13.9 14.8 14 10.1
EU12** 6.1/4 20% 27.2% 35.1% 42.3% 27.4% 17.2% 17% 15.7% 12.3%
6.2 8.2 9 11 9.3 9.9 11.1 10.3 14.4
Rest/world 5.9/8.5 17.2% 17.7% 18.3% 15.2% 13.5% 12.2% 12.7% 11.5% 17.5%
Total 36 46.3 49 72 69.2 80.6 87.1 89 81.9 42/39.9
** EU 12 until 2013, EU13 for 2014 as Croatia joined the EU in July 2013 (Population and Migration Estimates, Table 2, Dublin, Central Statistics Office, August 2013 and 2014)
9 As the total number of emigrants swelled over the period studied, by a factor of 2.5 between 2006 and 2013, remaining over 80,000 since 2011, the table shows the extent to which this was not a uniform flow across the different nationalities and areas. The Irish were not the most numerous in the immediate aftermath of the crisis, in 2008 and 2009, but they have remained numerically the largest population hit by outflows, with a total of about 242,000 citizens between 2008 and 2014, that is to say 1.93% of the Republic’s 2013 total population at its highest point. To put this into perspective, this represented a daily departure of 243 persons in 2013, a figure which was not significantly lower, 224 persons, in 2014. Since 2011, they have represented over one emigrant out of two, with a peak of 57% in 2013 and with only a very slight decrease in 2014. Their favorite destinations remained the UK for a quarter of them, the USA and more recently Australia with a temporary surge between 2010 and 20131.
10 The Irish were numerically the largest emigrant group, with a total of 1% of the Irish citizens leaving their country in 2012, but their proportional representation among the different nationalities was not the highest. Indeed, 5.6% of the non-EU-foreign nationals residing in the State left the Republic in 2011. This group, made up of over 50 different nationalities, is the one which has maintained a steady outflow throughout the period.
11 The post-enlargement continental Europeans are the ones who showed have shown the highest mobility at the earliest signs of the crisis : they accounted for 35% and 42% of the total number of emigrants in 2008 and 2009, by far the largest group. It can be assumed that most of them had settled in the Republic between 2004 and 2007 and were therefore more adaptable to a new change than longer established foreign residents. Indeed, the pre-enlargement European citizens remained fewer than 10,000 until 2010. It is to be noted that for all groups, the 2014 total figures remain rather high compared to the previous years. The Irish were still twice as many to emigrate in 2014 as they had been in 2009 and this is also true for the pre-enlargement continental Europeans. The non-European residents recorded the highest volume of emigrants ever in 2014. The slow recovery of the economy is undoubtedly one of the decisional factors for these migrants whose presence was almost exclusively linked to some employment
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prospects. The Irish unemployement rate was 4.6% in 2004 and remained low until 2008. It peaked at 15% in 2012. The rate of male emigrants, both for the Irish citizens and for the post-enlargement Europeans is to be considered in relation to the ailing, predominantly male economic sectors such as construction.
12 The correlation with the labour market can be traced in data on the age-groups, education attainments and economic status of the emigrants.
Table 4: Age groups of emigrants (000s and % of total), Male rates for selected years 1995 to 2014
1995 M 2002 2006 2008 M 2010 2014 M
0-14 1.2 (3.6) 50 2.5 (9.7) 2 .2 (6) 1.6 (3.2) 42 2 (2.9) 6 (7.3) 36
15-24 22.6 (68) 52 18.7 (73) 15.9 (44) 17.8 (36) 54 26.7 (38.5) 33.5 (41) 47
25-44 8.5 (25.6) 64 3.1 (12) 14.1 (39) 24 (48.6) 62 36.5(52.7) 37.6 (46) 59
45-64 0.8 (2.4) 37 0.1 (0.4) 2.1 (5.8) 2.9 (5.8) 75 2.9 (4.2) 3.4 (4) 41
65+ 0 (0) 50 1.2 (4.6) 1.7 (4.7 3 (6) 66 1.1(1.5) 1.5 (1.8) 26
Total 33.1 (100) 53 25.6 (100) 36 (100) 49.3 (100) 60 69.2 (100) 81.9 (100) 51.2
** EU 12 until 2013, EU13 for 2014 as Croatia joined the EU in July 2013 (Population and Migration Estimates, Table 2, Dublin, Central Statistics Office, August 2013 and 2014)
13 The document shows that pre-crisis emigration from the Republic was characterised by the young age of migrants, up to 2006 the 15-24 age group was the largest, accounting for up to 73% of the total number of emigrants, part of this group being made of students. From 2007 onward, with the exception of 2011, emigrants became more numerous in the 25-44 age group. The crisis hit young adults, many of them involved in the labour market. This is a predominantly male population. Throughout the period, the mature adult and senior emigrants remain relatively few but record slightly increasing proportions.
14 The most recent figures indicate a more evenly shared and less predominantly male group of emigrants in the 15-44 age brackets. The proportion of children and young teenagers in some of the selected years highlights family emigration at its highest in volume and proportionately in 2014.
15 The education attainment profile of the emigrants is a feature which has recently been made available; the figures reveal two main groups of emigrants: those who only have secondary school education and those who have attended a third level course.
Table 5: Emigrants’ education attainment, aged 15 and over, 2009 to 2014 (000s and percentage of the emigrant population)
Education 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Secondary 31.6 (45) 26.7 (39.7) 30.1 (40) 31.5 (38.3) 37.7 (45.8) 27.6 (36)
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Post Leaving Cert. 6.7 (9.6) 7.1 (10.5) 6.2 (8.2) 6.8 (8.2) 6.7 (8) 6.3 (8)
3rd level 24.4 (35) 27.9 (41.5) 35.8 (47.4) 39 (47.4) 35 (42.5) 35.3 (46.5)
Not stated 7 (10) 5.4 (8) 3.3 (4.3) 4.8 (5.8) 2.9 (3.5) 6.7 (8.8)
Total 69.7 (100) 67.2 (100) 75.4 (100) 82.2 (100) 82.2 (100) 75.9 (100)
(Population and Migration Estimates, Table 5, Dublin, Central Statistics Office, August 2014)
16 Since 2011, the number of highly educated emigrants has reached an annual volume of over 35,000 persons, that is to say 10,000 more each year compared to the 2009 figure. Qualified and possibly experienced workers, Irish and non-national, thus form the largest group of those who have decided to leave the Republic since 2010. Those who have reached more than a secondary education level have represented just over 41,000 individuals in 2014 and in 2013; although the absolute figure may sound negligible, it means they account for close to 1% of the total population of the Republic, who have not been and will not be of any benefit to the Irish labour force. This may not be a case of massive brain drain, as more precise figures are needed to assess the validity of the term, but rather a trickle which, in the medium to long term, could have the effect of a hemorrhage.
17 The figures for 2009 indicate a larger share of emigrants who only completed their secondary education. The share of this group within the total emigrant population fluctuated moderately but never below the 2014 figure of 36%. These, who have a basic level of education and therefore often occupy unskilled positions, are still part of the emigration flows and more data would be needed to refine the profile of this sizeable group. So far, such data is has not been made available.
18 Finally, the emigrants’ economic status is an interesting indicator of the possible motivation for the decision to leave the country.
Table 6. Emigrants’ economic status, aged 15 and over, 2009 to 2014, (000 persons and percentage of the emigrant population) and male emigrants in 2014 (%)
Status 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 M
At work 41.3 (59.2) 31.1 (46.2) 36.2 (48) 38.5 (46.8) 36.5 (44.4) 28.9 (38) 50
Unemployed 10.8 (15.5) 16.4 (24.4) 15.2 (20) 18.6 (22.6) 17.2 (21) 12.3 (16) 65
Student 12.5 (18) 14.2 (21) 17.6 (23) 19.5 (23.7) 20.2 (24.5) 29 (38.2) 51.3
Other 5.1 (7.3) 5.5 (8) 6.5 (8.6) 5.5 (6.7) 8.3 (10) 5.7 (7.5) 43.8
Total 69.7 (100) 67.2 (100) 75.4(100) 82.2 (100) 82.2 (100) 75.9 (100)
(Population and Migration Estimates, Table 6, Dublin, Central Statistics Office, August 2014)
19 Throughout the period, it is worth noting that the largest numbers of those who left were workers involved in the labour market. A total of 213,000 working emigrants left
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between 2009 and 2014. This questions the assumption according to which emigrants decide to leave the country because of rising unemployment. The lack of long term perspectives, promotion or improvement of working conditions is certainly also at play. Only qualitative surveying of these populations would allow a better understanding of their motivations. These emigrants accounted for the majority of those who left the country up to 2014. But not all emigrants were at work at the time of their departure.
20 Students leaving the country were more and more numerous during the 2009-2014 period. Their soaring volumes, a total of 113,000 persons, as well as their increasing proportion, from 18% of the total number of emigrants to 38.2%, make them the largest group of emigrants in 2014. Both groups, either students or workers, many of them well qualified and experienced, deprive the Irish society of their potential as a result of their decision to leave. Given the extent of the phenomenon and the small size of the Irish population, such outflows can be considered as a brain-drain phenomenon. Indeed, a part of these being highly educated, the term is appropriate in the post-2008 crisis in the Republic of Ireland.
21 Another group of emigrants not at work at the time of their departure was the unemployed. Their volumes fluctuated but remained high with a total of over 90,000 persons. Ironically, both groups contributed to the economic recovery of the country with their departures, either creating new opportunities when the positions they left were maintained, or else helping reduce the unemployment rate. Emigration did operate as a safety valve in the aftermath of the crisis, yet its effects on the unemployment rate and job opportunities seemed to have been rather limited as it has been slow to get nearer to the pre-2008 levels in spite of the departure of so many unemployed.
22 In the case of the Republic and the 2008 crisis, what also contributed to a balance between a shrinking economy and an adjusting labour force is the fact that during the post-crisis period, in-coming demographic flows did not stop.
Despite a slowdown in flows, immigrants are still coming in
23 It is usually expected that immigration should significantly shrink after an economic crisis as in-coming flows are partly triggered by or more generally sensitive to economic downturns. This proved to be the case after the 2008 crisis in Ireland as the flowing table shows, but only to some extent.
Table 7: Immigration to the Republic (000 persons) and net migration, 2006 to 2014
Year 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Imm. 107.8 151.1 113.5 73.7 41.8 53.3 52.7 55.9 60.6
Net mig. 71.8 104.8 64.3 1.6 -27.5 -27.4 -34.4 -33.1 -21.4
(Measuring Ireland’s Progress, Table 1.3, Dublin, Central Statistics Office, 2013 and Population and Migration Estimates, Dublin, Central Statistics Office, August 2014)
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24 The table traces how the immigration flows to Ireland reduced dramatically, from a pre-crisis peak in 2007 to its lowest volume in 2010. It then stabilised slightly at the rate of over 50,000 annual entries between 2011 and 2012, that is to say to about a third of its 2007 level, and picked up again from 2012 on. The initial major slowdown was expected, as the signal of an ailing economy does cause such rapid changes among ready-to-go immigrants. The fast return of in-coming flows before the end of 2013 was more unexpected, as it was not motivated yet by the recovery of the economy. Such a subtle link between economic growth and in-coming flows needs to be better defined.
25 Qualifying immigration to Ireland in the post-crisis period has to be based on the same data as what was referred to for emigration flows in the previous section.
Table 8: Immigration by nationality and area of origin, 2006 to 2014, 000 persons, with percentage of total migration and classified by sex for 2014
Male/Female 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
000s
18.9 30.7 23.8 23 17.9 19.6 20.6 15.7 11.6
Irish 5.5/6.1 17.5% 20.3% 21% 31.3% 42.7% 36.8% 39% 28% 19.1%
9.9 4.3 6.8 3.9 2.5 4.1 2.2 4.9 4.9
British 2/2.9 9.2% 2.8% 2.8% 5.3% 6% 7.7% 4.2% 8.7% 8%
12.7 11.8 9.6 11.5 6.2 7.1 7.2 7.4 8.7
Rest EU15 4.3/4.3 11.8% 7.8% 8.5% 15.6% 14.8% 13.3% 13.6% 13.2% 14.3%
49.9 85.3 54.7 21.1 9.3 10.1 10.4 10.9 10
EU12** 4.8/5.2 46.3% 56.5% 48.2% 28.7% 22.2% 18.9% 19.7% 19.5% 16.5%
16.4 19 18.6 14.1 6 12.4 12.4 17.1 25.5
Rest/world 11.6/13.9 15.2% 12.6% 16.4% 19.2% 13.3% 23.3% 23.5% 30.6% 42%
107.8 151.1 113.5 73.7 41.8 53.3 52.7 55.9 60.6
Total 28.2/32.4 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
** EU 12 until 2013, EU13 for 2014 as Croatia joined the EU in July 2013 (Population and Migration Estimates, Table 2, Dublin, Central Statistic Office, August 2013 and 2014)
26 In order to sketch a profile of the immigrants to Ireland since 2008, one first needs to distinguish between Irish (returning) migrants and non-nationals.
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27 From the mid-1990s to 2006, the flow of Irish nationals living abroad and deciding to return to Ireland, also called returning migration (remigration), to Ireland constituted a steady flow adding an average of 22,000 citizens a year to the total population of the Republic and fluctuating from 16,700 in 2004 to 27,000 in 2002. 2007 marks a record in volume for this group of migrants but the table shows that it occurred within the context of high immigration flows to the Republic, the Irish then only accounting for one immigrant out of five. The 2008 to 2010 period saw all flows, except that of the pre- enlargement Europeans, reduce significantly and the wave of returnees was not different from the general pattern. A steady in-coming flow of about 20,000 was maintained for the next two years, nevertheless accounting for just over one immigrant out of three, and then figures dropped again. The 2014 figure is the lowest figure ever recorded for returning Irish migration. Given the estimated size of the Irish diaspora worldwide, the 2014 low figure does not mean that most of those who could or wished to return did so, but rather that the Irish recovery was not yet strong enough a signal to trigger another wave of Irish remigration.
28 Following the crisis, the most spectacular drop in the number of immigrants was recorded among the post-enlargement Europeans. Here again, following a period of high volumes in 2007, when more than one immigrant out of two originated from the new EU States, flows to more modest in-put into the Irish population were recorded within the next two years and then remained stable. Though the 2014 figure is over eight times inferior to what was recorded in 2007, 10,000 persons on average every year have still reached the Irish shores to become residents every year since 2010. This seems to escape the logic of pure economics as if one is to believe that immigration is mostly related to the economic outlook of the country of destination in 2010 in the Republic, recovery was not even in the offing. Therefore new immigration patterns seem to have started developing. It could be argued that some of these immigrants may have entered the Republic under the family reunification schemes. However, the Irish State has not been the most generous in this respect, despite the efforts of some charities such as The Immigrant Council. Therefore, other motivations must have been at play, and it can be assumed that post-crisis Ireland offered more opportunities to thousands of new EU citizens than what they could avail themselves of in their own country.
29 Finally, the most unexpected pattern of immigration outlined in the table points to traces the in-coming flows of non-European migrants. Indeed, while their numbers logically shrank reduced immediately after the crisis, as observed for other groups, and, to some extent with the same steep decline between 2008 and 2010, their volumes doubled within the next year, from 2010 to 2011, and then recorded another two-fold increase between 2012 and 2014. So that by the end of the period studied, non- European immigrants represent the largest group of migrants to Ireland, resulting in an entirely new migration pattern wherein linguistic, cultural, religious or other diversity is more than ever present in the Republic. Indeed, Indians were the most numerous applicants, followed by Russian, Chinese and Nigerian citizens. More generally, after the crisis, the continuing in-put of immigrants lessened the effect of increasing emigration thus contributing to a total population growth which remained positive.
30 The immigrants’ age profile shows the extent to which the bulk of immigrants is made up of an adult population.
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Table 9: Age groups of immigrants, (000 persons and % of total), Male percentages for selected years 1995 to 2014
1995 M 2002 2006 2008 M 2010 2014 M
0-14 5.3 (17) 49 7 (10.4) 11.5(10.6) 13.9(12.2) 47 1.8 (4.3) 7.8 (12.8) 38.4
15-24 8 (25.6) 40 19.8(29.5) 31.6(29.3) 50(44) 46 17.3 (41.3) 15.9 (26.2) 42.7
25-44 14.6(46.7) 51.3 35.2(52.5) 57.2 (53) 38.8(34.1) 46 18.8(45) 33 (54.4) 51.2
45-64 2.6 (8.3) 50 4.2 (6.2) 6.1 (5.6) 7.2(6.3) 58 2 (4.7) 2.8 (4.6) 39.2
65+ 0.7 (2.2) 28.5 0.8 (1.2) 1.4 (1.3) 3.6(3.1) 44 1.9(4.5) 1.1 (1.8) 36.3
Total 31.2 (100) 49.1 67 (100) 107.8 (100) 113.5 (100) 47.4 41.8 (100) 60.6 (100) 46.5
** EU 12 until 2013, EU13 for 2014 as Croatia joined the EU in July 2013 (Population and Migration Estimates, Table 2, Dublin, Central Statistics Office, August 2013 and 2014)
31 As can be expected, the 15-44 age groups accounted for eight immigrants out of ten in the 2002-2014 period, a rate hardly higher than in the mid-1990s. It can be assumed that most immigrants intended to enter the Irish labour force; they were therefore adults, some being parents, hence the third highest rate for the 0-14 age group and very few being retirees. The 45-64 age group was under-represented throughout the period, probably due to the profiles the majority of immigrants are expected to have, where mobility and adaptability prevail over experience. In the immediate aftermath of the crisis, the reduction in volume was most obvious among the youngest, the 15-24 in- coming flows for example have fallen by 65% between 2008 and 2010, and the decline persisted until 2014. The decrease in the number of immigrants in the 24-44 age group seemed to have been more temporary as, by 2014, they returned close to their 2008 volumes and their 2006 share of the immigrant population.
32 The main impacts of immigration on the Irish population as a whole were first the extension of an already large young adult population. Secondly, throughout the period and as a total of all age groups, female immigrants have been more numerous than male ones, and especially so among young adults. Such a gender imbalance is even more noticeable as there were more male emigrants for the same years, as table 4 indicates.
33 To know more about these newly settled immigrants, their education attainment and their economic status are some of the social indicators available.
Table 10: Immigrants’ education attainment, aged 15 and over, 2009 to 2014 (000 persons and percentage of the immigrant population)
Education 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Secondary 21.9 (31.6) 15.1 (37.8) 17.3 (36.7) 14.2 (31.6) 14.6 (31.3) 13.4 (25.3)
Post Leaving Cert. 6.5 (9.4) 2.5 (6.2) 5.3 (11.2) 3.2 (7.1) 2.1 (4.5) 3.5 (6.6)
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3rd level 32.5 (47) 19.5 (48.8) 22.4 (47.5) 25 (55.6) 27.1 (58) 30.9 (58.4)
Not stated 8.3 (12) 2.9 (7.2) 2.1 (4.5) 2.4 (5.5) 2.9 (6.2) 5.1 (9.6)
Total 69.2 (100) 39.9 (100) 47.1 (100) 44.9(100) 46.6 (100) 52.9(100)
(Population and Migration Estimates, Table 5, Dublin, Central Statistics Office, August 2014)
34 The table shows that the majority of immigrants over 15 who have settled in Ireland since 2009 received a third level education. This is a proportion similar to that of the Irish-born population according to the 2011 census figures and this population also includes some Irish-born or Irish citizen migrants. There is no doubt that the work- related visa applications for non EU immigrants for example played a selective part in the whole process of immigration. These figures suggest that a majority of immigrants are entitled to qualified jobs in the labour market. However, whether they are offered positions corresponding to their education attainment is obviously not guaranteed. Cases of overqualified migrants occupying underpaid positions were reported in the media at an early stage of the immigration flows and are often due to the length of the process of diploma recognition2. The second largest group is made of people who only received secondary education, with a proportion ranging from a third to a quarter of the total immigrant population. For the year 2014 for example, their volumes accounted for a quarter of the total population of immigrants. The low education attainment of this group has a direct impact on their employability in the Republic.
Table 11: Immigrants’ economic status, aged 15 and over, 2009 to 2014, (000 persons and percentage of the immigrant population) and Male emigrant in 2014 (%)
Status 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 M
At work 33.7(48.7) 18.4(46) 23.2(49.2) 21.2(47.2) 22.2(44.4) 22.6(42.7) 53.9
Unemployed 15.7(22.6) 8.5(21.3) 9.7(20.6) 9.3(20.7) 7.5(21) 6.8(12.8) 44.1
Student 9.8 (14) 6.1(15.2) 9(19) 7.3(16.2) 11(24.5) 16.2(30.6) 53
Other 10.1 (14.5) 7(17.5) 5.2(11) 7.1(15.8) 6(10) 7.3(13.8) 20.5
Total 69.1 39.9 47.1 44.9 46.6 52.8 47.6
(Population and Migration Estimates, Table 6, Dublin, Central Statistics Office, August 2014)
35 Between 2009 and 2014, the largest group of immigrants was made of individuals at work, whether they found work after their arrival, moved to Ireland to fill a position, came under the terms of a work-permit or became self-employed. Their steady proportion accounted for 42 to 48% of the total number of immigrants between 2009 and 2014; it reached its lowest level in 2014. The share of unemployed immigrants also remained almost unchanged in the five years following the crisis, slightly above one immigrant out of five. In 2014, the jobless category recorded its lowest point, less than 13% of the total of the 2014 immigrants. This suggests that immigrants’ employability
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and adaptability closely followed the labour market which was viewed as ‘recovering’ before the end of 20143.
36 The most surprising data the table displays is the surge in the number of students among immigrants in the post-crisis period. Before the crisis, the Irish educational sector had opened up to new non-national potentials. The trend has developed since with the student category coming to represent three immigrants out of 10 in 2014. Further analysis would be needed to determine the share of non-EEA national students and to what extent the setting up of the Internationalisation Register Programme granting, under certain circumstances a Student Immigration Permission, played a part in this increase. Nevertheless a large number of young adults did avail themselves of such opportunities, thus changing the face of migration to Ireland.
Long term impact on the population of the Republic
37 As the signs of economic recovery have materialised since 2014, one can wonder what the long term effects of the new migration patterns sketched above will be on the population as a whole.
38 There is no denying that the return to high and then persistent volumes of emigration can be accounted for as a loss of human capital, resources and opportunities. Some view the phenomenon as less definitive than what previous generations had experienced, because of a shrinking and globalised world wherein human flows supposedly freely circulate. The losses at home and in the middle term are nonetheless visible.
39 What is more certain is the de facto diversity the massive and then changing immigration has brought. Beyond the in-coming patterns traced above, the Irish population is now encompassing a multicultural component which could hardly be imagined twenty years ago. From the first sizeable groups of asylum seekers who arrived in the Republic in the late 1990s4 to the naturalisation ceremonies held on a regular basis5, temporary or long term residence has become a reality for thousands of foreigners, introducing a diversity which materialises in many different ways. The economic crisis only impacted a proportion of these individuals. In 2015, the measure of this impact and this diversity relies on imprecise data. Until the next census, in 2016, the exact composition of the population is only based on estimations. These nevertheless allow us to draw the following profile for the period studied.
Table 12: Population classified by nationality, (000 persons and share of the total population in %), 2006 to 2010, estimates for 2012 and 2014
2006 2008 2010 2012* 2014*
3,802.4 3,909.5 3,994.7 4,035 4,045.3 Irish (89.8) (87.1) (87.7) 87.9) (87.7)
115.5 117.9 115.9 113 114.9 UK (2.7) (2.6) (2.5) (2.4) (2.4)
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43.8 50.8 52.4 45.5 38.1 Rest EU15 (1) (1.1) (1.1) (0.9) (0.8)
132.5 247.7 233 229.4 230.7 EU12/13 (3.1) (5.5) (5.1) (5) (5)
138.8 159.2 158.7 162.5 180.5 Rest/ world (3.2) (3.5) (3.4) (3.5) (3.9)
Total 4,232.9 (100) 4,485.1 (100) 4,554.8 (100) 4,585.4 (100) 4,609.6 (100)
* Preliminary (Population and Migration Estimates, Table 8, Dublin, Central Statistics Office, September 2012; Population and Migration Estimates, Table 7, Dublin, Central Statistics Office, August 2013; Population and Migration Estimates, Table 9, Dublin, Central Statistics Office, August 2014)
40 The composition of the Irish population before and after the crisis has not changed significantly over the twelve-year period presented in the table. Yet, two figures stand out to understand the higher than ever total of 12.2% of non-nationals residing in the Republic in 2014 and the new diversity that this necessarily brings along. On the one hand, the European post-enlargement citizens remain the most numerous group, reinforcing their presence despite their decline in volume from 2008 to 2014. This is likely to reveal a higher than expected economic sustainability and a more general resilience of this category of residents. On the other hand, almost a third of the non- national residents originate from outside the European Union. This is a major change in the composition of the Irish population as this non-European group of residents gathers over fifty nationalities with various cultures, languages and traditions. The 30% increase in volume from 2006 to 2014 is a fast growth compared to the Irish growth for the same period. Both phenomena challenge the too-simple assumption that newly settled non-nationals will depart when the economy is ailing. The impact of both European post-enlargement citizens and non-nationals from further afield seems to be a lasting one.
41 This article has not dealt with illegal migration which is yet another aspect of immigration that the crisis probably affected. By definition this field of study is rather difficult to tackle, as data are not available and very sensitive. Yet, the cases of 18,000 Irish-born children who had at least one illegal parent in 2008 or the Migrant Rights Center Ireland’s support for the cases of thousands of vulnerable non-nationals fueling the Irish grey economy6 show that they constitute part of the change in the post-crisis Irish demography.
Conclusion
42 To conclude, it must be said that the study of emigration from and immigration to Ireland in the post-crisis period not only proves that both inflows and outflows are sensitive to economic downturn but also that such migratory flows change rapidly and
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sometimes in an independent or anticipatory way in relation to the economic recovery. Indeed, if migrations act as an adjustment mechanism in a crisis period, the fact that emigration continued during the boom period and immigration never stopped during the recession shows that these flows may operate without the expected cause almost always justifying their existence but for other reasons and motivations which require further analysis. In the case of Ireland, falling net migration is mainly due to a labour immigration stream but a more complex attractiveness is also at play, especially for immigrants from non-European countries. The migratory patterns highlighted in this article have simultaneously occurred in some other European countries, Spain and Italy for example, confirming that migrant flows need to be considered internationally and compared. The changes in population composition which result largely from these movements are only sketched out here and not thoroughly covered by the data available, especially so in the intercensal periods. The Irish population has undergone major demographic changes in the past twelve years, in the post-crisis period almost as a boomerang effect to what had happened before and impacting all levels of Ireland’s social and cultural fabric.
NOTES
1. On average, about 10,000 people emigrated annually from Ireland to Australia between 2008 and 2010. The figure reached 13,400 in 2011, 18,200 in 2012 and 15,400 in 2013. It returned to more usual volumes in 2014 with 10,000 emigrants. This was partly the result of the Working Holiday Arrangement scheme. 2. As early as 2005, RTE reported on the issues at stake for immigrants’ recognition of qualifications and lack of political support. See ‘Ireland has missed an opportunity' at http://www.rte.ie/archives/exhibitions/1665-immigration/451848-highly-skilled- immigrants-work-in-low-skilled-jobs/, accessed on 5 September 2015. 3. The OECD publication Ireland’s Action Plan for Jobs : A Preliminary Review claimed “Ireland’s labour market bounced back strongly in 2013” ( available at [http:// www.oecd.org/ireland/Ireland-action-plan-for-jobs-review.pdf , page 1], accessed on 5 September2015) and later The Irish Times hailed labour force strength in early August 2014 under the headline “The economic recovery is most visible in the labour market”, The Irish Times, 9 August 2014 (available at http://www.irishtimes.com/business/ economy/the-economic-recovery-is-most-visible-in-the-labour-market-1.1891630, accessed on 5 September 2015). 4. The large numbers of applications from 1999 to 2003 do not reflect the effect they had on the population as it is believed that only about 1% of applications were granted to asylum seekers. But their presence was visible and mediatised. 5. According to the department of Justice and Equality, there were 100 naturalisation ceremonies held in the Republic between June 2011 and January 2015. During these, 59,000 non-nationals became Irish citizens. Source: Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service, “Minister Fitzgerald attends 100 Citizenship Ceremonies”, 23
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January 2015, [http://www.inis.gov.ie/en/INIS/Pages/ Minister%20Fitzgerald%20attends%20100th%20Citizenship%20Ceremony], accessed on 6 September2015. 6. A rally was recently staged in Dublin on March 15 th 2015 to campaign for the regularisation of many undocumented workers. The supporters claimed that they were demanding the same type of regularisation as the Irish government was asking for its citizens in the US.
ABSTRACTS
Between 2008 and 2009, the Irish economic crisis directly impacted migratory flows, the very ones which had been deeply modified during the boom years. As was expected, the crisis triggered the return of some emigration flows which need to be quantified and qualified. Has it also reduced the in-coming flows of foreign residents and in what way will these migrations change the Irish population in the middle and long term? The following article answers this double question and provides the starting points for a further analysis of the topic as new data become available.
Entre 2008 et 2014, la crise économique irlandaise a eu un impact direct sur les flux migratoires, ceux-là mêmes qui avaient été fortement modifiés durant la période de forte expansion. Ainsi, comme on pouvait s’y attendre, la crise a entraîné la reprise de l’émigration et il s’agit de quantifier et qualifier ces mouvements. A-t-elle dans le même temps réduit l’afflux de résidents étrangers sur le territoire et en quoi ces mouvements de population transforment-ils à court et moyen terme la composition de la population irlandaise ? L’article apportera des éléments de réponse à ces interrogations en dressant un premier état des lieux afin de poser les jalons d’une analyse plus détaillée, au fur et à mesure que de nouvelles données seront disponibles.
INDEX
Mots-clés: crise financière, démographie, immigration, émigration Keywords: financial crisis, demography, immigration, emigration
AUTHOR
CATHERINE PIOLA Université Paris-Dauphine
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The Vulnerability of the Northern Ireland Settlement: British Irish Relations, Political Crisis and Brexit
Jennifer Todd
Introduction
1 It was not unrealistic in May 1998 to see the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) – in the words of its Preface – as a “new beginning” in Northern Ireland, opening up to an agreed politics no longer reducible to ethnic power1. This beginning was, however, difficult to sustain. The institutions of Agreement, and in particular the consociational Assembly, became operational only in late 1999 and after a series of crises the Assembly was suspended in 2002 and dissolved in 2003. It was only under strong British and Irish government pressure that the Northern Irish parties accepted a slightly revised St Andrews Agreement in 2006 and began a new phase of devolved government in 2007. With the devolution of now radically reformed policing and justice to the Assembly in 2010, the implementation of the Good Friday/St Andrews Agreements was declared complete.
2 The declaration was premature. There was a re-birth of loyalist street protests in winter 2012, increased contention over Orange marches and near political breakdown in winter 2014. Once the British and Irish governments, for different reasons and in different ways, turned their attention away from Northern Ireland, a new phase of political struggle began. As future domestic, European and global problems take precedence over Northern Ireland in British and Irish concerns, crises are likely to recur. Possible British exit from the EU, to be put to referendum in 2017, is likely to have such impact. Its implications for North-South relations and for settlement in Northern Ireland are the topic of this article.
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The vulnerability of the Good Friday Agreement
3 The Good Friday Agreement of 1998, with later amendments at St Andrews, is the focal point of agreement between the parties in Northern Ireland. Despite its length and detail, it was always a thin agreement, underspecified in important respects. In those areas where the parties could not reach agreement – in particular the reform of policing and justice – the issues were referred to independent commissions. The formulation of a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland and the articulation of the principle of “parity of esteem” were referred to the new Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission. Disagreement and conflict on these matters were thus pushed into the future. Other provisions of the 1998 Agreement were conditional. Decommissioning was, notoriously, conditional on the full implementation of the Agreement. Still other provisions remained open to radically conflicting interpretation: while constitutional theorists read the Good Friday Agreement as marking a new concept of sovereignty, based on the will of the people and concerned with principles of governance rather than which state had control, unionists pointed to the paragraphs of the Agreement which insisted that British sovereignty remained unchanged2. Thus the years immediately after 1998 were characterized by recurrent crises over decommissioning, demilitarization, executive formation, policing, public symbolism, and the rights of the British government to suspend the Assembly3. These crises brought down the power- sharing executive and led to the electoral defeat of the more moderate parties (the Ulster Unionist Party and the Social Democratic and Labour Party) by the more extreme parties in their blocs, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Féin.
4 Far-reaching reforms of policing and justice were gradually implemented by the British government, in consultation with the Irish. In the new post 9/11 climate, IRA decommissioning eventually was completed by 2005, and British demilitarization by 2006. With these issues resolved, the two governments were able to bring the parties back to agreement. At St Andrews in 2006, both governments made it clear to the dominant parties, the DUP and Sinn Féin, that if one of them turned away from agreement, the alternative would be worse for it. With the formation of a new devolved administration in 2007, and by 2010 with the devolution of policing and justice to Northern Ireland, implementation was declared complete. It was not complete. There was no Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland and cultural and community relations issues had only partially been addressed. Most important of all, there remained radical disagreement between the Northern Irish parties on the way that key terms and principles of agreement would be interpreted. The parties disagreed profoundly about its overall geopolitical significance and as to what followed constitutionally, institutionally and culturally4. Did the GFA and St Andrews, as unionists asserted, strengthen the Union, or did they, as republicans believed, hollow it out? Did British sovereignty in Northern Ireland now have any cultural implications? Was the central feature of sovereignty now the principle of multi-levelled governance rather than the fact of state power? Was the basis of British sovereignty now the will of the people of Ireland, expressed in referenda? On these questions rested others: the meaning of “parity of esteem”; the appropriate forms of public symbolism.
5 The conflicting perspectives of unionists and nationalists on the principles of agreement meant that crises remained endemic. Crises occurred as each new issue arose, and as new circumstances gave rise to new questions of implementation, and
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without common principles the Northern Ireland parties were unable to resolve them. After 1998 adjudication on the meaning and principles of the Agreement had taken place informally, by British-Irish negotiation, in precisely the way that the broad terms of the Agreement had themselves been drafted. In effect, the principles of agreement were safeguarded by British-Irish definition and assertion of them. This informal mode of safe-guarding the principles of the Agreement was initially functional, at least for the two states involved. It suited the modus operandi of the United Kingdom which functions without a written constitution, and where the habits of territorial governance have traditionally and to the present involved informal agreements, flexibility, consensus, rather than appeal to law5. It also suited the Irish state which had gained a degree of autonomy by skilful political balancing of its three large, powerful and significant partners – the UK, the US and the EU. The overwhelming political presence of the UK was balanced by a strong diplomatic initiative in the USA which at once reduced US support for violent republicanism and brought in the US on the side of constitutional nationalism, with the EU brought into play as a model of shared sovereignty and a legitimator of Irish aims6. The resulting settlement was seen as a diplomatic triumph for a small state which gradually and through dialogue and persuasion shifted the direction of British state policy in Northern Ireland7. Irish elites saw no reason to change a diplomatic style which had worked so well.
6 This informal British-Irish mode of implementing the Agreement and of adjudicating on its principles was, however, dependent on the states’ prioritization of Northern Ireland. After 2010, this weakened. Economic collapse in the South removed Northern Ireland from the forefront of Irish government attention. The British government’s attention was increasingly focused on the dangers of Scottish independence, and on increasing public dissatisfaction with the EU expressed in popular support for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). With new administrations in each jurisdiction by 2011, a new strand of British-Irish policy was launched, focused this time on mutual British-Irish relations, rather than on Northern Ireland8.
7 The process brought a new British-Irish rhetoric of “best friends” which portrayed British-Irish relations as unconditionally positive. Senior Irish and British officials and politicians emphasized the wonderfully improved relationship between Britain and Ireland, the important trading relations, the intermingling and interconnections of peoples, the family ties9. Paul Gillespie takes this as indicative of a “normalisation” of British-Irish relations and a recognition by the Irish of the fact of “interdependence” rather than either dependence or independence. The removal of the territorial claim to Northern Ireland from the Irish Constitution is typically seen to have helped this normalisation10.
8 Relations in Northern Ireland, however, deteriorated as British-Irish oversight slackened. Northern Ireland was left to agree on remaining issues of implementation (rights, cultural policy, community relations policy) and new economic and heritage projects. Implementation was very slow. No Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland was agreed. The promise of a successor to the 2005 “Shared Future” strategic framework on community relations remained unfulfilled until 2010 when the executive produced a new consultation document on the topic (“Integration, Sharing and Cohesion”), quickly withdrawn in the face of criticism by the entire range of rights and community relations activists11. A new set of proposals was put forward in 2013 but it was
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overshadowed by increasing political conflict12. New EU funded projects were agreed after much discussion – a Maze Heritage Centre, on the site of the old Long Kesh/Maze prison where the republican hunger strikes had occurred and where loyalists had also been incarcerated, and the construction of a bridge (Narrow Water Bridge) to link South Down in Northern Ireland directly with North County Louth in the Irish state13. Unionists were uneasy with each project, and later withdrew their support from each, in the process losing EU funding. Meanwhile very substantive disagreement over the nature of the St Andrews Agreement of 2006 continued (see Tonge on DUP views14).
9 Conflict was initially over those aspects of the GFA and St Andrews that had still not been implemented – cultural equality (flags on council buildings), the past (the Maze heritage centre), and parity of esteem (legislation on the Irish language). Sections of the unionist population, sensing a political vacuum and the prospects of pushing back perceived republican gains, mobilized and won increasing unionist sympathy over a whole range of issues to do with “culture” and “the past”. Belfast City Council’s decision in December 2012 no longer to fly the British flag every day of the year provoked months of loyalist mobilization and rioting and the protest gained wider unionist support15. Meanwhile the British and Irish governments stood back, intent to let the Northern Irish parties resolve the conflicts themselves. They failed to agree even after mediation attempts by US figures, Richard Haass and Meghan O’Sullivan16. By late 2014 there was paralysis of shared government in Northern Ireland. It was resolved, temporarily at least, only when the British and Irish governments reengaged in negotiations with the Northern Ireland parties and convened the Stormont House talks. A new “Stormont House” Agreement was reached in December 2014.
10 The sequence of events shows the vulnerability of settlement in Northern Ireland to external events and shocks, in particular to those that weaken British and Irish commitment to hands-on oversight of Northern Ireland affairs. Possible British exit from the European Union (Brexit) will only increase this vulnerability. Gillespie is correct that it could change the game for unionists in Northern Ireland, and if it led to renewed mobilization for Scottish independence it could make a united Ireland preferable to marginalization in an English-dominated rest of the UK17. But that would require enough social stability to allow rational public assessment of the options. If instead Brexit rolled back the achievements of the Good Friday Agreement and weakened still farther British-Irish oversight of Northern Ireland, it is more likely to encourage unionist activists to mobilise against other aspects of the Agreement(s) with dangers of a return to conflict.
11 I argue below that in the short term Brexit is indeed likely to roll back the GFA. It is likely to impact on peace and stability in Northern Ireland by affecting North-South relations, in particular the role of the Irish border, the North-South institutions set up with the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) of 1998, in particular the Special EU Programmes Body set up to administer INTERREG and PEACE funding, and EU funding itself. In the remainder of the article I show why, and I argue that imaginative cross- border responses are necessary and will be of value even if Brexit is avoided.
North-South Relations
12 North-South relations are one pillar of peace and settlement in Northern Ireland. The need to open up these relations was a continuous strand of Irish government thinking
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at least from the time of Taoiseach Jack Lynch’s Foreign Affairs article18. A North-South momentum was central to the GFA; it is key to economic development on the island; and it is important for the easing of relations and the relaxation of attitudes on both sides of the border.
13 Mutual British and Irish EU membership helped North-South relations in a number of ways: • – Funding for peace and cross-border projects • – The form of North South implementation bodies • – Softer concepts of sovereignty and models of multi-levelled governance • – Openness of cross-border crossing, employment, and trade • – Legitimation internationally of the GFA
14 Brexit threatens this. It removes one North South implementation body set up with the GFA– the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB) – and potentially undermines the others. It removes an important source of economic funding and cooperation. It threatens the openness of the border, and thus stands to increase political polarization. It may encourage a move back to more exclusivist concepts of sovereignty in Britain and among sections of unionists in Northern Ireland. And it threatens the institutions set up under the GFA, in particular the form and functions of the North-South implementation bodies, and the promise of equivalent rights and equality provisions in the two jurisdictions.
15 A parallel threat to Nordic cooperation, institutionalized in the Nordic Council, occurred when Finland and Sweden joined the EU in 1995. McQuaid 19 shows how the Nordic Council struggled to identify areas where it still made sense to cooperate. The consequences for North-South relations are likely to be even more serious, since on them depends not just cooperation but also internal stability in the North.
Open borders, North-South trade and linkages
16 The openness of the North-South border is one of the great achievements of the last two decades. Together with the equalization process in Northern Ireland, this has removed the urgency of the Northern nationalist demand for a united Ireland. British sovereignty in Northern Ireland no longer impacts on the cultural identity or legitimacy of constitutional views of nationalists. Nor are they cut off from the rest of the island, and a path to greater institutional integration is in principle open, short of constitutional change. Recent surveys show that more nationalist voters now prefer to stay in the new Northern Ireland than move to a united Ireland20. This, however, is because British sovereignty no longer carries with it implications for internal power, cultural status or freedom of movement.
17 The opening of the Irish border depends on two pillars – peace and the EU framework. Without peace there would be constant security checks; without the EU there could be constant customs and immigration checks.
18 In the recent past – up until the 1990s – cross-border trade was badly affected by the border. At recent seminars in University College Dublin (10 December 2009; 18 November 2009; 10 February 2010) business leaders remembered the difficulty of any cross-border trade in the 1970s and 1980s, the constant delays at the border, the
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danger, the intimidation. And it was business that played a major role in pushing for an opening of the border and the development of an island-wide economy21.
19 Even more important, the openness of the border changes the quality of life on each side of it. The effect of violence was to cut the North off from the rest of the island: roads barred; farms cut in half; security checks; Northerners stigmatized in the South; people in the border areas – North and South – constantly worried about security, constantly suspicious. It takes time to overcome this. Even in the early 2000s, distrust, silence and avoidance of discussion of North-South issues were evident in the border area22. Recent research in 2014 shows that this has at last changed: in the Louth- Dundalk area, for example, respondents say that political differences and the border itself are less important to them than before23. It is possible to be relaxed about the border from each side, and thus again for British sovereignty to be less restrictive for Northern nationalists.
20 If there is Brexit then the border will again become important and perhaps more so since it will be a border of the EU. Unless the Irish state forgoes freedom of movement (of goods and peoples) within the EU, or the UK forgoes freedom of movement between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, they logically have to lessen freedom of movement across the Irish border. This impacts trade. It encourages a border- mentality of suspicion and surveillance. It will undoubtedly impact on the quality of life of border-dwellers and on the satisfaction of Northern nationalists.
Institutions: the SEUPB and the North-South bodies
21 The North-South Council and the related implementation bodies are central parts of the architecture of the GFA, co-dependent with the Assembly.
22 The Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB) is one of the six original North South implementation bodies. Other North South bodies set up as part of the North-South Council include Intertrade Ireland; Waterways Ireland; Irish Lights; Language Body; Food Safety (for discussion of their tasks and performance in the first five years, see Coakley, “The North-South relationship: Implementing the Agreement”, published in 200524). There is also significant institutional harmonization on tourism, and small but increasing cooperation in health (opening Crumlin Children’s Hospital in Dublin for heart surgery for children from the North) and education.
23 The main function of the SEUPB is to “manage cross-border European Union Structural Funds programmes in Northern Ireland, the Border Region of Ireland and parts of Western Scotland”. It has managed the INTERREG and the PEACE (most recently PEACE III) programmes. Its present work involves implementing a new 240 million euro INTERREG cross-border co-operation programme for the Border Region of Ireland, Northern Ireland and Western Scotland for 2014-2020.
24 Setting up the North South Council and implementation bodies involved path-breaking work in harmonizing working conditions for Northerners and Southerners within these institutions: this included complex details like equivalent pension entitlements for all employees. The bodies provide an original model of trans-state institution-building within the EU.
25 In the event of Brexit, the SEUPB will become redundant in its present form. Indeed it is likely that the wider institutional architecture of the North-South bodies will be
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challenged as greater divergence in laws and policy requirements follow a British exit from the EU. If freedom of trade is restricted, InterTrade Ireland may be unable to fulfill its remit to foster cross border trade. If the UK moves away from EU regulations on employment, so the internal structure of the North South bodies will need to be reconfigured. All of this reacts back on the GFA itself, challenging the structure of the Agreement. It is therefore politically destabilizing.
26 The initial question concerns the role of the SEUPB if the UK leaves the EU. In the most benign scenario, the two governments might negotiate with the EU a special position for Northern Ireland to enable a continued drawdown of funding. To negotiate this will require an urgency of focus and a convergence of aims between the governments, the more difficult because such a special position for Northern Ireland is likely to require some matching British financial contribution. Even if existing EU funding continues, the drawdown of new funding – and thus the continued role of the SEUPB into the future – is far from guaranteed. And even in the most benign of circumstances, the new challenges will require significant amendments within the North South institutions and in their remit (depending on UK changes in policy). Short of the most benign of circumstances, it will be politically imperative to reconfigure the form, nature and remit of the North-South implementation bodies and the role of the North-South Council: in effect it will be necessary to revise the North-South institutions set up under the GFA in order to keep to the principles of the Agreement.
Funding – INTERREG and PEACE funding
27 If the UK leaves the EU, then EU funding for cross border projects will be threatened. SEUPB is responsible for EU funding of up to one million Euro, although with the decline of the peace programmes the actual funding has itself declined: as noted above, recent investment includes an INTERREG grant of a quarter of a million euros over 6 years.
28 Important as these contributions are, they pale beside the British subvention to Northern Ireland. Calculating the “subvention” is controversial depending on whether or not we include universal benefits across the United Kingdom (eg unemployment, health)25. But public expenditure in Northern Ireland far outruns revenue generated from Northern Ireland, in 2010-11 by £ 9.6 billion. However we calculate the “subvention” within this, it dwarfs EU and North-South funding.
29 It is sometimes argued that EU funding is thus insignificant to Northern Ireland. But this neglects its social and political as well as economic importance. It supports cross- community and North-South endeavors and contact: so, for example, numerous small bodies have benefitted from PEACE funding, from community groups in the border area to local museums with cross-border educational projects. These small local projects have a cumulative effect in improving cross community and cross border relations. There are also larger projects of potential economic as well as social importance. If the UK votes itself out of the EU a Conservative government committed to financial rectitude is unlikely to spend on such projects even if they are only a small proportion of current expenditure on Northern Ireland.
30 Moreover even were funding available – as it was for Narrow Water Bridge and the Maze Heritage Centre – drawing it down depends on political agreement. As political agreement declines – and I have argued that this is highly likely with Brexit – a vicious
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circle develops with less funding available and less funding demanded for initiatives which create more open relations and more satisfied citizens.
New North-South linkages
31 In the event of Brexit, there will be a major impact on North-South relations. The border will become more important in trade, in interaction, and probably in perception and ideology. The North-South implementation bodies are likely to be weakened and perhaps rendered redundant. EU funding stands to be lost. These losses will be significant economically and socially, and even more so politically since the GFA – and stability in the North – rests on a North-South dimension.
32 It will be urgent to compensate for these losses: by opening new cross-border linkages and institutions; by negotiating new areas of funding; and by using the special position of Northern Ireland within the UK to maintain EU support for North-South projects and relations. Even if Brexit does not happen, it is for everyone’s benefit to reinvigorate North-South interrelations within the agreed constitutional parameters of the GFA. In the 1990s it was common to say that the momentum of the peace process had to be sustained: like riding a bicycle, if the momentum stopped one fell off. That momentum was (nearly) stopped from 2012-4. Strengthening North South relations in new circumstances can renew the momentum, and provide greater stability in both parts of the island in the event of future exogenous shocks. The following areas are important
Special EU funding for North-South projects
33 Could a British government after Brexit accept that Northern Ireland (in its North- South relations) have a different relation with the EU than the rest of the UK? This would be constitutionally anomalous, but not insurmountably so. The past thirty years have seen growing flexibility in concepts of sovereignty within the UK, and most particularly in respect to Northern Ireland26. Northern Ireland, while remaining under British sovereignty, is already constitutionally anomalous within the UK because of (i) the guarantee in the GFA that British sovereignty rests on the consent of a majority (ii) the North-South strand of the GFA which provides for small but exemplary forms of institutional integration (iii) the role of the Irish state in conflict management in Northern Ireland, agreed in the Anglo Irish Agreement of 1985 and since further developed.
34 Could the EU give special treatment to North-South relations even after Brexit? The EU has consistently proven itself sympathetic to peace-building in Northern Ireland, conditional on this being within a framework agreed by the two governments. And while special EU treatment for Northern Ireland would undoubtedly involve some British financial input, the alternative – if it led to political breakdown – would be more costly for the British government.
35 In recognition of these considerations, the Irish parliamentary Committee on European Affairs27 has called for bilateral British and Irish negotiation to have the special position of Northern Ireland in the UK recognised in an EU context.
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New political linkages and modes of representation
36 New political linkages and modes of representation could counterbalance the effects of Brexit. Garret FitzGerald once suggested that the Republic represent Northern farmers in the EU. Northern farmers might well welcome some special sectoral linkages with the South. Indeed one might envisage complex linkages for different sectors, some between North and South, some between Northern Ireland and Scotland if as is probable the Scots move towards independence after Brexit28.
37 Other linkages might also be imagined – for example between Northern border constituencies and MEPs in Southern border areas.
38 Of course here we come into complex legal territory in each jurisdiction and in the EU. But the lessons of the last thirty years of British-Irish negotiations are that innovative and mutually beneficial agreements can be developed by working within this complex and sensitive territory29.
Multi-levelled action
39 It is clearly necessary to have action at many levels: • – Top-level British-Irish planning for different eventualities. • – North-South discussions on how the potential losses of Brexit can be counter-balanced. Here the new North-South parliamentary body set up in 2012, together with the North- South Council, provide forums for discussion. • – Strong involvement of interest groups with common cross-border interests, for example business, farmers, health sector. • – Strong public involvement. The recent Constitutional Convention and Irish Citizens’ Assembly suggests that carefully constructed North-South citizens’ discussion might show ways of opening new linkages to mutual benefit30. • – Comparative learning: The Nordic Council, and in particular the Freedom of Movement Council that it set up in 2014 to remove obstacles to freedom of movement across the Nordic states, including between EU and non-EU member states, gives a model of how some of the effects of EU borders can be compensated by an additional layer of regional integration31.
Conclusion
40 There is little internal momentum within the Northern Ireland settlement. It is prone to crisis when not watched over by the British and Irish states. In this respect, preparing for Brexit can strengthen the settlement by increasing the strength of North- South linkages, within the constitutional constraints of the GFA.
41 It has been tempting to put the problem aside until after the British general election, or after British negotiations begin within the EU, or after a referendum. However a reworking of the North-South dimension can be of mutual benefit even if Brexit does not happen. Re-starting a momentum of mutual dialogue and mutual benefit can strengthen settlement in Northern Ireland, and allow it to survive the inevitable sequence of future shocks, of which Brexit may only be one.
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NOTES
1. British and Irish Governments 1998. Agreement Reached in the Multi-Party Negotiations [https://www.dfa.ie/media/dfa/alldfawebsitemedia/ourrolesandpolicies/northernireland/good- friday-agreement.pdf], accessed 22 September 2014. 2. E. Meehan, “The Changing British-Irish Relationship: The Sovereignty Dimension”, Irish Political Studies 29.1, 2014, p. 58-75; J. Morison, “Democracy, governance and governability: Civic public space and constitutional renewal in Northern Ireland”, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 21.2, 2001, p. 287-310; D. Godson, Himself Alone: David Trimble and the Ordeal of Unionism, London, Harper Collins, 2004. 3. J. Ruane and J. Todd, “The Politics of Transition? Explaining Political Crises in the Implementation of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement”, Political Studies 49 (5), 2001, p. 923-940. 4. J. Ruane and J. Todd, Ibid.; J. Tonge, J. M. Braniff, T. Hennessey, J. W. McAuley and S. A. Whiting, The Democratic Unionist Party: From Protest to Power. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014; P. Shirlow, J. Tonge, J. McAuley and C. McGlynn, Abandoning Historical Conflict? Former Paramilitary Prisoners and Political Reconciliation in Northern Ireland, Manchester, Manchester UP, 2011. 5. R. Rose, Understanding the United Kingdom: The Territorial Dimension, London, Longman, 1982; J. Bulpitt, Territory and Power in the United Kingdom: An Interpretation. Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1983; Robert Hazell (ed.), The state and the nations: the first year of devolution in the United Kingdom, London, The Constitution Unit/Imprint Academic, 2000. 6. E. Meehan, “The European context: changing forms of territorial politics in the United Kingdom”, in J. Coakley, B. Laffan and J. Todd (eds.), Renovation or Revolution? New Territorial Politics in Ireland and the United Kingdom, Dublin, UCD Press, 2005, p. 147-165. 7. J. Ruane and J. Todd, “History, structure and action in the settlement of complex conflicts: the Northern Ireland case”, Irish Political Studies, 29-1, 2014, p. 15-36; J. Todd, “Thresholds of State Change: Changing British State Institutions and Practices in Northern Ireland after Direct Rule”, Political Studies 62 (3), 2013, p. 522–538. 8. P. Gillespie, “The Complexity of British-Irish Interdependence”, Irish Political Studies, 29.1, 2014, p.37-57; J. Coakley and J. Todd (eds.), Breaking Patterns of Conflict in Northern Ireland: The British and Irish States, London, Routledge, 2014. 9. B. McDonagh, “Irish Friends and Friends of Ireland…”, London Speeches 2009-2013, Dublin, Institute of Irish and European Affairs, 2014. 10. J. Coakley, “The Belfast Agreement and the Republic of Ireland”, in R. Wilford, (ed.), Aspects of the Belfast Agreement, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 223- 244. 11. J. Ruane and J. Todd, “From ‘A Shared Future’ to ‘Cohesion, Sharing and Integration’: An Analysis of Northern Ireland’s Policy Framework Documents”, Prepared for Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, 2011, [www.jrct.org.uk/core/documents/ download.asp?id=429]. 12. K. Hayward, “Deliberative Democracy in Northern Ireland: Opportunities and challenges for consensus in a consociational system” in J. Ugarizza and D. Caluwaerts
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(eds.), Democratic Deliberation in Deeply Divided Societies: From Conflict to Common Ground, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, p. 11-34. 13. The former was awarded 18 million euros under EU PEACE III funding, the latter 17 million euros under EU INTERREG funding. 14. J. Tonge, J. M. Braniff, T. Hennessey, J. W. McAuley and S. A. Whiting, The Democratic Unionist Party: From Protest to Power, op. cit. 15. P. Nolan, D. Bryan, C. Dwyer, K. Hayward, K. Radford, and P. Shirlow, The Flag Dispute: Anatomy of a Protest, Belfast, Queen's University Belfast, December 2014, [http:// pure.qub.ac.uk/portal/files/13748797/The_Flag_Dispute_report_PRINTED.pdf], accessed 15 March 2015. 16. P. Nolan, Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report. Number Two, Belfast, Community Relations Council, 2013; P. Nolan, Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report. Number Three, Belfast, Community Relations Council, 2014. 17. D. O Ceailleagh, and P. Gillespie (eds.), Britain and Europe: the Endgame. An Irish Perspective, Dublin, Institute of International and European Affairs, 2015. 18. J. M. Lynch, “The Anglo-Irish Problem”, Foreign Affairs, 50: 4, 1972, p. 601-617. 19. S.D. McQuaid, “Nordic Horizons for a ‘Council of the Isles’? Instituting Regional Cooperation”, in Gerry Hassan and James Mitchell, (eds.), After Independence: The State of the Scottish Nation Debate, Edinburgh, Luath Press Limited, 2013. 20. D. Morrow, G. Robinson and L. Dowds, “The long view of community relations in Northern Ireland: 1989-2012”, ARK Research Report, 2013, [https://www.ofmdfmni.gov.uk/ publications/long-view-community-relations-northern-ireland-1989-2012], accessed 19 January 2014. 21. Sir G. Quigley, “North-South cooperation in 2013: towards an ever closer working relationship. Interview with Sir George Quigley”, Journal of Cross-Border Studies in Ireland, No 8, 2013, p 15-29; K. Hayward, and E. Maginnis, “The business of building peace: Private Sector Cooperation across the Irish Border”, Irish Political Studies, 22.1., 2014, p. 154-175. 22. J. Todd et al., “The moral boundaries of the nation: nation, state and boundaries in the Southern Irish border counties”, Ethnopolitics 5 (4), 2006, p. 365-382. 23. Ongoing research by the author 24. J. Coakley, “The North-South relationship: Implementing the Agreement”, in J. Coakley, B. Laffan and J. Todd, (eds.), Renovation or Revolution? New Territorial Politics in Ireland and the United Kingdom, Dublin, UCD Press, 2005, p. 110-131. 25. See [ http://www.nicva.org/sites/default/files/d7content/attachments-articles/ calculating_public_spending_and_revenue_in_northern_ireland_0.pdf], accessed 11 April 2015. 26. E. Meehan, “The European context: changing forms of territorial politics in the United Kingdom”, 2005, op. cit.; E. Meehan, “The Changing British–Irish Relationship: The Sovereignty Dimension”, 2014, op. cit. 27. Houses of the Oireachtas, Joint Committee on European Affairs Report: UK/EU Future Relationship: Implications for Ireland, June 2015, [http://www.oireachtas.ie/parliament/ media/committees/euaffairs/Agreed-Report-UK-EU-Future-Relations_Updated.pdf], accessed July 20 2015 28. P. Gillespie, “The Complexity of British–Irish Interdependence”, 2014, op. cit.
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29. J. Ruane and J. Todd, “History, structure and action in the settlement of complex conflicts: the Northern Ireland case”, 2014, op. cit.; J. Ruane and J. Todd, “History, structure and action in the settlement of complex conflicts: the Northern Ireland case”, 2014, op. cit. 30. J. Suiter, D. Farrell and E. O’Malley, “When do deliberative citizens change their opinions? Evidence from the Irish citizens’ Assembly”, International Political Science Review, 2014. DOI: 10.1177/0192512114544068. 31. [ http://www.norden.org/en/nordic-council-of-ministers/ministers-for-co-operation-mr- sam/freedom-of-movement/freedom-of-movement-council], accessed 11 April, 2015.
ABSTRACTS
The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 is the cornerstone of stability in Northern Ireland. It is, however, vulnerable to changes in British-Irish relations and priorities. This article argues that this is at the root of recent crises and political stalemate in Northern Ireland. It argues that future shocks – not least the threat of British exit from the EU – are likely to increase instability in Northern Ireland and in North-South relations.
L’Accord du Vendredi Saint de 1998 est la pierre angulaire de la stabilité en Irlande du Nord. Cependant, il est sensible à l’évolution des relations entre le Royaume-Uni et l’Irlande et des priorités. Cet article démontre que c’est là que se trouve la racine des crises récentes et du climat politique détérioré en Irlande du Nord. Par conséquent, les chocs à venir – dont la menace de la sortie du Royaume-Uni de l’Union européenne n’est pas le moindre – sont susceptibles d’accentuer l’instabilité en Irlande du Nord et dans les relations nord-sud.
INDEX
Keywords: Anglo-Irish relations, Ireland - cross-border relations, Northern Ireland - peace process, Northern Ireland - post-conflict, European Union / EEC, Brexit, financial crisis Mots-clés: Irlande - relations nord/sud, Irlande du Nord - post-conflit, Irlande du Nord - processus de paix, Union Européenne / CEE, Brexit, relations anglo-irlandaises, crise financière
AUTHOR
JENNIFER TODD University College Dublin
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Educate that You May be Free? Religion and Critical Thinking in Post-Boom Ireland
Michael Cronin
AUTHOR'S NOTE
This article is based on a lecture that was originally delivered to the Merriman Summer School in 2012 that addressed the topic of Religion and Education in Ireland.
1 If you happened to find yourself in Prague on St. Patrick’s Day in 1977 and you went looking for flowers you might eventually ask yourself the following question. Why are all the flower shops closed? The answer lay in the fate of one man, the philosopher, Jan Patočka, alone responsible for this sudden dearth of flowers in the Czech capital on that day. A founding signatory of Charter 77, he was repeatedly harassed by the state secret police. At the end of one particularly harrowing interrogation session, he died of apoplexy, aged 69. Determined that there should be no public display of support for the deceased thinker and activist, the authorities decreed that all flower shops remain closed on the day of his funeral. When the funeral orations began, the police started revving up their motorcycle engines and a helicopter hovered low over the open grave. Five days before the interrogation session that cost him his life, Patočka wrote the following words in what was to be his last text: Let’s be honest, in the past, conformism has never led to an improvement but a worsening of the situation. […] What is necessary is to behave at all times with dignity, not to be intimidated or frightened. What is necessary is to speak the truth2.
2 In speaking the truth, many dissidents from Central and Eastern Europe were lauded by intellectuals in the West. On the other hand, after the fall of communism in 1989, the writings of dissidents were increasingly regarded as historical documents of interest rather than political interventions of note. Dissidence was part of the ideological
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battleground of the Cold War and once the War was over all was deemed to be Quiet on the Eastern Front. Vaclav Havel, Patočka’s co-signatory of Charter 77, pointed out, however, that what Western Europe had failed to understand about dissidence in Eastern Europe would come back to haunt it. Havel’s main contention was that the totalitarian regimes which had wreaked so much havoc in Central and Eastern Europe were the manifestation of the darker sides of modernity and that any attempt to think through modernity had to accept the unpalatable realities of coercion, terror and mass murder3.
3 Havel, in a sense, was aligning himself with a long tradition of Central and Eastern European writers and thinkers from Robert Musil and Elias Canetti to Czesław Miłosz and Jan Patočka who alerted by historical experience to the nightmares of reason sought out new forms of transcendence that would drive emancipation for human beings (Laignel-Lavastine 2005: 15-34)4. The drive for emancipation was articulated in a context of extreme crisis where peoples in the Soviet bloc were enslaved in the name of an ideology of emancipation. As Ireland emerges from the most severe politico- economic crisis in its post-independence history, it is worth asking what kind of emancipation the Irish might strive for and what the role of religion and critical thinking might be in this new project of human flourishing.
Political rationality
4 In July 2010 a detention order for a young girl in a County Cork industrial school was placed for auction on Ebay. There was considerable adverse reaction from the victims of abuse in Ireland’s industrial schools and comparisons were drawn with an earlier controversial auction of letters detailing the horrors of the Irish Famine. Davoc Rynne, the owner of the company, Irish Celt, which put the letter up for auction said in his defence, “I can understand that [negative reaction] but we live in a capitalist society, so what can we do? I had to buy it5”. The managing director of Irish Celt simply articulated what has become a fatalistic commonplace in late modernity. The writer and theorist Mark Fisher has dubbed this commonplace “capitalist realism” which he defines as “the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it” (his emphasis)6.
5 To understand how even imagining alternatives has become impossible, it is necessary to begin by asking why one system has become both “political and economic” in its expression. When neoliberal thought first emerged from universities and conservative think-tanks, it was presented as primarily to do with economic arrangements. What neo-liberal economists sought was a radically free market, maximum competition, free trade, business-friendly tax policies and a light touch regulatory environment. When neo-liberal thought became hegemonic in the economic arena, it began to shift from being a rationale for economic policy to becoming a fully-blown form of political rationality where all dimensions of human life were to be subject to market discipline7. Education, health, the prison system, social welfare, the security forces, all become subject to neo-liberal political rationality. As neo-liberal political rationality subsumes the State to its own ends, immigration policy is no longer a matter of humane response to human suffering but a cold calculation of the economic cost of keeping people together in the one place and the CEO of one company, Intel, commands more
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ministerial attention than all the faculty of the Schools of Education in the Republic of Ireland put together. The native expression of this form of rationality might be termed McCarthyism after the type of instrumental cost-benefit analysis which underlay Colm McCarthy’s 2009 report on the full range of the State’s activities and the logic for the extensive cuts proposed in the report. The sole criterion for judging the success of a State under the new regime is its ability to sustain and foster the development and extension of the Market. Health, Education, Law Enforcement, which previously served different, autonomously defined ends (physical and mental wellbeing, knowledge and wisdom, freedom and security) are now all subordinated to the one end, market sustainability.
6 One of the crueler paradoxes of the crisis which beset Ireland from 2008 onwards is that the crisis which directly resulted from the excesses of extreme neo-liberalism led not to the de-legitimising of the rationality but on the contrary to an unprecedented intensification of the deployment of neo-liberal political rationality. As the Market proved itself to be the God that Failed, the response was not to dismantle a system or question a logic that had generated hitherto unseen levels of inequality, greed and environmental destructiveness but to use public monies to subsidise private losses and to introduce a series of austerity measures that primarily targeted public goods. In a sense, the Market has come to function as a dark version of transcendence, operating across geographical space and historical time and informing every aspect of the lives of human beings. Further confirmation of this phenomenon was provided in July 2010 where EU leaders met around the clock to discuss an aid package for Member States, the stated aim being to finish the discussions at all costs before the markets opened on the following Monday. The markets were treated as if they were a parody of a pagan deity, irascible, touchy, and only to be appeased with pledges, sacrifices and the burnt offerings of public services.
7 It is in this context that it is possible to argue that the greatest single threat to religious belief in Ireland is the relentless instrumentalisation of human beings implicit in neo- liberal political rationality. For when all is subordinated to the logic of the market, humans’ only value lies in their market value, understood in exclusively monetary terms. The inhuman reductiveness of the Market also points up the falseness of the opposition in Ireland between religious believers and secular, progressive thinkers. A constant theme of public comment and mass media presentation is the pitching of secularising “pinko” liberals against “hardline” believers of the nation’s different faith traditions (more particularly, the dominant faith traditions). In this Punch and Judy Show of the Ancients and the Moderns, the enemy is alternatively the Godless or the Godfearing Other. The effect of this false dichotomy is to conceal the very considerable overlap in concerns and values between believers and progressive secularists, notably, the mortal danger posed to both by, what might be termed, Market Totalitarianism.
8 To contend that there is no alternative to the Market is to argue, in effect, that democracy is meaningless, since democracy implies a set of choices between alternatives. Free Will, as understood by mainstream Christianity, becomes null and void as one is no longer free to will anything other than the Market. In a paradoxical way, the Market Totalitarianism which is the outcome of neo-liberal political rationality presents the ultimate triumph of the vulgar materialism which underpinned totalitarian regimes in the Communist bloc. All of human life and practices (superstructure) were reducible to the operations of the economic (base structure). The
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suppression of religious belief then was but one facet of this conviction in the supremacy of the material which is enjoying renewed vigour as an ideology in the fetishisation of the market. What I wish to argue for is the necessity of a new Culture of Dissent in Ireland which will bring together critical believers and non-believers. In response to the Shock and Awe tactics of Market Stalinism I want to consider how a number of key concepts, central to both many forms of religious belief and to progressive politics, can enable a new coalition of the willing dedicated to the construction of a free, humane, meaningful and spiritually transformed polity and educational system.
Empathy
9 One of the most celebrated poems by the Polish poet, noted dissident and Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz (1911-2004) is entitled “Campo dei Fiori”: At times wind from the burning Would drift dark kites along And riders on the carousel Caught petals in midair. That same hot wind Blew open the skirts of the girls And the crowds were laughing On that beautiful Warsaw Sunday8.
10 The title refers to the square in Rome where the philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned on charges of heresy. However, the square described in the poem is Krasinski Square in Warsaw, the site of a funfair in wartime Poland. Adjacent to the Square was the Jewish Ghetto and it was here on the 19th of April 1943 that the Wehrmacht began to burn down the ghetto and kill its inhabitants. The poem juxtaposes the carefree joy of the city dwellers making the most of the amusements on a sunny Sunday afternoon with the unmentionable horrors (“dark kites”) of the slaughter taking place only yards away on the other side of the ghetto wall. At one level, Miłosz’s poem, written in the year of the destruction of the Ghetto, 1943, is a telling indictment of the almost casual anti-semitism that condemns thousands of Polish Jews to atrocious deaths. But at another, the poem is a more general snapshot of the terrifying consequences of indifference to the plight of one’s neighbour. It is, above all else, a dark vision of the collapse of empathy.
11 A fundamental feature of a successful democratic society is the requirement for empathy. One of the duties of a citizen in a democracy is to learn what it is to be someone not like oneself and to be aware of the impact of choices that one makes on the lives of others. This can involve everything from the way we design entrances to our public buildings to the way we strive to avoid racial profiling in the policing of our streets. In a world of global interdependence, where our needs are catered for by people we will most probably never meet (the cotton shirt from India or the iPhone from China), forms of empathy need to be global as well as local. The capacity to imagine and understand the lives, feelings and historical experiences of others is crucial to the creation of sustainable human communities where citizens can remain equal in their difference. When we conceive of progress, it is typically in these terms. A particular group – the disabled, a sexual, ethnic or religious minority – is accorded rights of equal citizenship as a result of more inclusive forms of empathy. Conversely,
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bigotry, persecution, discrimination, exploitation are seen as undermining democratic promise because they fatally restrict empathy to privileged groups in a society. A singular contribution of the humanities and social sciences, from the disciplines of sociology, psychology, philosophy and anthropology to the teaching of history and literature, is to develop and strengthen the empathetic imagination. Without such imagination, the very cohesiveness of our societies is put in peril and the ability for a country to function in a globalised world becomes highly problematic. The rise of gated communities in urban centres all over the island of Ireland or the challenge, domestically and internationally, of humane responses to migration show that there is no room for complacency.
12 What we witness under conditions of Market Totalitarianism, however, is not simply the relentless celebration of individual gain but the popularisation of deeply anti- empathetic forms of Social Darwinism. What is striking about a series of programmes on Irish television in recent years from Big Brother and The Weakest Link to The Dragon’s Den and The Apprentice is that the supreme value is the survival of the fittest (the notion of “fitness” being variously defined). Rituals of expulsion, public humiliation, and vituperative forms of denunciation are standard fare in the circus slaughter of media innocents. Empathy for the feelings of others becomes a positive obstacle to the onwards and upwards strivings of individuals wholly devoted to a credo of ruthless self- advancement. It is precisely this credo that is repudiated by the teachings of the major faith traditions in Ireland. What Christianity, for example, has tirelessly argued for has been the absolute centrality of empathy – of doing unto others what you would have done to you – to its message9. This explains, in part, the immense hurt experienced by many believers on learning of the nature and extent of clerical abuse scandals as they demonstrated, above all else, a catastrophic failure of the faculty for empathy. The brutal, anti-empathetic thrust of neo-liberal political rationality mediated by representations in popular culture is thus deeply inimical to a core value of religious belief in Ireland.
13 The philosopher Martha Nussbaum in her work Not for profit : why democracy needs the humanities (2010) speaks of the type of education presupposed by democratic self- governance. The type of citizen required is an active, critical, reflective and empathetic member of a community of equals, capable of exchanging ideas on the basis of respect and understanding with people from many different backgrounds10.
14 For a society to function as a democratic entity locally and to flourish as a community of equals globally, it must incorporate the empathetic imagination into every aspect of its educational practice. Empathy, in effect, is a value which offers a crucial commonality to believers and progressive non-believers alike as they collectively resist the destruction of their capacity to care for and cherish the lives of others.
Responsibility
15 The current President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, has argued that in Ireland, “an enormous price has been paid for anti-intellectualism, which has closed out political theory, the best scholarship and celebration of the imagination11”. Part of the price was the collapse of the Irish economy and the need for an IMF/EU bailout in 2010. What was readily apparent was the serious absence of critical thinking, more especially long-
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term, structural thinking, from the private and public sector. The recourse to ill- conceived short-term solutions and active hostility to any serious questioning of an unconditional belief in the wisdom of markets led to the spectacular and costly failure of the banking sector and an unprecedented attack on the living standards of the least well-off members of society. However, what the crisis revealed more generally was a paradox endemic in everything from systemic failures in the health service to governance problems in major financial institutions. On the one hand, for example, the credit crisis was blamed on particular individuals – named bankers or property developers – who were said to have abused the system. The system itself was not to blame only the proverbial bad apples. There was nothing inherently corrupt about present banking practices, only isolated instances of corrupt bankers. On the other hand, when any attempt is made to go after individuals, the causes of abuse are said to be so systemic and so diffuse that no one individual can be held to blame. The bankers were only following orders ; it is not they but the system which is to blame. This dual structure of disavowal runs as a common theme through the blood transfusion scandal, the catastrophic failure of foster care policies in the Health Service Executive (HSE) and the controversy surrounding the bank bailout. The ultimate result, of course, is consequences without causes. Nobody is to blame but everyone has to pay the cost.
16 This systematic evasion of moral responsibility has corrupted the language of public life. Public figures who have been shown to have done something that is patently wrong will only admit to an “error of judgement” as if morality was a form of cost- benefit analysis and they had somehow got the figures wrong. When women die from contaminated blood products, children’s lives are destroyed by criminally incompetent fosterage arrangements and ordinary citizens face real hardship as they bear the collective costs of private losses, the sense of injustice is compounded by the abject failure to hold anyone to account. This, in turn, leads to an understandable and widespread discrediting of authority, whether it be vested in banks, institutional churches or the legal and medical professions.
17 The crisis in authority can, of course, be addressed in two ways. One way is to render authority more authoritarian by making the State and its agents more coercive in their response to forms of criticism and dissent12. Another approach is through the development of what one might term a sense of structural responsibility, that is to say, a recognition of how personal, moral responsibility is determined though not nullified by structural constraints. The development of this sense of structural responsibility is dependent upon the introduction of critical, Socratic thinking at all levels in Irish education. Underlying such an approach to thinking are three assumptions. Firstly, people who fail to examine themselves deeply and critically are more likely to be easily influenced by others as was so apparent in the widespread consumerist materialism of Tiger Ireland. Secondly, a lack of clarity about values, goals, aims or objectives resulting from deep thinking leads to the temptation to defer unquestioningly to authority figures, whether they be political bosses or senior bankers. Thirdly, when ideas are left unexamined, the temptation is to treat politics as a purely agonistic exercise, as all about “Them and Us”, where personalities are everything and policies count for naught. Crucially, when ideas are arrived at rather than simply given there is a much greater sense of ownership. It is easier to feel responsible for values that are freely and deliberately chosen than for those that are imposed or that are vaguely sensed to be part of a prevailing zeitgeist. The implication is that the sense of personal responsibility
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for deeds resulting from these values is all the greater in that there is a thoughtful engagement in the elaboration of the values themselves.
18 Central to the development of critical thinking must be an awareness of the structures that govern our lives. This is why I use the term “structural” responsibility. If we are not aware of how larger politico-economic arrangements inform our lives then our notion of responsibility diminishes to a form of therapeutic individualism where the individual becomes the alpha and omega of the self-help industry. Nothing exists outside the mediated torments of the flattered self as exemplified by the relentless confessionalism on Irish airwaves. It is clear from the teachings of the dominant faith traditions in Ireland that believers are held to be accountable for their acts and that the teaching of religious morality is about, amongst other things, defining the nature and extent of a believer’s responsibility with respect to thoughts and deeds. Faith traditions, however, not only counsel against narcissistic individualism. They also offer their own version of structural responsibility.
19 Diarmaid MacCulloch in his discussion of Greek influences on Judaism and Christianity argues that Plato’s “view of reality and authenticity propelled one basic impulse in Christianity to look beyond the immediate and everyday to the universal and ultimate13 ”. Plato’s view was articulated in his parable of the Cave where the particular phenomena humans observe are shadows of their ideal Forms which represent a truer and higher form of reality than the ones we habitually know. This would influence the development of the allegorical method of interpreting scripture amongst the sizeable Jewish diaspora in Greek-speaking Alexandria and the method would later be practised by converts to Christianity14. Thus, a fundamental tenet of scriptural practice in Christianity is to look beyond circumstance and contingency to larger structures of significance. The notion of responsibility only makes sense in terms of these larger structures of significance that are the articles of Christian faith and belief.
20 If believers and progressive non-believers alike are committed to a strong sense of responsibility, this must inevitably bring them into conflict with vested interests which as recent history has shown in Ireland are extremely reluctant to be held accountable or responsible for their actions. Implicit in a renewed commitment to responsibility is the recognition of the ontological necessity of conflict in society, a notion that might on first reading appear somewhat objectionable.
Conflict
21 A substantial chapter of bookshops in many richer countries is given over to self-help manuals. Implicit in these manuals is the notion that there is an ideal self which is somewhat out of kilter because it lacks confidence, vitamin B, the X factor or has failed to de-junk its life. “I am not myself today” implies that there is a unitary, consensual self which is the desirable default value for the good life. That is to say, reading the right book, taking the right therapy, buying the right product, will lead to the finding of a “true self” beyond disharmony or conflict. This psychologised consensualism finds its correlative at a political level in the notion that representative democracy consists of a collection of points of view which are all equally valid. The point of view of the workers’ representative where 2,000 jobs have been delocalized is as valid as that of the corporate vice-president who has engineered the “rationalization”. So everybody gets to have their say. But what they are saying is that real conflict is no longer acceptable.
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In other words, in reality, points of view are irreducible, as speakers are situated very differently, both materially and structurally. The false symmetrization of the mediasphere, however, conceals the very genuine conflict of interests through the irenic fiction of the representative sound bite.
22 In another version of the tyranny of compliance, when social movements oppose government measures, such as penalizing public sector workers for the financial irresponsibility of the private sector, government spokespersons and stockbroker economists talk about a “communications deficit”. If only the people understood what they were doing, they would realize it was ultimately for their own good. Opposition can only be conceived of as cussedness or stupidity. No allowance is made for the fact that there are grounded material interests and structural conditions which make opposition not only inevitable but vital.
23 As even the most rudimentary exercise in the study of others soon reveals, understanding is above all an initiation into unsuspected complexity. The simplest of situations involving other humans turns out to be not as straightforward as we thought. What this schooling in complexity reveals is the radical insufficiency of cultural shorthand. That is to say, the cultural categorisation of society as made of recognisable types designated by labels, “dyslexic”, “epileptic”, “Paddy”, “Gay”, “Muslim”, reduces the multi-dimensional complexity of humans to one defining trait. Once a person is described using one of these labels, it is suggested that is all you need to know about them. They become transparent. Thus, if someone is “Muslim” or “Catholic”, they must be by definition bigoted, anti-modern, misogynist and obscurantist. What gay rights activists and the women's movement, for example, in various parts of the globe and at different times have attempted to do is to restore multi-dimensionality and complexity to the lives of human beings who were deemed to be instantly intelligible as “gay” or “woman”, gender or sexual orientation revealing all that was necessary to know about a person.
24 A multi-dimensional perspective on humans means opening up the infinite, internally conflicted, shifting desires, ideals and interests of complex,human beings in the lifeworld. It means resisting the quantitative policing of one-dimensional clinical labels (“autistic”) or social typing (“deviant”), to restore the infinitely rich constellation of human experience and possibility. It is in this respect that the current vogue for “transparency” is a form of blindness that has more to do with the coercive narratives of macro-modernity (name and shame) than with any desire to account for the exquisite detail of human fullness. Putting a figure on a number of articles published or on the amount of minutes spent in consultation may make the education or health service transparent to auditors, but it makes them and the society that pays their inflated fees blind to the open-ended multi-dimensionality of genuine education and healthcare.
25 Implicit in the understanding of humans advanced here, is the inevitability, the necessity indeed, of conflict. As Angélique del Rey and Miguel Benasayag have pointed out, part of the work of mourning for humanity is the acknowledgement that there will never be perpetual peace. Each time, they note, that there is a “war to end all wars” which aims at bringing about the reign of everlasting peace, the scale of destruction and human suffering is greater than ever before15. This observation is crucial as an attention to the local, the micro, “small” places, “small” nations can lead to a kind of consensual smugness in the present or a censorious nostalgia with respect to the past
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when no false note was to be heard and everyone lived happily before in the green houses on the prairie. Local community does not entail an end to dissent. Much of the disappointed reaction of post-1968 activists was partly to do with an overly benign notion of community. Having overly idealized the small community, they could not tolerate the inevitable and indeed desirable persistence of difference and conflict. The notion that having found the larger group difficult it is possible to retreat to the haven of your “own” – peer group, buddies, family – and to expect the comforts of uncomplicated, consensual intimacy, is likely to result in the counter-movement of disappointment. However, it is important to move the notion of conflict beyond the binary logic of specular confrontation where entities with fixed identities face up to each other in a zero sum of binary opposition. Conflict from the viewpoint of richly differentiated human subjects is not confrontation, it is conflict as engagement with the multidimensionality of human beings, their texts, languages and cultures. It resists the culturalist versions of contemporary biopower which in the name of avoiding a “clash of civilisations” presents all conflict as confrontation through the binary stereotyping of “Us and Them”. The ultimate triumph of dictatorships as Miguel Benasayag and Angélique del Rey have pointed out is to present their opponents as pure adversaries16. Confrontation thus invariably leads to elimination.
26 An agonistic conception of human community which runs directly counter to the beatific visions of universal understanding underlying many public pronouncements on the topic of globalization takes as a basic premise the incomprehensibility of the other. That is to say, human interaction is not simply the revelation of what is already there. The reason is that in the movement to engage with the complex being of others, in the creation of some form of shared sense, some degree of commonality, the operation is not one of uncovering a universal substrate, waiting to be revealed in its pre-formed state, but the contingent construction of bottom-up commonality.
27 The recent history of Northern Ireland has, understandably, given conflict a bad name in Ireland. Indeed, the whole period of suffering and violence has often been summed up in that one word, the “Conflict”. Churchmen from all sides worked to bring an end to the misery that resulted from inter-communal hatred. However, the natural ally of conflict is not hatred but dissent. Accepting the necessity of conflict is recognising the need for both believers and non-believers alike to protect the multi-dimensionality of the human and challenge the murderous shorthand of labels. As Stanley Milgram showed in his famous torture experiments and Solomon Asch demonstrated in his work on the reception of visual information, it often only takes one dissenting voice to prevent a group of people from erroneously misinterpreting as true clearly false information or more worryingly, participating in acts of extreme violence against other human beings17. The participation by believers and progressive non-believers in an active culture of dissent is vital in an era of market totalitarianism where bearing witness to core values of empathy and responsibility and the non-instrumentalisation of human beings becomes more difficult by the day. It is striking in this respect that one notion which occurred repeatedly in the lexicon of dissident writers and thinkers in Central and Eastern Europe was one that is central to the moral teaching of the major churches in Ireland, namely, conscience. Ivan Klima, Czesław Miłosz, Karel Kosik, Arthur Koestler, Zygmunt Baumann all stressed the importance of recourse to conscience as a way of unmasking the public lie and establishing one’s personal duty or responsibility to bear witness against what is manifestly untrue and dehumanising18.
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What is arguably central to the development of an informed conscience is the instigation of a culture of critical thinking in the educational system at all levels.
Fear
28 Fear is predictably a great enemy of thought. It is difficult to think or believe freely if we fear for our life or our health or our well-being. Yet, fear is the predominant note of our age. Climate change, calamitous forest fires, catastrophic floods, extreme market volatility, pandemics (AIDS, SARS, swine flu), chronic youth unemployment, the list of contemporary terrors is endless. Each evening on the news we are provided with updates on the state of fear. Each age, in addition, has its particular genre of fear. In Ireland, the Religion of Fear (1920s-1960s) has given way to the Economics of Fear (1960s-present), the Fear of the Priest has been superseded by the Fear of the P45. One could argue that the changing genre of fear corresponds to a fundamental shift at another level which is the shift from the figure of discipline to the figure of control. The figure of discipline is typically that of the worker as captured in Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) or the prisoner as depicted in Oscar Wilde’s “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”. The figure of control, on the other hand, is the debtor or the addict. Characteristic of Ireland during the boom period was the prevalence of the figure of control as evidenced by the historically high levels of personal indebtedness and widespread instances of alcohol and drug abuse19. Indeed, the philosopher Gilles Deleuze has argued that in contemporary control societies, debt is the final form of enclosure, the ultimate form of imprisonment. It was the similarity of States of Fear in the East and the West that led Czesław Miłosz to ask the question, “Why should we love societies based on fear, whether it is the fear of misery or the fear of the political police20?”
29 In Ireland, particularly in the post-Famine period, the Church was often associated with a regime of fear and punishment that has been well documented on the printed page and on the screen. This, of course, is all the more paradoxical or poignant in that the founding message of Christianity was one of hope, of the banishment of and resistance to fear. However, progressive politics in Ireland has promoted its own states of fear notably through an overwhelming emphasis on negativity. The problem with perpetual opposition is that the most popular word is “no”. Like Ulster before, the mind becomes captive to a monosyllable. In Irish society where the punitive superego has variously taken the form of the coloniser, an unforgiving church or the sententious stockbroker economist, the tendency is for critique to transform itself into the self-hatred of powerlessness. A more radical move is to embrace a politics of hope which involves saying not no but yes. Yes to a better, fairer, more sustainable society. It is obvious that Irish society is at a decisive moment. The decisions taken now will affect not just the next few years but the fate of the island in this century and beyond. The core concepts underlying a new political solution are arguably self-reliance, social justice and freedom. A new way of ordering political and economic affairs means leaving behind a sterile politics of complaint and offering a vision that is both positive and transformative. In this context, it has to be honestly acknowledged that certain forms of political transformation, not only on the right (neo-liberalism) but on the left (revolutionary communism) have manifestly failed. There is nothing progressive about a politics which is scripted in advance by the social and political movements of the
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past. A truly radical politics is just that, a politics which may borrow from the past but is not a hostage to it, and more importantly, is a politics which engages with the unpredictability of the present in unpredictable and challenging ways. So what education in a new Ireland needs is the coming together of both believers and progressive non-believers in a mutual commitment to a message of justice and transformation underpinned by the shared values of empathy, responsibility and hope. As we seek to achieve this it is important to remember the last words of the Czech philosopher, that we should not be “intimidated or frightened” and most importantly that we do not intimidate or frighten each other as we have done for far too long.
NOTES
2. Jan Patočka, “Testament”, Politique aujourd’hui, 3-4, 1977, p. 45. 3. Václav Havel, Essais politiques, translated by Jacques Rupnik et al., Paris, Calmann- Lévy, 1989, p. 234. 4. Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine, Esprits d’Europe: autour de Czesław Miłosz, Jan Patočka, István Bibó, Paris, Gallimard, 2005, p. 15-34. 5. Patsy McGarry, “Industrial school order placed on eBay”, The Irish Times, 17 August 2010. 6. Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: is there no alternative?, Winchester, O Books, 2009, p. 2. 7. Wendy Brown, Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2005, p. 38-40. 8. Czesław Miłosz, “Campo dei Fiori”, The Collected Poems: 1931-1987, 46-49, translated by Louis Iribarne and David Brooks, New York: The Ecco Press, 1988, p. 47 9. Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, London, Penguin, 2010, p. 88. 10. Martha C. Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 2010, p. 141. 11. Paul Dillon, “Interview: Michael D Higgins – Ireland’s ‘Political’ Intellectual”, The Village, December-January 2011, p. 44. 12. Michael Cronin, “Rebel Spirits? From Reaction to Regulation”, in Debbie Ging, Michael Cronin, Peadar Kirby (eds), Transforming Ireland: Challenges, Critiques, Resources, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2009, 109-122. 13. MacCulloch, History of Christianity, London, Penguin, 2010, p. 31. 14. Ibid., p. 69. 15. Miguel Benasayag and Angélique del Rey, Angélique, L’éloge du conflit, Paris, La Découverte, p. 56. 16. Ibid., p. 109. 17. Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil, London, Rider, 2007. 18. Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine, Esprits d’Europe, p. 112.
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19. Debbie Ging, Michael Cronin and Peadar Kirby, “Transforming Ireland: Challenges”, op. cit., p. 1-17. 20. Czesław Miłosz,(2004) Abécédaire, translated by Laurence Dyèvre, Paris, Fayard, p. 41.
ABSTRACTS
A constant theme of public comment and mass media presentation in Ireland is the pitching of secularising “liberals” against “hardline” believers of the nation’s different faith traditions (more particularly, the dominant faith traditions). In this Punch and Judy Show of the Ancients and the Moderns, the enemy is alternatively the Godless or the Godfearing Other. The effect of this false dichotomy is to conceal the very considerable overlap in concerns and values between believers and progressive secularists, notably, the mortal danger posed to both by, what might be termed, Market Totalitarianism. This article explores the notions of empathy, responsibility, conflict and hope as informing new, shared forms of alternative thought and practice.
En Irlande il est courant d’opposer dans le discours médiatique et public les « laïcs libéraux » aux « fondamentalistes » des diverses religions du pays, plus particulièrement ceux issus des traditions religieuses dominantes. Dans cette version caricaturale de la querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, l’ennemi est toujours l’Autre, qui est à tour de rôle « sans Dieu » ou « dévot ». L’effet de cette dichotomie trompeuse est de masquer tout ce que les croyants et les laïcs progressistes ont en commun, les préoccupations et les valeurs qu’ils partagent, notamment le péril mortel que pose aux deux groupes ce que l’on pourrait nommer le Totalitarisme du Marché. Cet article explore les notions d’empathie, de responsabilité, de conflit et d’espoir en tant qu’elles peuvent informer des formes de pensée et des pratiques nouvelles et partagées.
INDEX
Keywords: Celtic Tiger, education, financial crisis, Irish State (Republic of Ireland), religion, society and religion, public debate Mots-clés: crise financière, éducation, État irlandais (République d’Irlande), religion, société et religion, Tigre celtique, débat public
AUTHOR
MICHAEL CRONIN Dublin City University
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Les Arts et la crise The Arts and Crisis
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Crisis and the Visual Arts in Ireland
Pat Cooke
Introduction
1 This paper explores contemporary responses to crisis in Ireland as refracted through visual arts practice. The key question that will be pursued is not the primarily philosophical one of “what is the nature of crisis?” but the situational one of “how might a sense of crisis manifest itself through the practice of a visual artist?” In attempting to answer this question it is hoped some light can be shed on other questions that appear to have gained greater urgency since the pivotal moment in 2008 when the economic ground shifted under the Irish people. Do artists have an obligation to engage with politics? Can some of the underpinning rationales for artist engagement, particularly in the field of relational aesthetics, empower artists to meet expectations that their work can, or should, be capable of decisive interventions at historical moments of crisis? A related objective is to ground a theoretical understanding of the nature of crisis in the evolution of an artist’s work, to gain some sense of its temporal manifestation in the life-long, everyday practice of making art.
2 The two artists I have engaged with to examine these questions, Deirdre O’Mahony and Anthony Haughey, were selected with a clear understanding that any number of other artists might just as equally have suited. The reason for the choice is that the author is familiar with the work of both over time and understands both, in variable ways, to be committed to exploring the interaction of political and aesthetic values in their practice.
3 Roitman’s discussion of crisis as a political concept proved very useful in delineating a framework for dialogue with the chosen artists. She is emphatic about the structural nature of crisis; that it is “nothing less than the defining category of our contemporary situation”, one which has led crisis discourse to become “a veritable industry”. Following Foucault, she insists on the close relation between crisis and critique, a binary in which the ethical role of critique is to produce crisis – thereby asserting crisis as a normative condition in contemporary life. Within this construct, crisis is
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experienced not as an empirical phenomenon but as a reflexive condition of observation that produces meaning1.
4 There are three specific senses in which we can talk about crisis in this context. Firstly, there is the sense of crisis as an immediate, urgent, contemporary event, impinging on collective and individual consciousness – provoking the sense that things cannot go on as they are, and that some form of decisive action is called for. Secondly, there is crisis (in Roitman’s sense) as a structural condition. And thirdly, the narrower sense of “crisis in the arts” – embracing the sudden irruption of questions of meaning (“what are the arts for?”) and the impact of factors such as funding cutbacks and contracted art markets on the professional lives of artists.
The arts and crisis
5 In Ireland, due to the dominance of literary traditions in drama, poetry and fiction, there is a tendency to look firstly to these art forms to register the shock of contemporary events. The power of Yeats’s poem “Easter 1916”, for example, is at least partly due to the vivid immediacy of its response to a momentous contemporary event; it was published in September 1916, five months after the events whose shock it registers. Following the collapse of the economic mirage of the Celtic Tiger years in 2008, the first reflex of one of the country’s leading public commentators, Fintan O’Toole, was to indict literature for having failed to offer a diagnosis of what was going on, or a prognosis of the Gatsbyesque doom that now, with retrospective clarity, seemed to have characterised the years of excess.
6 He mapped a cultural crisis onto the economic one. Acknowledging that “in its immediate forms the Irish crisis is fiscal and political”, he offered the prognosis that “as it plays out over the next decade it will be social and cultural”. The residual question was: “what fills the hole of collective cultural identity?2” His expectations of art’s transformative potential, particularly of theatre, were high: “at different moments of crisis over the past century or so, Irish theatre has recreated for itself the ambition to be a mind-altering substance, to be a force that actually changes the way Irish people as a whole see themselves (my italics)3.”
7 O’Toole presented a television programme in June 2011, Power Plays, that pointed a finger at Irish playwrights for failing to register the ethical and political collapse that underpinned the economic one. During the good times writers had failed to produce work that questioned an establishment “in the throes of collective madness”, and failed to provide the Irish people with “a vaguely accurate narrative or image of who or where they were4”. The distant rumblings of crisis had gone unheard; and now that a tsunami of economic collapse was upon the country, it appeared to him that writers had been numbed into silence.
8 Though far from numerous, other commentators came to similar conclusions. Julian Gough, writing from exile in Berlin in 2010, described fellow-Irish writers as “a priestly caste” isolated from the “electric current” of contemporary events5. Journalist Justine McCarthy, provoked by the National Campaign for the Arts’ emphatic endorsement of the economic importance of the arts, wondered if the words “arts” and “industry” had become “surgically attached”. She stressed the more ethical role of the arts in “consciousness-raising”, and called finally for a “performance-related clause in their contract with the people6”. This line of critique brought together the first and third
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senses of crisis outlined above: an immediate sense of shock at the sudden turn of events translated into a crisis for the arts.
9 But it was the writers who bore the brunt of this critique. Few commentators noted or questioned the role or responsibility of the visual arts in meeting these same demands. A column by Shane Hegarty in the Irish Times inadvertently captured the comprehensiveness of the elision. He wrote about how every so often we get “an abrupt shift in the economic, political or cultural landscape”, seeing that very moment (October 2008) as signifying a sudden change in the mood, aesthetic and objectives of art; we would need to “get used to the post-credit-crunch novel, post-credit-crunch television, post-credit-crunch music, post-credit-crunch theatre, post-credit-crunch film” – but not, apparently, post-credit crunch visual art7.
10 This seems an odd omission. Perhaps there is something to Ansgar Nunning’s observation that crises tend not only to defy direct observation but to “elude attempts at representing them, especially visually8”. One can see his point about finding strictly visual correlatives for the diffuse, temporally unfolding nature of contemporary events. However the contemporary visual arts were at least as well-placed as drama, literature, or any other art form, to register the impact of contemporary crisis – and, indeed, to be interrogated for failure to do so. The evolution of visual arts theory and practice over the past half century to embrace performative, participatory and multi-media modes of realisation has surely equipped them to register the complex layers of confusion and anxiety thrown up by moments of crisis.
11 There is some evidence that the visual arts in Ireland were, in fact, finely tuned to this task, offering initial responses that were remarkably coincident with unfolding events. Barely a month after the economic crisis fell with dramatic suddenness in September 2008, the Project Art Centre in Dublin staged an exhibition entitled “The Prehistory of the Crisis”, curated by Tessa Giblin. She situated the exhibition with journalistic immediacy: “as Ireland heads into recession in 2008, cultural and socio-political relationships are beginning to tighten.” The exhibition focused on migrant workers across Europe and in Ireland, whose fate could now be read as premonitory of the erupting crisis. “The open and relatively inclusive web of Irish and migrant workers”, Giblin wrote, “formed the bedrock beneath the economic boom9”. The first leg of the project comprised four works by European artists10; the second, in June 2009, comprised four Irish artists, Susanne Bosch, Anthony Haughey, Daniel Jewesbury and Sinéad McCann. Works were simultaneously exhibited in Dublin and Belfast. On the latter occasion Giblin commented specifically on the contemporary resonance of the work in an Irish context. She sensed “a time in history when economic recession underscores every cultural and artistic event taking place in Ireland, North and South”. Paralleling O’Toole’s response, she discerned two dimensions to the unfolding situation: “while the term is strongly associated with the impact of economic recession, the cultural crisis which might or might not emerge is bound to be characterised by a relationship to ‘the other’11”.
12 Two years later, the idea of crisis was invoked to give thematic coherence to the biggest art exhibition for over thirty years in Ireland. Curators Christian Viveros-Fauné and Jota Castro gave the title “Terrible Beauty – Art, Crisis, Change and the Office of Non- Compliance” to the project. The title consciously borrowed Yeats’s signature phrase from his poem “Easter, 1916” to suggest the immediacy of the exhibition’s responses. One hundred and fourteen artists from around the world showed work, about a quarter
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of whom were Irish. An editorial in the Irish Times noted that while literature had long been the art form through which Ireland had come to be known in the world, the presence of so many Irish artists of international repute alongside their international peers was the measure of a significant change in the standing of the visual arts in Irish cultural life. However, the writer temporised over whether the exhibition effectively engaged with the question of crisis posed by its overarching title, leaving it to the critics and the public to decide whether “there is any meaningful interplay between the artists and whatever “crisis” they might respond to12”.
13 A qualitative difference between the responses of the visual and literary arts is notable. The initial demand placed upon the literary arts called for a diagnosis of crisis as a bounded, national experience, as an obligation falling to the Irish writer. The visual arts, based as they are on cosmopolitan networks, with well-embedded processes of collaborative, interdisciplinary, and multi-media practice, tend to construe crisis as a porous, trans-national, global discourse. Given that the crisis was, in economic terms, a global phenomenon, this gave considerable verisimilitude to the efforts of visual artists. Their collective and individual approaches suggest that grappling with crisis in the contemporary world cannot be credibly bounded by national or nationalist modes of interpretation. This was brought home most strikingly by Susanne Bosch’s contribution to “Prehistory of the Crisis (2)” entitled “Ourselves Alone” (which is a literal translation of the name of the leading Republican Party “Sinn Fein”). Bosch presented photographs in which objects and individuals that clearly had no origin in Ireland were cut out, leaving the Irish once again homogeneously alone – a no-longer tenable proposition.
14 This instinct to keep faith with a transitive understanding of crisis was also present in Mark Curran’s body of work entitled “The Market”, which was shown at the Gallery of Photography in Dublin in autumn 2013. Curran distilled imagery and interview data from stock exchanges in Dublin, London, Frankfurt, and the recently established Ethiopian Commodity Exchange in Addis Ababa (the youngest exchange in the world) into an examination of the metaphysical power of markets, dematerialised in the fugitive flow of capital across stock exchanges, to pervert or destroy individual lives in personal and intimate ways. The work sought to include the global and the personal in a single field of vision. A quotation from one of his interviews (with a London broker), served as a leitmotif for the work: “what people don’t understand… is that what happens in the market is pivotal to their lives… not on the periphery, but slap, bang, in the middle13.”
15 Nunning invokes cognitive metaphor theory as a way of understanding how crisis works discursively. Crisis metaphors, he asserts, “largely determine the cultural life of crises14”. He notes how neo-liberal responses to the recent crisis from within the business world have favoured the original Greek sense of the word: a moment of decision in the course of an illness or disease. As an instance, he cites a headline from the Financial Times: “Fear Prevents Patient from Responding to Treatment.” Peckham likewise traces how metaphors of contagion and disease have been deployed extensively since the Asian financial crisis of the mid-nineties to shape and determine managerial interventions15. Such metaphors work to legitimate normative responses, acting subtly to reinforce capitalist ideology by glorifying the achievements of those “consultants” involved in saving the system. This raises hard questions about how
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artists might offer immediate responses to crises that do not end up serving, however inadvertently, prevailing norms and hegemonic systems.
Crisis in artistic practice
Deirdre O’Mahony
16 Born in 1956, Deirdre arrived in London in 1979 to study fine art at St. Martin’s School of Art, just as the Thatcherite revolution was getting under way. However, her formal training as a painter offered no immediate means of responding to what was going on around her. Instead, she began moving in a circle constellated around the punk movement (becoming friends, among others, with Shane McGowan, lead-singer with “The Pogues”). At this stage the formalities of art and the exigencies of living in a society wrenched between the polarities of neoliberalism and punk remained disconnected. Her revolt against Thatcherism through the embrace of a punk lifestyle was “part of my life world, but not part of my art practice16”.
17 She returned to Ireland in 1992 and settled to raise a family in the small village of Kilnaboy, in the heart of the Burren in West Clare. Her first significant body of work following her return was the painterly “Traces of Origin” (1993). It comprised four site- specific paintings, using limestone imprints and local geological references. These were installed on the limestone pavement at Ailwee Cave in the Burren17.
18 But soon her work came to centre on ecological concerns, prompted by troubling questions about the interactions between state, community and landscape. In the early nineties, the Office of Public Works, the state heritage body, proposed to build a large- scale visitor-centre at Mullaghmore in the heart of the Burren landscape, triggering a major ecological controversy with local, national and international dimensions. Her closeness to this controversy provoked a crisis in her arts practice as she strove to deal with questions of agency and power-relations as a member of a rural community riven by conflict over the proposed development. “X-PO” (2007-08) was probably the project that most decisively reflected the change. She revived the former post-office in Killnaboy as a public space where community histories could be explored – a role it continues to serve18. Her exhibition TURF (Transitional Understandings of Rural Futures) explored “the social, cultural and emotional attachments that underlie present day conflicts around land and the regulation of the landscape” at a time when European conservation regulations were coming into conflict with the customary rights of rural-dwellers to cut turf for their fuel needs over winter19. Her most recent project, SPUD (2012-), invokes the potato as metaphor and foodstuff in an on-going ecological investigation with local and global dimensions. The work combines artistic research, artworks, events, exhibitions, films, collaborations and interventions to “reflect on farming knowledge, food security, seed heritage and sustainability20”.
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Narratives and Representations
The X-PO, Kilnaboy Co Clare; exhibition launch of Tracings, Narratives and Representations by the X-PO Mapping Group, tracing occupancy in the townlands of the parish, the Rinnamona Research Group on the anthropological study made of Rinnamona by the Harvard Irish Mission and artist Sean Taylor, of The Blushing Hills, a text-based artwork. (Photograph Peter Rees, 2008).
Peter Rees, An Udder View
Peter Rees, An Udder View, X-PO exhibition of a selection from more than 25.000 photographs taken by Rees of life in Kilnaboy over a twenty-five year period. The 20 albums of photographs of just over 1000 photographs represent a selection from the 27,000 in Peter Rees’ photographic archive, selected and curated by the photographer and artist over a four month period. During the exhibition it became a hub of activity, see [http://www.deirdre-omahony.ie/public-art-projects/x-po.html]. (Photograph Peter Rees, 2008)
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SPUD -the future is in the bag
SPUD -the future is in the bag is part of an artist-led research project for the historic and contemporary context of Callan Workhouse Union and curated by Hollie Kearns and Rosie Lynch. Containers have been planted with potatoes, introducing participants from the neighbourhood to the Callan Workhouse and to container planting as a way of easily growing food in different contexts, from small gardens to urban spaces. (photograph Rosie Lynch 2015)
Anthony Haughey
19 Anthony’s life-journey as an artist is rooted in an experience of displacement. Born in Armagh in 1963, he moved as a young child with his family to Liverpool to escape the growing political tensions in Northern Ireland. Settling in the Seaforth Docks area, he grew up in a place undergoing rapid industrial decline through the seventies and eighties. In 1988, while attending the University for the Creative Arts at Farnham near London, he returned to Ireland to research a photographic project on migration. He produced his first exhibition of photographs, “Home” (1992), while living in Dublin21. Migration, the liminality of borders and borderlands, became, and remain, connected themes of his work. In his first book of photographs, “The Edge of Europe” (1993), he explored Irish emigration from the west of Ireland to the US as both an historical and a contemporary experience22.
20 Soon after, as the Celtic Tiger sprang to life, he witnessed a land inured to centuries of migration undergoing a reversal of fortune: it was becoming a land of immigrants. They came from all over the globe, and included returning Irish, EU migrants, and refugees and asylum seekers from other continents. Seeing Ireland become a land of 188 nationalities was for him a far more engaging spectacle than its conversion to a land of conspicuous consumption. “Postcards from Mosney” (2006) was based on work with a community of asylum seekers who since 2000 were being held at a former holiday camp in County Meath23. He explored this theme further in a two-part project “How to be a
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Model Citizen” (2006-09). The first part involved working with refugees in Malta in 2008. As part of the second leg of the project (in Dublin) he invited Irish citizens to take the citizenship test normally applied to immigrants, which they all failed24. These migration-based projects overlapped and interwove with his work “Disputed Territory” (2006), which explored the aftermath of conflict in Ireland, Bosnia and Kosovo25. In this work he sought to counter the “lazy rhetoric of globalisation” under which the significance of borders is downplayed – a lie he had come to understand through the experiences of refugees attempting to enter “fortress Europe” and, of course, in terms of the borderlands between North and Southern Ireland, which he had explored in “Borderlines” (2007)26 .
21 The project in which Haughey most explicitly confronted the impact of the Celtic Tiger on the Irish landscape was “Settlement” (2011). For this, he visited abandoned housing estates across rural Ireland, semi-complete developments that had been frozen in time by economic collapse in 2008. With premonitory insight, David McWilliams had dubbed such places “ghost estates” in 200627. As Cian O’Callaghan comments in an essay that accompanied the exhibition, these are places “haunted by the Celtic Tiger28”. All the photographs were shot between sunrise and sunset. With echoes of the neo-Gothic sublime, these unpeopled places conjure up the aesthetic enchantment of ruins. But as a returned-emigrant Haughey was instinctively aware, and consciously so since his early project on “The Edge of Europe”, of the aesthetic lie of an empty landscape rendered beautiful by the absence of those compelled to flee from it, iconically epitomised in the paintings of Paul Henry (1876-1958). The reverse aesthetic works powerfully, as a kind of caustic whitewash applied to the Tiger’s sepulchre.
Settlement lll
Settlement lll, 2011 100 x 120 cm digital C-type print
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Monument to the Collapse of Capitalism
Monument to the Collapse of Capitalism, 2011, installation, A1 architectural drawings, 100 x 120 photograph and wall text
Dispute 1913 | 2013
Dispute 1913 | 2013, Kingscourt Brick Workers Lockout, 2013, Labour and Lockout Exhibition, Limerick City Gallery, 2013
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Dialogue
22 Both O’Mahony and Haughey speak of crisis mostly as a diffuse, accumulative aspect of their life-journeys as artists29. In the primary sense of crisis as a decisive moment, both speak retrospectively, describing moments that set in train a process of reflection or distillation, emerging later through the work. The experiences of childhood and early adulthood fall very much into this category. For Haughey it was the experience of growing up in a working class area of Liverpool, witnessing the relentless decline of a thriving dock area into post-industrial wasteland, a condition of “constant crisis” he could only understand with adult hindsight. For O’Mahony, the disparate dimensions of her early adult experience in London remained critically disconnected for many years. “The kind of issues I would have been dealing with in my life-world, around identity, around what it was to be Irish in London, and the punk scene”, she frankly admits, “didn’t carry over into my practice for a long time, because I couldn’t find a way of processing that experience through the practice of painting as I was doing it then”.
23 Remarkably, the formal and ethical evolution of both O’Mahony and Haughey’s work is rooted in their personal journeying as migrants. Intellectually and artistically, returning to Ireland proved transformative. Both speak of decisive moments in which crisis in their work was provoked and shaped by wider social and political events. For O’Mahony the controversy over the visitor centre at Mullaghmore was “very important: it radicalised me”, making it “impossible to make paintings unknowingly, to represent an innocent gaze on landscape”. She realised that she would have to “move beyond painting as a practice, to tease out the complexity of how to represent… the West of Ireland today”. Thinking this through led to a radical transformation of her practice. She felt the need to engage people (her neighbours) in her work. She perceived the essence of the Mullaghmore controversy as a lack of consultation, of top- down decision-making in implementing EU conservation regulations that ignored the feelings, interests and traditions of people living in the designated areas. She became aware of the inadequacy of the political system simultaneously to deal with the “microscopic” changes needed locally and the ecological challenge of global-warming. Dealing with these challenges could only be done effectively by linking the local to the global scales of human activity. She became an activist who made an art museum out of a post-office (X-PO), filling it initially with her own work, and then handing it over to her neighbours as a place to fill with their own voices and concerns. She describes the art she began making then and continues to make as “produced with and through relationships and people”.
24 For Haughey too there was a similarly decisive moment, which he describes explicitly as a crisis of representation. Because of his background in Liverpool, he had always been interested in the question “how do you bring resistance and solidarity into representation?” For a good many years, he found that the formal discipline of photography offered a more than adequate means to explore the issues that mattered to him. In his early work he was heavily influenced by the writings of Martha Rosler and (particularly) Allan Sekula30. They challenged, from both feminist and Marxist perspectives, existing modes of documentary photography that seemed to cast the camera downward voyeuristically towards the dispossessed and marginalised, without effectively advancing critical understanding of social systems and questions of social justice.
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25 The critical moment for his practice came when he felt there was no choice but to break out into participatory, multi-media forms. It happened when he began to work on a project in former Yugoslavia in 1998. Faced with the aftermath of a war that had turned genocidal in Bosnia, he experienced a crisis of representation: The methods I was using before weren’t adequate to address the complexity and enormity of what I was dealing with – and that’s where the choice of visual media becomes an issue. Photography is limited, you can do certain things, but it’s still heavily codified, and it was just inadequate to the task. So one of the deficits for me was the lack of complexity in relation to narrative.
26 He found discarded and damaged photographs. He made videos that collected testimony from survivors of atrocities. He collated all of this into an archive, “because I couldn’t make sense… I couldn’t wrap a frame around what I was seeing, and begin to critically represent it”. Haughey’s first instinct when asked to speak about “crisis in the arts” is not to invoke structural or career challenges around arts funding, but the abiding formal, representational challenges involved in the making of art itself.
27 Neither artist finds it plausible to think of crisis as something containable within a national frame of reference. For O’Mahony the wider frame is clearly ecological, for Haughey it is more economic. He explains that though “Settlement” was sited within a national frame, its subject of abandoned ghost estates is “very clearly implicated with globalisation, with how capital moves”.
Art, Ethics, Aesthetics
28 Both artists share another career feature in common; they have doctorates in their fields and are teachers at third level institutions. Their academic background empowers them to bring strong theoretical frameworks to bear on their ways of working. They have embraced some of the leading thinkers on relational aesthetics to inform their development as artists committed to participatory and collaborative practices. Both reference the way writers such as Rancière, Nancy, Bourriaud and Spivak have influenced their way of working collaboratively with groups, communities and people31. Given the centrality of ecological questions to her work, O’Mahony cites Guattari’s “ecosophical” approach as a particular influence. Guattari urges the need to bring together the subjective, the natural and the wider social context as part of ecological consciousness. This led her to try and generate through practice a continuum of material encompassing (as Guattari put it) the “fabric of everyday life, large-scale crises, and habits of thought”.
29 Both artists endorse the engagé values of relational aesthetics, and are committed to the view that art and politics are interconnected. Haughey has always seen art as “an extension of the wider culture”, as “political within itself, but…also political in how it represents outside those… formal boundaries of the gallery”. O’Mahony expressed a more ambivalent stance in response to a proposition of Zygmunt Baumann’s put to her in the interview. Baumann insists that “the more they distance themselves from the realities of the day and so resist being accommodated by them, the less fit the arts and the artists are to be deployed in the service of the status quo”. Given Baumann’s abiding concern with ethics, this may seem a perversely art-for-art’s-sake conclusion for him to arrive at. However, he does not appear to be suggesting that art must be apolitical, but rather that when it subscribes to an overt political agenda it cannot
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avoid being instrumentalised; he is convinced that art’s revolt can only be effective when it “represents the claims of the particular against the homogenising pressure of the general32”. Although it would seem to downplay the structural role that ecological values play in framing her work, O’Mahony can see the attraction of Baumann’s proposition. But while she agrees that “the politics comes out of the examination of particular situations, particular questions”, she nevertheless invokes Grant Kester in support of her commitment to socially-engaged practice, or “dialogical aesthetics33”. Claire Bishop’s description of such work’s desire to escape the cycle of fetishistic re- interpretation so that “the work of art itself is… In perpetual flux”, has resonance for her. But so also does Bishop’s worry that project-based art renders itself available to instrumentalisation in the “experience economy”, whose underlying drive is to “replace goods and services with scripted and staged personal experiences34”.
30 Both artists struggle with Rancière’s paradox of “art’s getting involved in politics on the express condition of not having anything to do with it35”. O’Mahony is aware of the frisson of urgency, the portentous gravitas that the invocation of crisis can have in “sexing-up” the claims of an art work to contemporary relevance. She admits to succumbing to that kind of drama in her initial articulation of the X-PO project, which she associates with her “sense of the evangelical” at that time. But now she feels that “responding to the crisis means staying with the question over time”. She thinks that the “immediate understanding of “crisis” has been a smoke-screen; if you keep people distracted enough they won’t notice the underlying structural deficiencies”. As an artist, “one has to speak and operate in multiple registers all of the time to reflexively respond to the real ‘crises’ behind the political performance of crises”. The emphasis has shifted from the sense of a decision point thrown up by the urgency of circumstances – and demanding an “evangelical” immediacy of response – to an insistence on staying with the structural genesis of such moments. In his way too, Haughey’s consistent pursuit of issues around migration, long before the crisis of 2008 and as a work-in-progress, subscribes to a similar conviction that making art is an oblique process, in which by indirections we “find directions out”, as Polonius puts it in Hamlet.
31 For Haughey, David Levi-Strauss’s question (because it is a question) crystallises the motive and the challenge of this kind of art-making: “Why can’t beauty be a call to action?36” Driven by an impulse to make work in which ethical hope and aesthetic desire comingle, both artists acknowledge a persistent anxiety around its transformative capacities. Haughey’s collaborator on the “Whose Voice is it Anyway?” project (2008), the German artist Susanne Bosch, thought their work together, where they passed on skills (in this case learning how to use a camera and develop photographs) to a group of refugees at a disused holiday camp, was successful. But Haughey was not so sure. He wondered whether the approach could “make an effective intervention of challenging powerful media discourses that continue to project negative perceptions of transnational migration as a threat to the social order37”. Perhaps the beauty of art is that it is always difficult to tell whether the call to action is effective or not.
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Conclusion
32 Finally, perhaps, the crisis within art and the crisis for art reflect a uniquely post- modern and, more precisely, a post-utopian moment. For Roitman, Hegelianism and Marxism adduced the possibility of crisis out of the moral demand for a difference between past and future inspiring the conviction that one can act upon history to transform it. When it is no longer possible to hold a position from which to observe society as a totality, when there are no universal principles, there can only be “self- referential” principles. This renders crisis immersive: no longer a scientifically observable condition but rather a mode of observation that produces meaning38. It is a condition that transforms Lenin’s question “What is to be done?” Into Beckett’s resolve, “I’ll go on”.
33 Ironically, if inevitably, the same philosophical dilemma envelops both artists and their critics. While Fintan O’Toole has been Ireland’s most forceful voice calling for art work that responds to the urgency of the contemporary crisis, he may have undergone an analogous crisis in his own mission as a public intellectual. In a recent and perceptive critique from a Marxist perspective, Daniel Finn has criticised O’Toole’s own reform agenda for a temporising liberalism that “blocked out the real question of who exercises power in Irish society, proposing instead the kind of institutional tinkering that would change everything so that everything could stay the same39”. That makes O’Toole’s polemics sound like an exercise not too far removed from the paradoxes of relational aesthetics.
34 Rancière concludes that “the contradictory attitudes that today are being drawn from the great aesthetic paradigms express a more fundamental undecidability in the politics of art40”. And he might have added, in politics in general. It might be asked if this “undecidability” is not also the general hallmark of the current crisis – evident, for example, in the macroeconomic indecisiveness about whether to apply Keynesian “quantitative easing” or fiscal austerity to the biggest economic challenge the world has faced since the 1930s. What can art do in this context? Perhaps Rancière best sums up the pressurising expectation: that “art, uncertain of its politics, is increasingly encouraged to intervene due to the lack of politics in the proper sense41”.
NOTES
1. Janet Roitman, “Crisis”. Political Concepts: a political lexicon. Available at: [http:// www.politicalconcepts.org/issue1/crisis/]. Accessed: 5 February, 2015. 2. “Hold on tight: why the past will be a model for our future”, Irish Times, 27 November, 2010. 3. Fintan O’Toole, “Minority report: can theatre avoid the fate of classical music?” Irish Times, 20 October, 2012.
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4. For a broad discussion of the impact of the Celtic Tiger years and their aftermath on Irish culture and society, see Kieran Bonner and Alexandra Slaby (eds), Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 37, no. 1-2 (2011). The relationship between the artist and the state as refracted through cultural policies, and as a subject opened up to debate under the pressure of economic crisis in post-2008 Ireland is explored in detail in: Pat Cooke, “The Artist and the State in Ireland: Artist Autonomy and the Arm’s Length Principle in a Time of Crisis”, in the same volume, p. 99-119. 5. The Guardian, 11 February, 2010. 6. “Artists should always have to sing for their supper”, Sunday Times, 27 September, 2009. 7. Shane Hegarty, “The Culture Vultures are Circling”, Irish Times, 4 October, 2008. 8. Ansgar Nunning, “Making Crises and Catastrophes: How Metaphors and Narratives Shape their Cultural Life”. In Carsten Meiner and Kristin Veel (eds), The Cultural Life of Catastrophes and Crises, Walter de Gruyter, 2012, p. 67. 9. Project Art Centre, Archive. [http://dev.projectartscentre.ie/archive/archive-va-detail/8- prehistory?tmpl=component&print=1&page=]. Accessed: 4 February, 2015. 10. The exhibition comprised four films by Aernout Mik, (Holland) Patrick Bernier & Olive Martin (France), Jeanne Faust & Jörn Zehe (Germany) and Andrijana Stojkovic (Serbia). 11. Project Art Centre, Archive. [http://dev.projectartscentre.ie/archive/archive-va-detail/ 577-the-prehistory-of-the-crisis-2?tmpl=component&print=1&page=]. Accessed: 4 February, 2014. 12. “Art in a Time of Crisis”, Irish Times, 6 September, 2011. 13. Gallery of Photography, Ireland. Available at: [http://www.galleryofphotography.ie/ mark-curran-the-market/]. Accessed: 6 February, 2015. 14. Ansgar Nunning, op. cit. p. 73. 15. Robert Peckham, “Economies of contagion: financial crisis and pandemic.” Economy and Society, 42:2, 2013, p. 226-248. 16. Interview with Deirdre O’Mahony, 23 January, 2015. 17. See: [ http://www.deirdre-omahony.ie/artworks/1990s/list/57-traces-of-origin.html]. Accessed: 10 Feburary, 2015 18. See: [ http://www.deirdre-omahony.ie/public-art-projects/x-po.html]. Accessed: 11 February, 2015. 19. See: [ http://www.deirdre-omahony.ie/artworks/2000s/list/67-turf.html]. Accessed: 11 February, 2015. 20. SPUD Pamphlet # 2 (2014). See also: [ http://www.deirdre-omahony.ie/public-art- projects/spud.html]. Accessed: 11 February, 2015. 21. For further information on “Home” see: [http://anthonyhaughey.com/projects/home/]. Accessed: 8 February, 2015. 22. Anthony Haughey, The Edge of Europe, 1996, Dublin, Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, 1996. The book contains an essay by Fintan O’Toole, who has remained a supporter of Haughey’s work over the years. He wrote a review of the “Settlement” project in the Irish Times: “Ireland in Ruins: the height of folly, the depths of misery”, 12 November, 2011.
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23. For further information on “Postcards from Mosney” see [ http:// anthonyhaughey.com/projects/postcards-from-mosney/]. Accessed: 8 February, 2015. 24. For further information on “How to be a Model Citizen” see [ http:// anthonyhaughey.com/projects/how-to-be-a-model-citizen/]. Accessed 8 February, 2015. 25. For further information on “Disputed Territory” see [http://anthonyhaughey.com/ projects/disputed-territory/]. Accessed: 8 February, 2015. 26. Anthony Haughey (co-editor), Borderlines, 2007, Dublin, Gallery of Photography. 27. Cian O'Callaghan, C. Boyle, M. Kitchin, “Post-politics, crisis, and Ireland's ‘ghost estates’”, Political Geography, 42, 2014, p. 122. 28. Cian O'Callaghan, “Haunted Landscapes”, Source Photographic Review Issue 65, Winter 2010, Belfast, PhotoWorks North & Gallery of Photography, p. 33. See also, Cian O'Callaghan, M. Boyle, R. Kitchin, op. cit., p. 121-133. 29. In this section, all direct quotation is from the interviews held with O’Mahony (23 January) and Haughey (28 January) unless otherwise attributed. 30. He cites Sekula’s “On the invention of photographic meaning, in photography against the grain”. Halifax, Press of the Nova Scotia College of Arts and Design, 1984, as a work that particularly influenced him. 31. The seminal definition of relational aesthetics is commonly attributed to Nicolas Bourriaud, who defined it as “A set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space”, in Relational Aesthetics, Dijon: Presses du réel 2002, p. 112. Works referenced in the course of interviews with the artists and through their various publications include: C. Bishop (ed.) (2006) “Relational Aesthetics” by Nicolas Bourriaud, in “Participation”, Documents of Contemporary Art, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press; G. Spivak, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of Gayati Chakravorty Spivak, London, Routledge, 1995; J. Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics, New York, London, Continuum, 2004; J.-L. Nancy, “The Inoperative community”, translated by Peter Conor, Vol. 76, University of Minnesota Press, 1991. 32. Zygmunt Bauman, Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers?, Harvard UP, 2009, p. 197. 33. Kester Grant, “Dialogical aesthetics: A critical framework for littoral art”. Varient 9, 1999, 2000. 34. Claire Bishop, “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics”, OCTOBER 110, Fall, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004, p. 52. 35. Jacques Rancière, Aesthetics and its Discontents, Cambridge, Polity, 2005, p. 46. 36. David Levi-Strauss, “The Documentary Debate: Aesthetic Or Anaesthetic? Or, What’s so Funny about Peace, Love, Understanding, and Social Documentary Photography?” Camerawork: A Journal of Photographic Arts 19, 1992, p. 9. 37. Susanne Bosch and Anthony Haughey (eds), STATE, Dublin, Project Press, 2010, p. 10. 38. Roitman, op. cit. 39. Daniel Finn, “Rethinking the Republic: Fintan O’Toole and the Irish Crisis”, New Left Review 90,
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November-December, 2014. Available at: [http://newleftreview.org/II/90/ danielfinnrethinkingtherepublic]. Accessed: 19 January, 2015. 40. Jacques Rancière, Aesthetics and its Discontents, op. cit., p. 60. 41. Rancière, op. cit., p. 60.
ABSTRACTS
The global economic crash of 2008 had a particularly severe impact in Ireland, including on the funding and the practice of the arts. This paper examines contemporary responses to crisis in Ireland as refracted through arts practice. It focuses on the work of two contemporary visual artists, Anthony Haughey and Deirdre O’Mahony, both of whom see ethics and politics as intrinsic to their work. It asks whether some of the underpinning rationales for artist engagement, particularly in the field of relational aesthetics, can empower artists to meet expectations that their work can, or should, be capable of decisive interventions at historical moments of crisis. A related objective is to ground a theoretical understanding of the nature of crisis in the evolution of an artist’s work, to gain some sense of its temporal manifestation in the life-long, everyday practice of making art.
La crise économique mondiale de 2008 a eu un impact particulièrement sévère en Irlande, y compris dans le domaine des arts et de leur financement. Cet article analyse les réactions à cette crise en Irlande par le biais du prisme de la pratique artistique, se concentrant sur le travail de deux artistes visuels contemporains, Anthony Haughey et Deirdre O’Mahony. Tous deux considèrent les questions éthiques et politiques comme faisant partie intégrante de leur œuvre. L’article s'interroge quant à savoir si certains des principes qui sous-tendent l’engagement de l’artiste, notamment dans le domaine de l’esthétique relationnelle, peuvent donner aux artistes les moyens de répondre à l’attente de production d’œuvres qui pourraient ou devraient être des interventions décisives dans des moments de crise historiques. Un objectif complémentaire est d’ancrer une compréhension théorique de la nature même de la crise dans l’évolution de l’œuvre d’un artiste, de saisir sa temporalité dans la pratique quotidienne de celui qui fait œuvre artistique tout au long de sa vie.
INDEX
Mots-clés: arts visuels, rôle social de l'artiste, crise financière, Haughey Anthony, O'Mahony Deirdre, militantisme Keywords: visual arts, social role of the artist, financial crisis, Haughey Anthony, O'Mahony Deirdre, activism
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AUTHOR
PAT COOKE University College Dublin
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Hearth Lessons: Paula Meehan’s Ecofeminist Economics
Amanda Sperry
1 Paula Meehan’s 2009 collection, Painting Rain, is a continuation of a poetic project that runs throughout her work, one that seeks to express an eco-conscious public voice through poetry. She is a globally-oriented, yet community-focused poet with, in her words, “an impulse to express collective memory1”. One of her most prolific critics, Jody Allen Randolph, insightfully places her “at an intersection of counter cultural ideas and Irish lyric tradition” and notes the influences of the American Gary Snyder’s “regard for the natural world” and “his ecological activism” but also Eavan Boland’s feminist engagement with the Irish tradition2. In an interview, Meehan says that Snyder’s liberationist politics “prepared me to hear the powerful arguments that feminism put at my disposal3”. As a female poet from a working-class background, Meehan’s work has continuously viewed her ecologically and communally derived sense of place through the lenses of class and gender to express her own environmentally conscious liberationist aesthetic. Unlike her contemporary, the late vocational poet Dennis O’Driscoll, whose working-class voice is known for engaging economic issues and especially the excesses of Celtic Tiger culture, Meehan’s poetic activism has focused more broadly on historical injustices and social critiques that view social class, gender, and environmental exploitation as intimately connected. Meehan has said, “poetry acts as a lightning rod to earth the energies of the Zeitgeist you are living through4”, and thus Painting Rain is necessarily concerned with conveying the communal sense of loss and displacement leading to the Celtic Tiger’s demise during the 2008 global financial crisis. In an interview I conducted with Meehan about the collection, she makes her economic concerns clear and explains the way she quite literally “grounds” economics through an eco-critical stance. She states: So many of our vulnerable ecosystems were (are still) under threat from mindless turbo development. Late century capitalism run riot. Now that the boom is over and we’ve gone into recession and the government is using taxpayers’ money to bail out the banks, we may have a breathing space to estimate what’s been lost through the unmediated and rampant greed that characterized both planning and building in nineties and noughties Ireland5.
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2 The collection, therefore, engages the economic collapse through Meehan’s environmental and feminist perspectives that allow her poetry to convey social losses accrued during the Celtic Tiger.
3 In addition to Meehan’s own words, this reading of Painting Rain for its eco-feminist economics is indebted to the critical work of Kathryn Kirkpatrick who first examined Meehan’s “Eco-feminist Poetics” in which “the gender, class, and ecological concerns of Meehan’s poems [are] interwoven” and “inseparable6”. She cites Meehan’s “willingness to weave pre-colonial and pre-modern ways of knowing with modern secular rationalism and a socialist politics” as that which lends her poems to ecofeminist readings7. Kirkpatrick also challenges Meehan’s readers to acknowledge “the interconnections between exploitative economic systems, social inequalities, and environmental degradation8”. This challenge can be extended to current economic concerns by focusing on the way Meehan’s work in Painting Rain engages economic rhetoric and popular economic concerns through ecological tropes that counter the cognitive frames offered in newscasts and newspaper headlines as methods for understanding the economic crisis. A cognitive frame is a socially constructed conceptual metaphor that affects the way an individual perceives ideas9. Often the cognitive frames used to explain economic issues draw on environmental and gendered language that promotes objectivist ideologies.
4 The first poem of the collection, “Death of a Field”, acts as a statement for an ecofeminist economic aesthetic that runs throughout the collection. It directly engages one of the most pressing economic issues in Ireland, the excessive housing development that led to a scarred landscape of “ghost estates”, housing developments wherein many of the houses were left only partially constructed and became derelict. The poem also engages the environmental and gendered rhetoric surrounding this issue that affects the way these housing estates are perceived and limits the potential solutions for this massive problem. “Death of a Field” is an anti-pastoral elegy to the loss of a green space that begins when it is transformed into a construction site with a notice posted by the county council that a housing development will be built there. Meehan writes, “The field itself is lost the morning it becomes a site/ When the Notice goes up: Fingal County Council -- 44 houses10”. Already the poem draws attention to construction vocabulary with “site” and “Notice” as well as the impact of linguistic choices. As soon as a written notice labels the space “site” instead of “field" it is “lost”. Approximately halfway through the poem, Meehan writes, “The end of the field as we know it is the start of the estate" (13). The way the space is cognitively processed changes from “field”, open green space, to “estate”, a word that now ironically connotes derelict dwellings rather than grand living spaces. Just as the poem is linguistically constructed, just as the houses are constructed, our relationship to nature is constructed through cultural perceptions. Instead of naturalizing the economic processes of turbo development that results from the very recent change in economic policies that capitalized on the neo-liberal global financial structure, Meehan’s focus on linguistic construction, on naming the green space, draws attention to the constructed nature of the economic system in which the residential development occurs.
5 When housing construction ground to a halt leading to and as a result of the 2008 global financial crisis, journalists began to frame reports on the problem of derelict estates through repeated use of cognitive frames. Headlines in Ireland announced that it was haunted by ghost estates, and major Irish newspapers picked up the language of
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US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s somatic, or body, metaphors about stress testing banks as if they were human heart patients rather than financial institutions doctoring global markets. Much of the language in the texts of these newspaper pieces, however, commonly slipped between ecological and somatic tropes that drew on historical injustices yet maintained equations between land and body. For example, excessive development was often framed as a disease on the land. An opinion writer in The Irish Examiner said that “the country is blighted with unfinished or ‘ghost’ estates and public money is being used to rescue banks and property developers whose recklessness has undermined the economy11”. Noel O’Driscoll in The Kildare Nationalist wrote about the “development bonanza” in Athy and said the town “is a black spot for ghost estates12”. An article in The Irish Times also discussed “the type of ghost estate that blights many Irish towns” in comparison to other countries’ experiences of the global economic crisis13. A search of an international newspaper database of Ireland and the United Kingdom’s newspapers for the three years from 2008 through 2011 returned 482 articles with the phrase “ghost estate”. Of those, approximately ten percent contained the terms “scarred” or “blighted” in reference to the land or included reference to a country stricken by turbo development. Although this vocabulary seems critical of the development problem, their use maintains equations between land and a diseased body.
6 These terms draw on the cultural memory of the years of the potato blight and famine when the land in Ireland could not sustain the Irish people. Framing the contemporary economic crisis through the cultural memory of the Great Famine, through terms that emphasize a diseased body of land, certainly dramatizes the importance of the financial crisis, but it also suggests the political response to the Famine offers solutions for the current crises. For example, Graeme Wearden reports in his “Business Blog” for The Guardian that the financial crisis is the “biggest crisis since the Famine”, and his account of emigration and austerity measures are reminiscent of accounts of Famine Ireland. He writes: The human cost of austerity demanded in return for the bailout has been huge. Around 300,000 people have left the country since 2010, and the unemployment rate has risen over twelve percent. The poster child to Europe’s response to the crisis may be back on its feet, but it will be walking gingerly for some time14.
7 Here the land is a recovering body that has once again been insufficient to meet the needs of the Irish people. A 2012 report from the UCD Geary Institute suggests one reason that the 2008 financial crisis is read in terms of Irish history rather than through the frame of a global financial meltdown. This report concludes that the Irish financial crisis did not result from exposure to complex financial products or to the US sub-prime fallout but is: “a plain vanilla property bubble” caused by a failure to regulate real estate development and is therefore a “home-made” problem influenced by international developments15. Therefore, this great homegrown financial crisis is easily linked to the Great Famine, which was the most devastating economic crisis in Irish history. Many historians of the famine detail laissez-faire policy that exacerbated the effects of the potato blight, and the contemporary crisis has been marked by an ideological affinity for austerity measures that affect the individual Irish citizen by guaranteeing Irish banking debt. Although the comparison between the Great Famine and the contemporary fiscal crisis is an overstatement of the case, the cultural memory of political responses to the famine affects the language used to describe the current
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land crisis of “ghost estates” as an economic land crisis rather than as an effect of a global financial meltdown.
8 In “Death of a Field”, Meehan engages the cognitive frames of the land as an exploitable body, not by critiquing them or offering alternative metaphors, but instead by offering what Kirkpatrick called “the pre-colonial and pre-modern ways of knowing" that change the way the frames are perceived16. At the end of the poem, Meehan presents the land as a body. The speaker wants to “know the field… Through its night dew, it moon-white caul/ Its slick and shine” (14). The dewy field becomes a newborn baby whose “caul”, or amniotic sack, was linked to superstitions of good omens and was thought to be a charm against drowning17. Although, the “slick and shine”, makes the field seem both new and like a newborn, the descriptor of “moon-white” for the caul also gives this metaphor the expanded association with a woman’s white close-fitting cap known by the same term18. The metaphorical frame has multiple layers that allow the association of land and women through the reference to both birth and dress. The primary association to birth draws on pre-modern associations that are receptive to a spiritual dimension, preventing the land from being devalued or valued as a commodity at all.
9 The focus on an alternate form of value occurs when Meehan refers to the field’s “profligacy”, a word that connotes reckless or extravagant spending but also is used to convey “sexual promiscuity” (14)19. In an interview entitled “The Body Politic”, Meehan says that she has learned to value the “historic valence”, or to feel what Pasternak calls “the ghost of each word”, as an “external power” that when combined with the internal “breath work” of the body is the beginning of poetic magic, what Meehan called “the cauldron where the brew starts fermenting20”. The historical valences of “profligacy” change the field’s system of valuation. When the land as body frame is forced to contain both the realm of the pre-modern spiritual experience and the realm of modern rationalism turned irrational consumerism, the cognitive frame provides its own critique. Instead of the profligacy of global capitalism, the field is profligate because it is unknowable. The poetic speaker wants to “know the field/Through the soles of [her] feet”, and yet this attempt would be like trying to know the expansive and spiritual experience she describes as the “million million cycles of being in wing” (14).
10 Whereas capitalism is premised on transcending nature through knowledge that licenses its exploitation as a resource, the field’s value is in its unknowable quality. This quality draws on the language of the land as a body to be valued, but the historical valence of the language and the emphasis on an embodied sense of experiencing the field is a way of knowing that values what is irreducibly Other rather than what is exploitable. The usual purpose of a cognitive frame is to draw on embodied experiences to make an unknowable concept more familiar, yet Meehan transforms a familiar cognitive frame to defamiliarize the field, to convey its mystery. This alternative system of valuation disrupts the way in which the land as body metaphor serves to naturalize a system of exploitation. Throughout Meehan’s work Kirkpatrick claims Meehan refuses the binary of nature and culture that places nature in a separate and subordinate position and instead “represent[s] the human and nonhuman in intimate relation, sustained, paradoxically, by a tension between the known and the unknowable21”.
11 In addition to “Death of a Field", poems in Painting Rain mourn fields as animistic Others lost to construction projects. “Not Weeding" mourns a “back field” that becomes
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a “building site” (15). The weeds of the former field are personified as “refugees” and “former sworn enemies" that have become “cherished guests” and “emissaries of the wild” (15). Meehan mourns “The Mushroom Field” located “at the edge of the estate" and its floral resident, “hawthorn”, contrasts with its new residents, “a ten storey apartment block/ and a shopping centre” (87). In “Death of a Field”, Meehan clearly states that “the memory of the field disappears with its flora” (13). The personification of flora, “the yearning of the yarrow" and “the plight of the scarlet pimpernel”, juxtaposed with the naturalization of the human endeavors, “the site to be planted with houses” that becomes a “Nest of sorrow and chemical”, (13, emphasis added) creates the sense of intimate relation between the human and nonhuman. This intimacy disrupts the traditional separation of nature and culture and therefore places into question nature’s subordination as an exploitable commodity.
12 After Ireland’s economic crash, Meehan was to be found at the Occupy Dame Street movement to add her physical protest to her poetic ones. Like Occupy Wall Street in the US, protestors expressed anger about class stratification and specifically the government’s rescue of banks at the expense of working class taxpayers through the implementation of budgetary austerity measures. The protest was organized through Facebook and Twitter to establish an encampment outside the Central Bank in Dublin on Dame Street. An RTE News report on the movement’s goals stated: The protesters say they want the EU and the IMF to “stay out of Ireland’s affairs”; an end to the burden of private debt on the people of Ireland; the return of ownership of Ireland’s oil and gas reserves to the people of Ireland; and for ‘real participatory democracy’22.
13 Meehan’s Facebook page, curated by Jody Allen Randolph, contains a Vimeo clip of Meehan at Occupy Dame Street, supporting the cause through her celebrity. The post dated December 8, 2011 shows Meehan and Irish folk singer Christy Moore at Occupy Dame Street in which Moore expressed solidarity with the international Occupy Movement occurring throughout the Republic23.
14 In addition to her physical presence, Meehan has lent her artistic celebrity to the Occupy movement. A website entitled occupiedchicagotribune.org, created to support the Occupy movement in Chicago, reports in a newsletter on artists’ participation that Paula Meehan wrote a poem entitled “Occupy Language” to be posted on their website24. She later read the poem on an RTE television program entitled The Works. The poem explores what it means to “occupy” something. The repetition of the imperative to “occupy language”, or “occupy Spring”, or to “occupy love” expresses a consciousness of experience, or a truthfulness, suggested in the first lines of the poem25. Meehan writes: “The word ‘truth’ glistening like a new born leveret in its form. Occupy language26.” As in the poems of Painting Rain, this experience is tied to the natural world, here a young rabbit in its nest. Occupying language is a conscious task and yet Meehan suggests a non-rational spiritual quality through natural imagery that she describes as “truth.” As with the Occupy movement itself, Meehan occupies language for justice. After her command to “Occupy language”, she writes of “the word justice, the scales of a rare beast rumored extinct”, and she alludes to other movements for social justice including the Arab Spring through her command to “Occupy. Occupy Spring if you dare. The mocking sap is arising. Refuseniks Spring that occupies us27”. Meehan sees the Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring through an appreciation of the spirit of the “refusenik”, a protestor who refuses to obey the law28. Meehan also suggests a pre-modern spiritualism that provides a sense of universal inclusion through
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an allusion to William Blake’s “the Eye altering alters all” when she writes: “The mind which alters, altering all29.” The allusion to spirituality and the natural imagery convey a sense of power and an optimistic inevitability for the social justice movements. This global experience happens/occurs for Meehan when we “occupy language. Reclaim the words30”. The poem’s distribution through the website and popular television show attests to Meehan’s desire to engage with and facilitate the social justice protests through media activism in a way that renews the power of words such as “truth” and “justice”.
15 In Painting Rain economic issues about protest or historical and systemic critiques are not ancillary to the more biographical poems that mourn the loss of family or remembrances of childhood. Economic concerns are embedded in many of those moments as well. In “Hearth Lesson” economic issues are central to family tensions. The colloquialisms “money to burn, burning a hole in your pocket” trigger childhood memories of parental discord (85). Meehan writes, “Even then I can tell it was money,/ the lack of it day after day,/at root of the bitter words” (p. 85). A poem about a visit to the seaside mourns the Celtic Tiger and its “dream/ of empire – dissolved, wrecked. Gone badly wrong” (24). A poem about Aunt Cora on the edge of death includes the memory of her emigration to London for better economic opportunity (38-40). Memories of Uncle Peter include the poet’s younger self described as “all prickles and class anger” (41-44). Other anecdotal poems, like “Note from the Puzzle Factory”. include economic references such as a person that checked herself in to a mental facility after she “went to the limit on Visa” (58). In “A Change of Life”. a poem about what a poet must know in order to write poetry, the speaker writes of a people “Enslaved by money and the lure of power… This new fever has a grip on the island/ and everyone wants, wants, wants” (62-63). Not only are the public poems about economic anxieties, but Meehan’s sense of her own poetic identity is intertwined with such anxieties.
16 In the sequence “Troika”, Meehan explores the level to which economic issues that stem from class and gender oppression, and the objectivist ideologies that underpin them, have shaped her poetic engagement with language. The title of the section, “Troika”, has become synonymous with Ireland’s economic troubles. According to The Financial Times, “Troika”, came to prominence as a term used to describe the European Commission of the EU, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, the three international bodies that funded Ireland’s banking bailout in 2010, and the term rose to popularity during the Occupy Dame Street Movement. Nigel Farage, a UK member of the European Commission, began using the term in a derogatory manner with regards to the EU, ECB, and IMF financial engagement with Greece31. The term now culturally resonates within the context of the financial crisis vocabulary after the plethora of newspaper headlines covering the impact of the austerity measures and Ireland’s fulfillment of the agreement on December 15, 2013. Meehan’s composition of the poem predates the term’s use to refer to the EU-ECB-IMF engagement with the debt crisis. However, her use of the term reflects the same concerns about sovereignty and, more broadly, power relationships in economic activity that disproportionately affect vulnerable populations. Leading up to the Lisbon Treaty vote in 2009, which allowed Ireland to accept the Troika’s funds, much of the opposition to the vote concerned whether Ireland would still be a sovereign nation and how much control it would cede to international political bodies. Irish voters initially rejected the Treaty at the height of the economic crisis because of these fears, but the Treaty was ratified in 2009 after
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an extensive advertising campaign about the government’s desperate need to recapitalize the banks32. In the October 31, 2013 Belfast Telegraph report, Labour TD Kevin Humphreys saw the end of the Troika program as a recuperation of national sovereignty. Humphreys stated: “When the Troika goes, they are gone for good, and we will get our independence and our sovereignty back33.” In Meehan’s poem, the term captures the connotation of political power, and the experience of class and gender oppression experienced within that system in the context of her childhood.
17 In the first section, the speaker’s discovery of rhyme coincides with her family’s eviction from a housing complex. Meehan writes, “my father had done a deal with a man/ key money down on a house/ in Bargy Road, East Wall,/an illegal corporation tenancy” (74). This ill-advised transaction was necessary in an age of “no work, no roof,/no hope” (74). The poem describes the receipt of “the Eviction notice./Some neighbour had ratted us out” and goes on to detail how the children “came home from school to bailiffs/boarding up the windows, to all/we had on show in the garden,/ paltry in the dying light” (75). Although the phrase echoes Dylan Thomas raging into the dying light, Meehan presents an image of resignation. The family’s mattress “with its shaming stain/nearly the shape of Ireland” makes this domestic plight a part of a larger national crisis in the face of which they are powerless (75). The eviction and the class oppression it represents seem to be accepted or at least expected as just the way things are in the historical moment.
18 The moment of rhyme derives from the chickens the family cared for in exchange for illegally renting the house. As the family chases the chickens, Meehan writes, “the winter stars come out and/ feathers like some angelic benison/ settl[ed] kindly on all that we owned” (75). Here rhyme is a metonym for poetry and the poetic moment when the plight of the chickens reflects the plight of the family roused from their roost. This perception of rhyme calls forth Heaney’s Sophocles translation that draws on Vaclav Havel’s definition of hope. Heaney writes: “But then, once in a lifetime/the longed-for tidal wave/Of justice can rise up./And hope and history rhyme34.” For Heaney and Meehan, rhyme is the historical condition reflected through immediate human circumstance. The aesthetic quality of the feathers makes problematic the sharp divide of the chicken between economic object and artistic subject when it reflects the family’s class position. Nicole Shukin argues that the animal sign, like the racial sign, can be read as a site of what Homi Bhabha terms “productive ambivalence” that enables “vacillations between economic and symbolic logics of power”. The animal as a commodity fetish “represents the simultaneous play between metaphor as substitution (masking absence and difference) and metonymy (which contiguously registers the perceived lack)35”. The feathers settling on the possessions of the evicted family at once affirm the poor working class family as a part of an aesthetically created whole that attempts to register the condition of the working class and yet highlights the family’s lack of work and shelter.
19 Meehan rhymes the plights of the working class with the treatment of animals and sees both as aligned with “object” in the subject/object binary, an objectification essential to the capitalist economy. Kirkpatrick writes Meehan “explore[s] and challenge[s] the binary oppositions informing sexism, classism, and speciesism. Indeed, the degraded terms on which systems of cultural dominance rely – woman, working-class, and animal – are reclaimed and valued in her poems36”. Meehan signals this value by juxtaposing the commodity with spirituality. The chicken becomes an “angelic
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benison” or blessing like the field manifested as a spiritual experience, and in that way becomes more than a product to be consumed. Cultural critic Teresa Brennan writes that the Marxist argument is that “Profit depends on the difference a living subject makes to a dead object37”. Brennan goes on to argue that a critique of subject/object distinction as it relates to the economy begins in ecological and environmental writings that reveal humans are not the only subjects adding energy or labor to the economic system, and in treating nature and the animal kingdom as dead objects instead of producers of energy for the economic system, class conscious economic critiques often reinforce the objectivist ideology crucial to maintaining class oppression38. Meehan’s poetic expression of class conscious critique avoids an objectivist ideology through a spiritual quality that recognizes difference, perceives similarity, and therefore prevents a collapse into the subject/object binary39.
20 Michel Foucault proposed that dominant tropes determine the episteme of an age because they determine how and what we know. Meehan’s ecofeminist aesthetic manipulates these cognitive frames to make speaking subjects of exploited objects. Her fields and plants become archives of a way of living that values non-rational experience in order to disrupt the capitalist cycle of knowledge as the power to commodify. During the Celtic Tiger, Meehan’s discontent with the various forms of oppression it exacerbated appeared within poetry that sought to renew language in support of social justice activism. Instead of creating a binary between political activism and creativity, Meehan’s poetry, according to Randolph, shows that the “communal and creative can coexist, with neither limiting the other40”.
NOTES
1. Jody Allen Randolph, “The Body Politic: A Conversation with Paula Meehan”, An Sionnach 5.1-2 (2009), p. 260. 2. Jody Allen Randolph, “Text and Context: Paula Meehan”, An Sionnach 5.1-2 (2009), p. 7. 3. qtd. in Jody Allen Randolph, “Text and Context: Paula Meehan”, p. 10. 4. Rip Van Winkle, “Paula Meehan”. Scottish Poetry Library Podcast, August 2013, [http://scottishpoetrylibrary.podomatic.com/entry/2013-09-03T22_00_00-07_00]. 5. Amanda Sperry, “An Interview with Paula Meehan”, Wake Forest University Press, November 2008, [http://wfupress.wfu.edu/an-interview-with-paula-meehan/]. 6. Kathryn Kirkpatrick, “Paula Meehan’s Gardens”. New Hibernia Review 17.2 (Summer 2013), p. 45. 7. Kathryn Kirkpatrick, “Between Country and City: Paula Meehan’s Ecofeminist Poetics”, Out of the Earth: Ecocritical Readings of Irish Texts, Ed. Christine Cusick (Cork, Cork U P, 2010), p. 111. 8. Kathryn Kirkpatrick, “Paula Meehan’s Gardens”, p. 45.
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9. Alan Cienki, “Frames, Idealized Cognitive Models, and Domains”, Cognitive Linguistics, Eds. Derk Geeraerts and Hubert Cuyckens, Oxford, Oxford U P, 2007, p. 179. 10. Paula Meehan, Painting Rain, Winston-Salem, NC, Wake Forest UP, 2009, 13. Subsequent references appear in parentheses in the text. 11. “Ghost Estates--Don’t Knock Them Down”, The Irish Examiner, April 15, 2010. 12. Noel O’Driscoll, “Athy is a Blackspot for Ghost Estates”, The Kildare Nationalist, August 9, 2011. 13. Jamie Smyth, “‘Perfect Storm’ Rages in Lativia”, The Irish Times, September 24, 2010. 14. Graeme Wearden, “Ireland Prepares to Exit Bailout After ‘Biggest Crisis Since the Famine’”, Business Blog, The Guardian, December 13, 2013. [http://www.theguardian.com/ business/2013/dec/13/ireland-prepares-to-exit-bailout-business-live]. 15. UCD Geary Institute, “Crisis in the Irish Banking System”, Discussion Paper Series No. 3, Februrary 2012, p.5-6. 16. Kathryn Kirkpatrick, “Between Country and City: Paula Meehan’s Ecofeminist Poetics”, p. 111. 17. “Caul, n.1” OED Online, September 2014, Oxford University Press. 18. Ibid. 19. “Profligacy, n.” OED Online. September 2014. Oxford University Press. 20. Jody Allen Randolph, “The Body Politic: A Conversation with Paula Meehan”, p. 251. 21. Kathryn Kirkpatrick, “Between Country and City: Paula Meehan’s Ecofeminist Poetics”, p. 112. 22. “No Plans to End ‘Occupy Dame Street’ Protests”. RTÈ News, October 11, 2011. [http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/1011/307260-damestreet/]. 23. Paula Meehan’s Facebook page, curated by Jody Allen Randolph, December 8, 2011, accessed August 11, 2014. Link to video: [http://vimeo.com/33322018]. 24. Occupied Chicago Tribune claims, “Poet Paula Meehan’s ‘#Occupy Language’, a mesmerizing work from Occupy Dame Street, is available exclusively on the Occupied Chicago Tribune’s website.” See Occupied Chicago Tribune, “Revolution in Bloom: Occupy Chicago Launches Arts Collective”. March 2012, www.occupiedchichagotribune.org. 25. Paula Meehan, “Occupy Language”. The Works, season 1, episode 1; aired January 26, 2012 on RTÉ One. 26. Ibid. The text quoted is my transcription of a video recording. 27. Ibid. 28. “refusenik, n.”, OED Online, September 2014, Oxford University Press. 29. William Blake, “The Mental Traveller”, The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake ”, Ed. David V. Erdman (Berkeley: U of California P, 1982) 485. Paula Meehan, “Occupy Language”. 30. Paula Meehan, “Occupy Language”. 31. “Farage: EU-ECB-IMF Troika Driving Greece Towards Violent Revolution”. YouTube video, 1:52, from a speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg on February 15, 2012, posted by “UKIP MEPs”. February 15, 2012, [https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=vd6EC-BJIaI].
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32. This campaign included Seamus Heaney. See Henry McDonald, “Seamus Heaney Launches Fierce Attack on Irish Opponents of Lisbon Treaty”. The Observer, September 12, 2009, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/13/seamus-heaney-ireland-lisbon- referendum]. 33. “Troika ‘Optimistic’ About Future”. The Belfast Telegraph, October 31, 2013. [http:// www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/republic-of-ireland/troika-optimistic-about- future-29715872.html]. 34. Seamus Heaney, The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes, New York, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1991, p. 77. In an interview Heaney states about the quoted lines, “I quoted with great pleasure Vaclav Havel on hope. His view is that it’s not optimism but it’s something worth working for.” See Jenny McCartney, “Seamus Heaney: He’s Seen It All”. The Telegraph, September 9, 2007, [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ culture/3667813/Seamus-Heaney-Hes-seen-it-all.html]. See Vaclav Havel, Disturing the Peace: A Conversation with Karel Hvizdala, Trans. Paul Wilson, London, Faber, 1990. 35. Nicole Shukin, Animal Capital: Rendering Life in Biopolitical Times, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota press, 2009. Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture, New York, Routledge, 1990, p. 74-75. 36. Kathryn Kirkpatrick, “Between Country and City: Paula Meehan’s Ecofeminist Poetics”, p. 118. 37. Teresa Brennan, “Why the Time is Out of Joint: Marx’s Political Economy without the Subject”. Strategies for Theory: From Mark to Madonna, Ed. R. L. Rutskey and Bradley J. MacDonald (Albany, NY, State University of New York P, 2003), p. 25. 38. Ibid., p. 26. 39. Sherryl Vint, Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal (Liverpool, Liverpool U P, 2010), p. 204. A collapse into the subject/object binary normally occurs for the animal when the animal is treated only as a commodity. This treatment is common with animals such as chickens that become only the next meal rather than living creatures to be treated with dignity. 40. Jody Allen Randolph, “Text and Context: Paula Meehan”, p. 13.
ABSTRACTS
Paula Meehan’s Painting Rain conveys the socio-cultural impacts of the Celtic Tiger’s collapse through an eco-feminist framework. Within this framework, environmental, gender, and class inequities are intimately intertwined. The poetry conveys a pre-modern non-rationalism that disrupts the alignment of land, women, and the working class as objectified terms of binaries. Whereas patriarchal capitalism is premised on transcending nature through knowledge that licenses its exploitation, Meehan’s ecological tropes present nature as an irreducible Other to be appreciated through an embodied experience rather than being rationally known and commodified. Her descriptions of embodied experiences are premised upon the same land as body equation prevalent in news media descriptions of economic catastrophe, but her poetry
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presents tropes that counter the reductive economic clichés of journalism. While Meehan engaged in political protest at the Occupy Dame Street movement, she presented a collection of poetry that also resists any perceived divide between art and activism.
Le recueil Painting Rain de Paula Meehan traduit l’impact socio-culturel de l’effondrement du Tigre celtique par le biais d’un cadre théorique éco-féministe. À l’intérieur de ce cadre, les inégalités de genre, de classe et d’environnement sont intimement liées. Sa poésie évoque un non-rationalisme pré-moderne qui remet en cause l’équation terre, femme et classe laborieuse en tant qu’éléments objectivés d’oppositions binaires. Alors que le capitalisme patriarcal est fondé sur la transcendance de la nature par un savoir qui en justifie l’exploitation, les tropes écologiques de Meehan présentent la nature comme un Autre irréductible ; elle peut être appréciée par une expérience sensible mais pas connue rationnellement ou transformée en produit de consommation. Ses descriptions d’expériences sensibles s’appuient sur la même équation entre terre et corps qui domine les descriptions médiatiques de la catastrophe économique, mais la poésie de Meehan offre des images qui battent en brèche les clichés économiques réducteurs des journalistes. Alors qu’elle s’impliquait dans le mouvement de protestation Occupy Dame Street elle a produit un recueil qui résiste aussi à toute division entre art et activisme.
INDEX
Mots-clés: Meehan Paula, poésie, Tigre celtique, crise financière, féminisme et post-féminisme, rôle social de l'artiste, militantisme, Occupy Dame Street Keywords: Meehan Paula, poetry, activism, Celtic Tiger, feminism and post-feminism, financial crisis, social role of the artist, Occupy Dame Street
AUTHOR
AMANDA SPERRY Georgia State University
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Tigre celtique et roman « gothique » : Claire Kilroy, The Devil I know
Claude Fierobe
1 Un tableau – Girl in the Mirror – dans All Summer (2003), un violon dans Tenderwire (2006), peinture et musique donc, deux façons proches l’une de l’autre de sonder le mystère de l’identité, singulièrement de l’identité féminine, tout en évoquant les profondeurs troublantes de la mémoire incertaine. En 2009, dans All Names Have Been Changed, Claire Kilroy aborde un autre domaine, celui de la création littéraire, en donnant la parole à un narrateur masculin, Declan étudiant en « creative writing » à Trinity College. Comme All Summer, The Devil I Know (2012) est une longue confession. D’un genre particulier, elle prend la forme du témoignage de Tristram Saint Laurence, durant ses dix jours de comparution devant un tribunal de Dublin. Double écho de Sterne: d’abord le nom du héros bien sûr, et ensuite le rythme de la composition du livre où figurent, comme dans Tristram Shandy, des chapitres très brefs, réduits parfois à une seule phrase, voire un seul mot (« The Viking », 279). The Devil I Know, roman de Dublin – il y en a beaucoup de Joyce à Neil Jordan ou Sean O’Reilly – est une évocation pleine de bruit et de fureur des méfaits du Tigre celtique, animal un temps domestiqué, retourné à l’état sauvage. Si l’économie est devenue folle, elle n’est que la face visible d’une terrible réalité, d’un désastre qui concerne à la fois le sort des hommes sur cette terre et le salut de leur âme dans l’au-delà. Une épigraphe empruntée au début de Finnegans Wake nous entraîne vers Howth Castle, modèle de Hilltop, propriété que Tristram tient de sa mère.
A Glimpse of Paradise
2 Au commencement le paradis.1 Il est là, à portée de la main. Un paysage à couper le souffle :
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The truck ascended past ponied meadows and heathered slopes until the road crested and Dublin Bay appeared below, broad and smooth and greyish blue, patrolled by the Baily lighthouse. The whitethorn was in full blossom and the ferns were pushing through. (16)
3 Aucun doute sur ce qui s’offre aux yeux de Tristram le narrateur et de son ami – ami, vraiment ? – Hickey le promoteur : l’Irlande dans toute la beauté d’une nature intacte. Mais voilà, l’enchantement est balayé par quelques phrases rageuses :
Better to have been born somewhere dismal, I sometimes think. Better to have grown up shielded from striking natural beauty, to have never caught that glimpse of Paradise in the first place only to find yourself sentenced to spending the rest of your life pining for it. (16)
4 On ne saurait être plus clair : le paradis est perdu et il n’a pas été retrouvé. Ce qui nous attend est bien le récit d’une condamnation (« sentenced »), un récit placé sous l’égide de la morale. Car une faute a été commise, dont un aperçu nous est donné dans la même page :
Hickey loaded me into his labourer’s truck along with the rest of the junk he’d accumulated – Coke cans and crisp packets, chocolate wrappers and Lotto tickets, rolled up Daily Stars. (15)
5 Tristram découvre le paysage depuis ce pick-up crasseux où Hickey passe une bonne partie de son temps. Concentré d’une modernité pervertie, l’univers de Hickey est celui de la consommation, du jeu, des media, et des déchets : « He cleared the passenger seat of debris with a swipe of the hand. » (15) Un univers contre nature : « I rolled the window up to seal the beauty out. » (16) Tristram se cramponne à une lueur d’espoir, mais ce n’est qu’une illusion fugace – « for a moment » – : « The sun and sea, the harbour and the islands, the horses and the gorses […] Not a precious thing had changed. » (17) Pour dire vrai, tout a déjà changé et tout va encore changer. Demeure l’apparence d’une plaisante ruralité :
Windgate road still retained the leafy air of a country lane […] Verges of cow parsley, honeysuckle, buttercups […] The bluebells were still in blossom, thousands of them lining the forest floor. (42)
6 Mais tout n’est que leurre, le mal est déjà fait : « A country lane punctuated by ten-foot high electronic security gates […] » (42) Ce mal va s’étendre, le promoteur a estimé d’un coup d’oeil le nombre de constructions possibles, et la nature ne représente que la plus-value qu’elle apporte : « Retain the mature trees, obviously, or a few of them at least. Mature trees sold a development. » (42)
7 Alors s’établit nettement au-dessus de la baie de Dublin une frontière entre deux domaines distincts, celui du paysage originel et celui d’une urbanisation caricaturale à l’image des nouvelles résidences des parvenus et de leurs palmiers, à l’image donc du « ranch » de Hickey :
Hickey had built a mock-colonial ranch on the side of the East Mountain. A row of floodlit palm trees delineated the end of nature’s
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dominion over the moors and the beginning of the reign of the developer. (211)
8 Monde nouveau où le faucon crécerelle ne songe pas à s’aventurer, se contentant de voler « beyond Hickey’s boundary. » (216) Reste qu’en compagnie d’Edel, la femme de Hickey qui deviendra sa maîtresse, Tristram a encore tout loisir de contempler la mer argentée à peine ridée par une brise légère : « “It looks as if you could walk on it”, Edel said. » (218) Mais le temps des miracles est bien passé et le pire est à venir. Il est annoncé malicieusement, dans ce texte qui ne manque jamais de causticité, par une présence insolite a priori, celle d’une pomme qui roule dans le tableau de bord du pick- up. La pomme, symbole de la chute : elle dégringole en effet, et Tristram la dépose dans l’emplacement du frein à main.
9 Elle annonce sur le mode mineur ce qui est sans doute la scène la plus terrible de tout le livre : le barbecue. En majeur, cette fois-ci, le martyre de la nature. Hickey a invité Tristram, et bien sûr les membres du Cercle d’Or et autres nouveaux riches, tous arrivés en hélicoptères ou en limousines noires – « Money kills the imagination » (212). Le barbecue donc, morceau de bravoure littéraire, véritable exemplum, métaphore terrifiante de la folie qui a saisi l’Irlande du boom économique. Hickey est fier d’apporter les homards, heureux de parader : « I caught these lads meself this morning […] Fresh from Balscadden bay. Thought we’d give them a lash on the barbie! » (214) Son fils a déjà essayé de crever l’œil d’un des crustacés, Hickey va les jeter vivants sur le grill. Pays saccagé, animaux torturés. S’ils s’échappent, le Viking, autre profiteur du système, les écrase d’un coup de talon avant de les remettre à cuire : « Their various pairs of legs extended and retracted until they finally expired. » (215) Après la mise à mort, la dévoration, c’est Hunger qui se précipite pour être le premier, Hunger ainsi nommé pour avoir fait fortune en s’appropriant les affaires les plus juteuses venues devant les tribunaux depuis les années 1990, Hunger qui mange à tous les rateliers : « Don’t tell me you didn’t know he was working for the other team too? » (215) L’antenne du crustacé bouge encore ? Hunger la fourre dans sa bouche : « It’s dead now. » (216). La digestion sera plus difficile. Le homard est démembré alors qu’il n’est pas encore mort, comme est démembrée l’Irlande livrée à l’appétit insatiable des spéculateurs. Comme est troué, percé, éviscéré, un territoire vivant, sorte de prélude à une exécution définitive que la crise a au moins le mérite d’annuler, à moins qu’un accès de fièvre ne surgisse à nouveau. Repas de sauvages, retour à la barbarie.
10 Une campagne violée, à l’image des animaux en proie à l’avidité des rapaces humains, autoproclamés Cercle d’Or. Ce thème animal, Claire Kilroy n’est pas la seule à s’en emparer. Avant elle Dermot Bolger (Night Shift), John McGahern (« Creatures of the Earth »), Keith Ridgeway (Animals), avaient, chacun à sa façon, stigmatisé l’inconduite des hommes à l’égard des bêtes. Mais il n’y a pas que la cruauté évidente, il y a la négligence coupable qui prépare sournoisement la catastrophe, ou plutôt qui en est le signe annonciateur. Ainsi se trouvent mis en parallèle deux abandons, l’un renvoyant à l’autre par un procédé d’osmose douce qui contraste singulièrement avec la cruauté de la scène du barbecue. Le passage imprévu de Tristram à Dublin se transforme en un séjour qui est lui-même un retour aux origines. Hickey le tentateur est à l’œuvre : « I hoped he wasn’t bringing me where I thought he was. And then he did. » (42) Le voici, ce lieu redouté : « Hickey pulled in at the old stone gate pillars. The name of the house was barely legible. “Hilltop” it read beneath the clusters of lichen. » (42) Hilltop, objet des convoitises du promoteur. Ainsi se noue un faisceau sémantique fort et ordonné, né d’une conjonction
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de plusieurs éléments du roman : l’alcoolisme de Tristram, son origine sociale, l’abandon de la propriété et celui du poney. L’innocence de l’enfance est perdue.
11 Nous voici en terrain familier. Tristram St Lawrence est le descendant d’une grande famille anglo-normande et Hilltop, la « big house » où s’est déroulée son enfance heureuse. Il est cet Absentee de la tradition qui revient au pays, visite le domaine qu’il a délaissé avant de le livrer au délire spéculatif. Structure romanesque récurrente depuis le XIXe siècle, quasi-cliché : Claire Kilroy utilise et actualise un schéma connu. Elle insiste : « Like the gate, it [the front door] was sagging on its hinges, as if the departure of the family home had caused Hilltop to slump in dejection. » (43) Le parc n’a jamais été entretenu, il est envahi par une végétation folle – « The rhododendrons bushes had bolted the size of caravans, and what had once been the lower lawn was now a drift of ferns » (46) – le bois des barrières est vermoulu, la peinture est écaillée. Et puis il y a Prince, le poney, le compagnon adoré des jeux de jadis, abandonné à son sort depuis des années, apparition irréelle, comme un reproche vivant, si peu vivant, jeté à la face du promoteur, indifférent – « It’s only a moth-eaten oul pony », – et du proprétaire ému jusqu’aux larmes – « A tear was rolling down my cheek » (50) – : « His back was a knuckled ridge of spine and his hips propped up his hindquarters like tent poles. » (49) La mort est au rendez-vous : « Animals must know when they are finished. They may not undestand death, as such, only that the world had left them behind, that it is time to lie down. » (50) Comble d’ironie, c’est « le méchant homme » (« the bad man », 50) qui offre au pauvre animal la pomme du tableau de bord, symbole équivoque où se mêlent compassion et châtiment. Prince sera mis à mort (on dit euthanasié, n’est-ce pas ?) expulsé du jardin d’Eden, « Life was simpler then » (46) sans avoir compris de quoi on l’accusait : « I fear that every blessed thing on this earth is cursed with the capacity to wander at its predicament – Prince was left wondering what he’d done wrong. » (49)
12 Prémonitoire, un coup de tonnerre clôt cette évocation d’un paradis perdu : « A dry crack of thunder warped the air followed by a second flash of ligtning. » (51) Attention : ce qui est dit des animaux vaut pour les hommes qui grouillent dans l’immense excavation du chantier :
At the bottom of the pit was a whole civilisation. Machinery, lights, materials, tools. And men. There were a rake of them down there. Miniature men grubbing about in the dirt like the creatures exposed when you lifted a rock. (163)
13 Écho à peine voilé de la visite du parc à l’abandon : « I lifted one of the showjumping poles and panicked woodlice scurried down its length. The grass underneath was moulded into a curd-white channel speckled with slugs. » (46)
I want to make a big splash
14 Certes Tristram pleure sur ses terres désolées et sur le poney moribond. Malheureusement, il n’en reste pas là. Par sa passivité – il se laisse instrumentaliser par Deauville qui en fait une sorte d’homme de paille à demi consentant, privé de réelle lucidité, il se laisse emporter par Hickey, littéralement, dans sa voiture, vers sa perte – il s’abandonne au délire spéculatif qui s’est emparé des milieux d’affaires. Les Irlandais s’aveuglent à la beauté de l’Irlande, se retournent vers celle qui les a nourris pour la dévorer, inversant la célèbre formule de Joyce : « Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow
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».2 Il y a bien pour Tristram un retour aux origines : « I consulted my watch and it said that the time was early summer and that I was a boy of eighteen again, no damage done. » (18) Pure illusion cependant, car le chaos menace. Chaos intérieur d’abord qui mène son assaut sur le point faible de Tristram : l’alcoolisme qu’il a tenté de fuir d’un continent à l’autre, d’un hémisphère à l’autre. Torturé par le manque, Tristram n’évite la récidive que par un appel du mystérieux Deauville qui envoie un taxi le soustraire à la tentation en l’emportant vers une réunion des Alcooliques Anonymes. Hickey l’avait entraîné vers The Summit, le pub fréquenté jadis, où s’ouvrent les portes d’un enfer à l’odeur irrésistible, celle de la bière brune, invitation pressante, quasi irrésistible, à sombrer dans « un puits d’obscurité » :
We waited for the tumult within the glasses to settle, the chaos that miraculously resolves itself into a well of black topped by a head of cream – a trick, a cruel trick – it never resolves, but lapses back into chaos the second you swallow it. A chaos so calamitous that you don’t know where to turn to escape it, but by then it is too late. The chaos is inside you. That is the nature of a pint. (21)
15 À la menace toujours présente mais encore virtuelle de ce chaos intérieur correspond la réalité terrifiante de l’incroyable dérèglement qui a submergé l’Irlande. Mépris des règles dont l’artisan en est le bien nommé ministre Ray Lawless, « A rain-coloured man with rain-coloured hair and rain-tinted glasses on his nose. » (109) Sans foi ni loi, il est d’une cupidité sans limite, et surtout ne vous méprenez pas sur le sens de son prénom :
He was not ray as in a sunbeam, but ray as in the fish, that ugly fish with its mournful face the colour of a mushroom. Ray the bottom feeder. Steadily making its way along the ocean bed, ingesting the tiny creatures that strayed across its path, never hungry, never full […] (113)
16 Autre prédateur, Hickey, celui qui répète à l’envi : « I want to make a big splash » (181). Le saccage peut commencer. En mode mineur d’abord. Son pick-up dévale à travers le parc : « The truck slewed sideways across the sodden lawn, spraying mud like a slurry spreader […] What had been a meadow of butterflies and wildflowers was now a ploughed field. » (54)
17 Hickey est homme de terrain, ne dit-on pas qu’il est « physically adapted to the muck. » ? Certes, mais pas seulement. Il est homme et bête à la fois, et son hybridité en fait une créature redoutable dans la société contemporaine :
[…] so he was not a man but something hybrid, something wolfish, something that wore its pelt on the inside3, because they were a new breed, weren’t they, these developers. (188)
18 L’animalité du personnage est soulignée à maintes reprises. Il est un chien : « Hickey drove as a dog might, with some part of his anatomy – his elbow or sometimes his head – shoved out the window » (41) ; un loup : « He flashed me a wolfish smile » (41) ; un taureau : « He went at everything in that manner : bullishly […] » (44) ; une bête féroce : « Hickey bared his teeth at me, the enamel gleaming through his black beard like bone exposed in a wound. » (213) Tel une divinité nouvelle il trône au milieu de son chantier « a god admiring his handiwork from the heavens, picking out which bit he might like to toy with nex ». (119) En
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effet, il peut tout saisir dans sa main. Sa tête est pleine de « plastic models » qui caractérisent sa relation au monde : « He had reduced it in scale to a size that was manageable, malleable, an entity he could carve and sell. » (119)
19 Voilà l’homme, si peu humain, qui sert le noir dessein de Deauville, soumettre entièrement l’Irlande à l’appât du gain, la contraindre à perdre sa raison et son âme : « Money disrupts the cognitive process. It guns electrodes to your skull and scrambles your brains. » (72) La fièvre qui saisit Tristram et Hickey n’est que l’image d’un délire collectif, œuvre du démon qui se retirera, si on peut dire, affaire faite. Collectif oui, les personnages ayant perdu leur identité et, comme dans les romans de Dickens4, étant devenus interchangeables : « They were all the same. Boyler, Coyler, Doyler, sitting there, sharpening their knives. » (231)
20 Claire Kilroy force le trait jusqu’à la caricature, preuve de sa réaction d’horreur en face d’un désastre dont elle multiplie les signes prémonitoires au premier rang desquels figure la « mort » de Tristram dans un hôpital de Bruxelles (somnifères et alcool) : « The registrar informed me that my heart had stopped beating. » (82) Comme Tristram, l’Irlande meurt : comme lui ne reviendra-t-elle d’entre les morts que pour mieux perdre son âme ?
21 À la protestation navrée de Tristram – « You’ve destroyed my lawn » – la réponse de Hickey donne le ton : « “I’l get you a new one” […] “I am about to make you a rich man.” » (55) Après, il lance ses machines à l’assaut du domaine et bien vite un cratère se creuse « as if a meteorite had struck. » (163) Pour Hickey, c’est un trou aux dimensions de son ambition, mais Tristram a conservé sa lucidité dans la fièvre générale – « Everybody sees different things when looking into an abyss. I see more than most » (164) – et s’il répugne à se confier c’est en raison de sa marginalité, de son incapacité à se joindre à l’euphorie dominante, quasiment érigée en règle de vie par le Taoiseach lui-même :
How could I have confessed my gut feeling to M. Deauville? That Hickey was digging us into a big hole. That across the country people were digging themselves into big holes, that big holes were spreading across Ireland like the pox, eating away at the heart of the island. (164)
22 La spéculation est une gigantesque arnaque, et l’Irlande est un pays de non-droit. Il n’y a plus d’autorité, il suffit de connaître le type qu’il faut (« the very man », 122). L’état est à l’image monstrueuse du ministre rendu difforme par la cupidité : « And he was misshapen because he grabbed and grabbed, a country spilling over its borders, annexing smaller states, distending with each acquisition. » (112) ; il n’ y a plus de fisc, Hickey assène la leçon : « ‘This isn’t Elizabethan England, or wherever you’re from. This is Ireland. The Tax Man’s just a big joke here.’ » (167) ; la loi n’est plus qu’un souvenir : « […] the Building Control Act of 1990. The Building No Control Act, more like. It’s all self-certification now – you’re basically correcting your own exams. » (184) Il n’y a pas non plus d’argent, mais des obligations, des traites, du papier. Le boom économique de l’Irlande ? Du vent. Bon exemple de ce que Julien Gracq appelle « l’émission continue de fausse monnaie5 ». D’où l’image du vide, d’un creux d’où surgissent d’énormes sommes d’argent pour les profiteurs :
Castle Holdings was a shell company. I bought nothing, sold nothing, manufactured nothing, did nothing ; and yet […] it returned a profit
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of £66 million that first year […] Who better to direct a shell company than a shell human being ? (72-73)
23 Une série de cercles concentriques se dessine à la surface de notre monde – l’Enfer de La Divine Comédie en est visiblement la matrice – cercles toujours plus larges où s’évanouit la notion même de réalité, à partir du « Cercle d’Or » initial : Hilltop, l’Irlande, l’Angleterre, Dubaï, Shangai, Pudong. Ses membres ont un surnom – « the Bills » pour « Billionaires » – qui définit bien leur seule raison d’être : « Their moniker betrayed the terrible hunger in them, the insatiable drive to acquire. » (138) Le sénateur McGee salue à sa façon l’audace de Tristram et Hickey – « Balls, these guys have balls, and balls are what we need. » (140) Il n’a pas tort puisque Hickey n’a jamais abandonné « le détecteur à métaux » de sa jeunesse (métaphore pertinente du sens des affaires), et il a fini par trouver un trésor :
I knew there was a treasure buried around here somewhere. I could smell it, so I could. And now I have found it. It was right under me nose all the time. Land. Or what happens to land when a man changes it into property. (142)
24 L’alchimiste a réussi son grand œuvre : « I’ve transformed a heap of muck into gold. » (142) Mais en peu de mois la crise dissipe ce qui n’était qu’une illusion, Deauville ne laisse planer aucune équivoque : « It’s over, Tristram. The money is gone ! » (294). À l’intention de Hickey – qui lui demande : “What money ?” – Tristram se montre encore plus explicite : « All of it. All the money. My money, your money, McGee’s money, Castle Holdings’money. The country’s money. » (295) Deauville, « senior bondholder », sera le seul à ne rien perdre : « He says it means he is immune. He says it means we take the hit. » (295) Tristram met les points sur les i :
Deauville says the markets are in collapse. He says the world economy has begun to implode and that our assets have junk status. He says no one is going to want to buy them. And we paid for them with borrowed money. We paid for them with credit. Which in fact means debt. We owe more money than we can possibly count. (295-6)
25 Le texte maintient sa cohérence et se replie sur lui-même : le chaos extérieur engendre ici le chaos intérieur – c’était l’inverse au début du livre – celui qu’apporte l’alcool par le goulot de la bouteille de whiskey porté par Hickey à bouche de Tristram. Si le whiskey plonge à nouveau Tristram dans les entrailles de l’enfer, c’est le vin noir, le Brunello di Montalcino, qui connote la dépravation des membres du Cercle d’Or : « The wine was rich in tannin and it blackened their lips. I could smell it on their blackend breaths, their blackened hearts, their blackened souls. » (237) Une formule frappante résume tout : « Building site to bomb site overnight. » (312) Elle s’applique à l’Irlande comme à Hilltop :
We were witnessing the remnants of a dead civilisation, one that had left nothing but wreckage in its wake, the Vandals or the Goths. Except that it had not been civilised at all. Civilisation was the wrong word. (312)
26 Retour à la sauvagerie donc, puisque prédation, dévoration et rapacité sont les moteurs de l’action, ceci au prix d’un divorce total d’avec la réalité, et de l’adhésion déraisonnée
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au mirage du progrès, en un acte de foi imbécile, « wishful thinking » propre à engendrer une catastrophe : « […] lately in this country, wanting something to be true made it true. Wanting something to be worth a hundred million made it worth a hundred million. » (248-9)
Uncanny
27 Il y a plus. La perpective réaliste qui semble gouverner le texte, déjà minée par la fusion de l’animal et de l’humain, se trouve profondément déstabilisée par la répétition lancinante de trois termes : uncanny, hell, tocka tocka. Ce n’est ni un hasard, ni une négligence.
28 Uncanny. Celui qui parle, se confesse, « témoigne » (le récit se divise en dix « days of evidence ») est cultivé, et surtout traducteur distingué, véritable prodige : « I do all the major European languages […] I was recognised as the best at what I do. » (5-6) Vient très vite la première occurrence du terme uncanny et, pour enfoncer le clou, sa traduction en français et en allemand : « They said my gift was uncanny. That was the word my clients used in their various mother tongues. Étrange, unheimlich, uncanny. » (6) Unheimlich, Freud bien sûr, au cas où le lecteur n’aurait pas été assez attentif. Maître des mots, interprète et rien d’autre – « I am an interpreter, a perfect conduit, an instrument of others » (93) – mais ce n’est déjà pas si mal, Tristram affiche aux tournants majeurs de son existence le même marqueur de « l’inquiétante étrangeté6 », en règle générale assorti de la formule « that was the word they used », avec quelque variantes. Un exemple vient d’être cité, il y en a de nombreux autres. Tristram est le directeur fantoche d’une compagnie fantoche, qu’à cela ne tienne : « M. Deauville could not have chosen a more fitting candidate. Uncanny. That was the word they used. » (73) Tristram est cliniquement mort, mais revient à la vie, du jamais vu : « They had never seen anything like it before, the registrar said. Uncanny. That was the word they used. » (82) Tristram est à la fois, avec la même facilité, un passeur de langages et un passeur d’argent : « Money travelled through me as freely as languages. Uncanny. That was the word they used. » (231) Uncanny est à la fois leitmotiv et programme : dans toute cette histoire, il y a quelque chose qui s’écarte de la norme, qui creuse l’abîme d’une folie contagieuse où les repères habituels ont été perdus de vue.
29 Or, c’est bien le narrateur qui consomme la métamorphose d’un ancien Eden en un univers anxiogène empli de créatures de cauchemar : « Graveyard ivy clotted the orchard walls in grotesque guises – cut-throats, hanged corpses, ghouls. I am a troubled man. I have a troubled mind. I see things in the dark. » (30) Tristram engendre l’Unheimlich, d’où l’obscurité d’un témoignage qui, à chaque nouveau jour de comparution, paraît prendre davantage ses distances avec le réel. À tel point que, pour ses juges comme pour lui- même, Tristram est insaisissable. Il ne sera pas saisi car il va partir très loin, là où, sans doute, personne ne pourra le suivre. De plus, il est une anomalie métaphysique, son existence participant de domaines a priori incompatibles. Il est d’abord, comme Lazare, revenu d’entre les morts, mais pour se sentir damné à tout jamais, « for there is no rest for the wicked. » (83) Il a échappé au coma éthylique et à l’accident d’avion, pour revenir en Irlande, mais ce n’est pas vraiment lui qui est mort « That was another Tristram St Lawrence. » (13) Deux fois revenant, sans identité fixe, « a trembling wreck » (22), ou pire encore « some studied automaton copied from some other studied automaton, ad infinitum, with nothing at the centre7 » (18), un spectre (« Christy Gaffney stood frozen rigid, a man who had seen a ghost »,19), l’une des âmes errantes (« wandering souls, 20), un cadavre ambulant (« death warmed up « , 288), « a hollow man, an empty shell » comme « the fish
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heads, the crab claws, the lobster shells and all the other gutted creatures » (290) qui jonchent la rive. Y aurait-il une revanche des crustacés ?
30 Hell. Tristram appartient au monde incertain du fantastique8, à cette zone où s’estompe la distinction entre le réel et l’imaginaire et même, on l’a vu, la vie et la mort. Hell fait écho à uncanny : à la fois confirmation et aboutissement. À l’hôpital où il a été admis – et où jamais la formule « entre la vie et la mort » n’a été plus juste – il ressasse : « Hell, hell, hell. I couldn’t stop saying that word. Still can’t » (82) Il donne une explication qui est bien plus qu’une pirouette :
The cleaners found me comatose and called 999, but the phone must have been upside down and 666 dialled in the panic because it was Hell I was dispatched to, and not hospital, make no mistake. (82)
31 Plus tard, le whiskey aidant, Tristram est « connected to the bowels of Hell. » (299) Le téléphone est un moyen de communiquer avec la Bête9, avec l’enfer, avec le démon – Deauville/Devil – actualisation du gothique en même temps que critique des excès de la pseudo-communication. Toutes les chambres d’hôtel sont identiques : « They are all hell », abîme où sombrent de conserve la psyché malade et l’Irlande condamnée : « You cannot imagine the depth of the hole into which I had dug myself. » (86) De la même façon, les cauchemars plongent le rêveur dans « la caverne d’effroi10 », image gothique par excellence, ici revisitée par les machines de Hickey : « I had extravagant nightmares about subterranean activity – caverns being excavated beneath the castle. The expansion of Hell was under way in these dreams. » (159) L’enfer s’étend sous le château, sapant les fondations de l’ordre traditionnel pour instaurer le règne de la Bête. En parcourant avec Hickey les terres d’une ferme qu’ils aimeraient transformer en lotissement, Tristram lève les yeux vers les étoiles – « The heavens, I remember thinking as I gazed up at them » – mais il est sans espoir : « And down here, the hell. » (249) C’est dans le sous-sol du château que Tristram finit par se cacher : « I took myself under the castle, along the winding subterranean passages to the priest hole […] I clasped my knees and buried my face and I hid, Fergus, I hid. » (342) Tristram, en position fœtale, cherchant à « fuir le monde du risque redoutable et hostile11 », à échapper aux hommes, mais bien plus encore à celui qui tire les ficelles : « Deauville. He was on the prowl. » (342)
32 Deauville/Devil est omniprésent sans jamais être visible. Quand il l’appelle, le portable de Tristram affiche « unknown ». Tristram se doute bien de quelque chose, dans la mesure où à une question du juge sur la raison de son retour en Irlande il répond ; « An Act of God, or maybe the other fella. » (5) Le démon est un être virtuel, bien dans l’air du temps. Pourtant il apparaît, mais sous des avatars pour le moins inattendus. Le premier est Larney qui comme Tristram est un revenant. Vieux serviteur de la famille, il hante – quoi de plus vrai puisqu’il est mort depuis longtemps12 – le parc de Hilltop, et pose à Tristram une série d’énigmes. A la dernière d’entre elles concernant la véritable identité de Deauville il donne une réponse claire: « It’s deh-ville. Deh-ville, not doh-ville, yes ? » (336) Le second est un promeneur que Tristram prend pour « a local historian » (358) Comme Larney qui épelait le véritable nom du mystérieux Deauville – « Dee. Eee. Vee. Eye. El » (336) – il explique que l’héritier de Hilltop et tous les autres pensaient faire fortune en un clin d’œil : « But that’s the problem with setting yourself up as a little god. You invite the other fella in. Don’t you? » (359) La boucle est bouclée, « the other fella » a le dernier mot. Tristram, longtemps égaré, ne comprend le véritable enjeu que sur le tard,
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grâce à Larney : « The castle was droning, the lights were shining, the heavens were spinning, and the hells. I shook my head. The Devil is my sponsor? » (336)
33 Tocka tocka. Ce bruit pourtant aurait pu le mettre sur la voie, ce bruit curieux qui résonne partout en contrepoint aux propos de Deauville :
I listened to him touch-typing on his keyboard, tocka tocka, tocka tocka. He was seated at his control panel watching his monitors, firing off instructions from his executive chair. That is how I pictured M. Deauville. » (23)
34 Tocka tocka pour se renseigner sur Hickey : «Tocka tocka on the keyboard as Mr Deauville ran a check » (40) ; « Tocka tocka in the background – what was that strange noise » (85) pour tirer Tristram des griffes de l’alcool ; tocka tocka pour lancer l’affaire de Castle Holdings et Tocka tocka, Tocka tocka (99-101) pour approuver l’investissement ; Tocka tocka pour l’offre sur Pudong assortie d’un encouragement ironique : « Bona fortuna. » (238)
35 Tocka tocka du clavier ? A coup sûr, puisque l’ordinateur est, avec le téléphone portable, l’instrument moderne du démon, lui-même caché dans le monde virtuel de la finance internationale. Mais autre chose aussi, de bien plus grave : « Tocka tocka, Tocka tocka. Not fingertips flying across a keyboard but the sound of hooves. » (334) Larney/Deauville révèle sa véritable nature à la conscience coupable de Tristram : « Hooves. No matter which way I turned : hooves. » (336) Tantôt géant, tantôt gnome, le démon gratifie Tristram d’une « goatish dance » avant de lui demander de payer son tribut : « Deauville had come to collect. » (360)
36 C’est ici que le point de vue choisi par Claire Kilroy prend tout son sens. Comme point de départ elle avait pensé à Hickey, mais celui-ci lui avait paru vite privé d’étoffe : d’où l’idée de choisir Howth Castle – « that’s a whole way of life, that’s something that’s been here over 900 years » – et Tristram : « […] it had to be someone who had a huge heritage to lose. » De plus le choix d’une voix est primordiale (celle de Hickey étant « bawdy ») : « I needed a voice that could reflect on its own actions : the boom was orchestrated by people that don’t think13. » Le schéma narratif sur lequel fonctionnent nombre de romans de la tradition gothique est bien en place : une big house, un héritier longtemps errant revenu au pays natal, un démon dans l’ombre, son agent opérant au grand jour, une chute en enfer.
37 Tristram se sent coupable de forfaiture, simplement en regardant autour de lui. Le paradis s’efface – « The view my ancestors would have enjoyed was due to be bricked up again, by me » – les panneaux préviennent, interdisent – « Danger. Concealed Exit. Hard Hat Area » – panneaux auxquels, de son cru, Tristram ajoute : « Abandon Hope. » (162) C’est Dante, bien sûr, aux portes de l’Enfer – « Abandon all hope, ye who enter here » – c’est aussi Vathek et Nouronihar au sein des cavernes d’Eblis, à l’énoncé du « décret terrible et irrévocable » : « Their hearts immediately took fire, and they, at once, lost the most precious gift of heaven : – Hope14. » Échos littéraires qui placent le roman dans le contexte plus large de la nekya, structure fondamentale de tous les récits inspirés, de près ou de loin, par celui de la Chute originelle dont ils reprennent le schéma. The Devil I Know se teinte alors d’une sombre coloration, la métaphysique prenant le relais de la satire et se donnant les outils du fantastique pour parvenir à ses fins : « The more black the situation became, the darker and more gothic the novel became15. » Les clients qui se pressent pour acheter à prix d’or les appartements mis en vente « off the plans » (183) par Hickey sont des « medieval supplicants » (186), et leur folie est le pendant naturel de celle des « Bills »
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du Cercle d’Or qui, autour de leurs projets, se mue en un « medieval display of mettle. » (237) Danse des fous, danse macabre, dans un nouveau moyen-âge, un nouvel âge de ténèbres qui s’étend aux portes de Hilltop – « There was just the darkness. It was everywhere » – (206) et sur la campagne où se perd la voiture « our vessel was adrift in a sea of black » (249), et où l’esprit s’égare sur les chemins de l’enfer : « The blackness of the surrounding fields facilitated this strain of thought » (253). « Ce noir est l’or du démon16 » : ce qui vaut pour les fonds noirs de Goya vaut pour cette obscurité primordiale.
38 Avec cette variante contemporaine du pacte faustien le livre se clôt par une descente aux enfers que Tristram est obligé d’affronter les yeux ouverts : « I am afraid of what I will see. » (361) La personnification à l’œuvre ici est dans le droit fil de la théologie catholique où le diable, diabolos, est une personne qui se met en travers du chemin pour entraîner l’homme dans son unique projet : faire le mal. Dans The Devil I Know où les événements et les images qui les connotent se déclenchent comme les répons attendus d’un rituel bien rôdé, le fantastique est venu déployer son voile moins pour brouiller les repères que pour faire du texte une fable morale où s’exprime l’indignation de l’auteure. Indignation non feinte qui enferme l’action dans un carcan iconographique médiéval (grotesques, danse macabre, diables aux pieds fourchus, souterrain à la fois refuge et prison), retour aux sources où le mot gothique retrouve sa signification originelle. À travers les interstices du réel s’infiltre le pouvoir du Malin qui ne cesse de travailler le monde où nous vivons. Pour J. C. Chandor, réalisateur de Margin Call (2011), film qui met en scène le krach d’une banque d’affaires en une nuit : « Le succès du capitalisme s’explique par sa capacité à s’adresser à nos instincts reptiliens17. » L’Irlande en fournit ici une éclatante démonstration.
39 D’autres écrivains, dramaturges ou romanciers, dénoncent les méfaits de la cupidité des temps modernes. Donal Ryan se penche sur les abandonnés du boom économique dans un village de l’ouest (The Spinning Heart, 2013) et, Anne Enright stigmatise le matérialisme (The Forgotten Waltz, 2011). The Devil I Know, à la différence des précédents, est une fable morale, une « étude philosophique» qui, comme celles de Balzac, relève au moins en partie du fantastique18. Dans une veine analogue on trouve The Seafarer (2006) de Conor McPherson : James « Sharky » Harper joue son âme au poker avec le démoniaque Mr Lockhart qui dépeint un enfer glacé inspiré d’un poème médiéval. Terminus19, « a luridly compelling waking nightmare of Dublin as an eighth circle of hell20 » met en scène un serial killer misogyne qui a conclu un pacte avec le diable. Animals (2006), de Keith Ridgway est une véritable entreprise de déréalisation opérée par le délire hallucinatoire du héros. Dans un roman étourdissant, Skippy Dies (2010), Paul Murray, entre maintes autres choses, évoque un monde souterrain où le prince des ténèbres manipule les âmes des hommes.
40 Indignée, alarmée, Claire Kilroy, nous démontre que la crise est un phénomène démoniaque où notre humanité se perd. Fin du passage sur cette terre pour Tristram, fin d’un temps – « I was stricken by an overwhelming sense of things coming to an end » (360) – « waste land » né de la folie humaine, monde que la seule évocation du nom du Malin suffit, littéralement, à pétrifier21 :
“Desperate, the devastation they wreaked. It is nothing short of diabolic.” At this word, the birds stopped. The secret creatures in the undergrowth stopped. The very air, I tell you, stopped. (359)
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NOTES
1. Édition utilisée : Claire Kilroy, The Devil I Know, London, Faber and Faber, 2012. 2. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, (1916), London, Granada, 1977, p. 185. 3. Écho de l’épisode du lycanthrope dans The Albigenses de C.R. Maturin : « I am a mad wolf. The hairs grow inward – the wolfish coat is within. », The Albigenses, Hurst and Robinson, London, 1824, vol. I, p. 226. 4. Un exemple : « Mr Aggs, Mr Baggs, Mr Caggs, Mr Daggs, Mr Faggs, Mr Gaggs », Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend, (1865), Penguin, 1974, p. 131. 5. Julien Gracq, Les Terres du Couchant, Paris, Corti, 2014, p. 22. 6. Titre français adopté pour la traduction de l’essai de Freud, Das Unheimliche, publié en 1919. 7. Écho probable de « L’homme au sable » des Contes d’Hoffmann, où Nathanaël s’éprend de la poupée mécanique Olympia. 8. Voir par exemple Irène Bessière, Le Récit Fantastique, La poétique de l’incertain, Paris, Larousse, 1974. 9. « Que l’homme doué d’esprit calcule le chiffre de la Bête, c’est un chiffre d’homme : son chiffre, c’est 666. » Apocalypse de Saint Jean, 13 : 18. 10. Gaston Bachelard, La Terre et les Rêveries du Repos, Paris, Corti, 1948, p. 197. 11. G. Durand, Les Stuctures anthropologiques de l’Imaginaire, Paris, Bordas, 1969, p.275.c 12. Aussi mort que le narrateur anonyme de The Third Policeman de Flann O’Brien, publié en 1967, et que Skippy, le héros du roman de Paul Murray, Skippy dies. 13. Réponse de Claire Kilroy à Derek Flynn, « Conversation with Claire Kilroy », Writings.ie/Interviews, 21 Aug. 2012. 14. William Beckford, Vathek, (1786), London, Oxford University Press, 1970, p. 119. 15. « Conversation », Ibid. 16. André Malraux, Le Triangle noir, Gallimard, 1970, p. 86. 17. Propos recueillis par A. Tonet dans Le Monde du 31 décembre 2014. 18. On peut songer à La Peau de Chagrin. 19. Pièce de Mark O’Rowe, jouée à l’Abbey Theatre le 9 juin 2007. 20. Brian Logan, The Guardian, 5 April 2011. 21. Le démon arrête l’épée de Valentin dans le Faust de Goethe. Après avoir tué le frère d’Isidora, Melmoth n’a qu’un geste à faire pour arrêter ceux qui se précipitent sur lui : « Every arm is paralyzed – every mind is frozen to its centre ! », C.R Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer, (1820), A Bison Book, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1963, p. 97.
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ABSTRACTS
Claire Kilroy’s fourth novel, The Devil I Know, is a nightmarish picture of Ireland devastated by the implosion of the economy and by the greed and folly of all. Behind the scenes, the devil himself pulls the strings of the human puppets. Tristram, who is both his victim and his accomplice, his “interpreter”, witnesses the ruin of his own “big house” in a monstrous property development, and more generally “the remnants of a dead civilisation”. The Devil I Know is a dark moral fable to which the “gothic”, cleverly updated, furnishes all the necessary narrative resources.
Le quatrième roman de Claire Kilroy, The Devil I Know, est un tableau cauchemardesque de l’Irlande dévastée par l’implosion de l’économie, rendue possible par la cupidité et la folie générales. En coulisse, c’est le démon qui tire les ficelles des marionnettes humaines. Tristram, qui est à la fois sa victime et son complice, ou son « interprète », a sous les yeux les ruines de sa « grande maison » dans un projet immobilier monstrueux et, plus généralement, « les vestiges d’une civilisation morte ». The Devil I Know est une sombre fable morale à laquelle le « gothique », adroitement actualisé, fournit les ressources narratives nécessaires.
INDEX
Mots-clés: crise financière, littérature gothique, Tigre celtique, littérature – roman, Kilroy Claire Keywords: Celtic Tiger, financial crisis, gothic literature, literature – novels, Kilroy Claire
AUTHOR
CLAUDE FIEROBE Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne
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“The Lost and the Lonely”: Crisis in Three Plays by Enda Walsh
Patrick Lonergan
1 The 2008 global financial crash had a famously devastating impact upon Ireland, which went from being celebrated for its prosperity under the Celtic Tiger period (1995-2008) to being mocked internationally for the collapse of its economy. The resulting economic and social crisis has also had an impact upon its culture. If Irish writers and artists have been slow to address the financial crash, this may be due to the collapse in arts-related funding in the country – a collapse that has led to the closure of theatre companies, the withdrawal of numerous funding schemes, and the emigration of many leading actors, writers and directors. Nevertheless, we have seen the emergence of a small number of plays that seek to understand the impact of the crisis upon Irish life, to investigate its causes and consequences, and to historicise the events that transformed Ireland so quickly in the post-2008 era of austerity.
2 One of the first plays to directly address the end of the Celtic Tiger era is Enda Walsh’s Penelope, which appeared in 2010. By comparing that play to two earlier Walsh works, The Walworth Farce (2006) and New Electric Ballroom (2008), I want to show how Walsh’s work has always placed crisis at its centre. Beginning with the play that most explicitly addresses this theme and then working backwards, I will argue that these three plays may collectively be seen as an attempt to comment on some of the major issues of the Celtic Tiger period – but they also locate crisis at being at the heart of Irish life generally. They therefore can be seen as examining how a disastrous social transformation (such as that of 2008) can enable positive as well as negative responses.
3 Walsh first came to prominence in the late 1990s, as one of a group of young male Irish dramatists who were writing violent and vivid monologues that seemed as much influenced by Quentin Tarantino as they were by Brian Friel or Samuel Beckett. Like other writers of his generation (such as Conor McPherson and Mark O’Rowe), Walsh has subsequently developed his skills and his profile – as could probably have been expected. But what could not have been predicted when Disco Pigs premiered in 1996, or when bedbound became the unexpected hit of the 2000 Dublin Theatre Festival, was how Walsh’s reputation would rise so quickly – so that he is now regarded as one of the
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leading playwrights in the English-speaking world. His stage adaptation of the movie Once won him a Tony Award in 2012; his plays Misterman (revised in 2012 having premiered in 1999) and Ballyturk (2014) both played to sold-out audiences at Britain’s National Theatre. In 2015 it was announced that he was collaborating with David Bowie and Ivo Van Hove on the production of a new musical called Lazarus while his stage adaptation of Pinocchio for Disney is scheduled to premiere in 2016. Very few playwrights have managed to combine commercial success with a reputation for aesthetic experimentation in the way that Walsh has done.
4 Those successes were enabled to a great extent by Walsh’s collaborations with Druid Theatre, the Galway-based company that became internationally famous for its discovery of Martin McDonagh in the mid-1990s. For Druid, Walsh wrote the three plays explored in this paper, and their success played a key role in the establishment of his reputation worldwide. Druid brought those plays to international attention in various tours between 2006 and 2011, but they also benefited Walsh by allowing him to work regularly with a small number of collaborators. Hence, Mikel Murfi (director of The Walworth Farce and Penelope) also acted in New Electric Ballroom, while Tadhg Murphy appeared both in a revival of The Walworth Farce and in the premiere of Penelope. All three productions had the same set designer (Sabine Dargent), and there was also overlap in such areas as stage management, costume, lighting, and dramaturgy. So because the plays were not just produced by one company but developed by it too, they share several important strands and themes. That practical unity allowed Walsh to develop shared themes across the three plays – as this paper will show in more detail.
5 I want to begin by discussing Penelope because it most clearly addresses this article’s themes – even though it is the last of the three to be produced, having appeared in 2010. It is Walsh’s reimagining of the Homeric story of Odysseus’s wife and her suitors, who are represented by four Irishmen who gather every day in a drained-out swimming pool to compete to win the love of the eponymous character. As the play begins, a fifth suitor, called Murray, has just killed himself, leaving a large bloodstain on the pool wall. As the other men gather to discuss their colleague’s death, they realise from the fact that they all had the same dream the night before that Penelope’s husband – who is never named but whom we may safely call Odysseus – is going to arrive home that day. And, as in the Homeric original, the suitors all understand that he will massacre them immediately upon his arrival. Faced with the prospect of certain death, the four men have to overcome an instinctive competitiveness with each other in order to ensure that one of them seduces Penelope before her husband arrives, thereby making sure that Odysseus will have no home to return to.
6 In bringing The Odyssey into a contemporary Irish context, Walsh is, of course, doing something that has been done before: the influence of James Joyce is evident throughout the play, and it also informed its reception in Ireland, where audiences have been conditioned by the influence of Joyce to draw and detect parallels between ancient Greece and modern Ireland. And in an international context, the play is certainly not the first attempt to find a contemporary approach to Greek myth: it is, for example, reminiscent of Charles Mee’s re-imaginings of Greek plays (such as his transformation of Aeschylus Suppliant Woman into Big Love in 2000). There is a further context, which is that in 2010 both Ireland and Greece had been lumped together as Europe’s “PIIGS’, a deeply insulting acronym for Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain – the indebted nations whose financial indiscipline was threatening to destroy
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the European project generally. While the Irish and Greek cases diverged after 2012, with Ireland’s leaving its bailout programme whilst Greece struggled to abide by the terms of its own arrangements with its creditors, Walsh’s decision to blend Irish characters with Greek myth in 2010 had subtle contemporary resonances.
7 Interestingly, however, Penelope premiered not in Ireland but in Germany. Since Disco Pigs was first performed in Germany in the late 1990s, Walsh has worked very closely with a German dramaturge named Tilman Raabke, who has collaborated with him on the drafts of several plays. It was Raabke who invited Walsh to write Penelope as part of a group of six plays by European writers, all of which were about the Odyssey, and staged as part of the Ruhr Valley’s year as one of Europe’s Capitals of Culture in 2010. One of the interesting features of Walsh’s career is that many of plays since 2000 have premiered in German translation before his own English-language text appears – thus giving him immediate access to two very different “first” audiences. Walsh has stated that he felt the play was particularly suitable for the Theater Oberhausen because it is based in a city that he considers quite isolated and impoverished; he therefore believed that its audiences might identify with the suitors. But he also wrote the play with an Irish production in view: he has stated that he created the three eldest male characters with the Irish actors Niall Buggy, Dennis Conway and Karl Shiels specifically in mind1. So the play was intended by the author to be meaningful to audiences both within and beyond Ireland.
8 Nevertheless, Penelope’s status as one of the earliest post-Celtic Tiger dramas is indisputable. The play dramatizes a situation in which an era of debauchery and excess is about to be brought to a violent conclusion – a conclusion that everyone in the play had secretly been anticipating, but was nevertheless hoping to avoid. Penelope asks whether, in such situations, it is possible for people to change: to use crisis as an opportunity for creation rather than destruction. The play is therefore motivated by a unifying question that was terribly pertinent in Ireland (and elsewhere) in 2010: if our world is about to be destroyed, will we be destroyed too, or can we invent new ways of living? As this article argues, that theme dominates Walsh’s work (it is present in Homer and Joyce too, of course). But it is unsurprising that many audiences who saw the play in Ireland in 2010 were quick to read it as an allegorical representation of the end of the Celtic Tiger era.
9 Such an interpretation can easily be justified. We might, for instance, note the names of the four protagonists. They have been given what will seem to many to be generically “Irish” surnames, rather like the way in which Beckett used the common names Malone and Molloy to make his characters seem less individualised. One can also make the argument that the names draw on the melodramatic convention of revealing character through name. The eldest character Fitz, for instance, seems most self-aware and of all the men is most at peace (albeit that his peace is produced through self-medication) – so we might see him as “fitting” into his own life and environment. The next eldest is Dunne – and the play frequently puns on his name in order to show that he is in many ways “done”: a has-been, someone whose best days are behind him. The most dominant character, Quinn, uses aggression to dominate the other men; his name appears to combine the words “kill” and “win” and thus hints at his personality, which is violently competitive. Finally the youngest man Burns is also the most passionate and indeed is the one who will finally seduce Penelope – but too late to prevent Odysseus’s triumph.
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10 Another way of looking at those names is to see them as allusions to the Irish businessmen who helped to create the Celtic Tiger and who also might be accused of having brought about its demise. Fitz might refer to Sean Fitzpatrick, the Chief Executive of Anglo-Irish bank, the financial institution that, more than any other, helped to undermine Ireland’s reputation and economy. Dunne could be an allusion to Ben Dunne, the former chairman of Dunnes Stores who bribed numerous politicians (including the Taoiseach Charles Haughey), and who was infamously arrested in a Florida motel where he was charged for cocaine possession and soliciting a prostitute. Quinn might relate to Sean Quinn, the former Chairperson of the Quinn Group: in 2008, he was Ireland’s richest man, worth almost €4 billion, but he was declared bankrupt in 2012; his irregular dealings with Anglo-Irish bank continue to be a subject of much speculation in the Irish media. There are no obvious correspondences in the Irish business community with the name Burns (there is a property developer of that name, but he is nowhere near as prominent as the other three figures). And it is worth mentioning in passing that the name of the fifth suitor, Murray, is shared by another offstage presence in a different play about a competition between a group of men : David Mamet’s Glengarry Glenn Ross (1984).
11 Walsh has hinted that he intended for those names to remind audiences of those prominent Irish businessmen, but it would be inaccurate to suggest that he is attempting to portray any of those people directly2. There is however one very direct allusion to the Celtic Tiger in the script. It comes in Dunne’s description of his favourite childhood book, The Magic Porridge Pot, which, in Quinn’s view, is “the only book there is”: FITZ — There are others actually. QUINN — Not that speak so clearly of investment and growth or the fast development of an unstable economy… There is a whole town that grounds to a standstill when it became awash with porridge, yeah… A pot that gave and gave, a community that took with no notion of responsibility or future. FITZ — I thought the magic porridge pot lifted the people out of poverty. DUNNE — And into obesity, those fat bastards! […] What the pot needed was regulation. It needed that little girl to stay at home with the sole purpose of saying “Cook-pot-cook” and “stop-pot-stop”. Outside of which she didn’t need any more words FITZ — She would have grown up retarded, mind you. QUINN — She would have grown up in power. DUNNE — She’d be the keeper of the pot3.
12 This passage reproduces jargon and ideology that were ubiquitous during the Celtic Tiger period, with Fitz repeating the commonplace assertion by neoliberal politicians that the enrichment of a tiny Irish elite would alleviate poverty by having a trickledown effect (though in fact Ireland then as now had one of the biggest gaps between rich and poor in the world). The references to regulation are also important: it is now fully understood that the Irish crisis arose due partly to a failure of regulators to do their jobs. It is also notable that the dispute between the old man and the younger is a competition between different sets of values: Fitz has the wisdom to understand that to have power over only one thing is to lead a pointlessly limited life, but for Quinn and Dunne – men in their forties and fifties respectively – the girl with the magic porridge pot has an admirable status. The older man admires discipline, but the two middle-aged men admire showy abundance.
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13 So we can see how the play could be seen as an allegory for the collapse of the Celtic Tiger. Interestingly, these lines were cut from the Druid premiere of the piece on the grounds that they made too apparent the link with the Celtic Tiger (though they continue to appear in other professional productions of the play). While that decision highlights the way in which the play has multiple resonances and meanings, it also underlines the fact that Walsh’s thinking in the composition of the play was influenced by contemporaneous Irish events.
14 Walsh himself shows early in the play that the meaning of a story – or indeed the meaning of a phrase – is dependent upon where it is uttered, whether in Ireland or Germany (or at the bottom of a swimming pool). An immediate example of this approach appears in the opening scene, in which Quinn fries a sausage with a blowtorch, an act that is at once aggressive, proprietary, and an assertion of masculinity. When asked how it tastes, Quinn thinks carefully before replying that it is “sausagey”: This is the very last sausage, men, and I wanted you all to know that it’s a superior sausage. Not some dust-filled, cigar-shaped hunk of pigshit… but an actual sausage! The sausage of our youth. Had I just said, “this is a hot sausage’… well, that has negative connotations. FITZ — Not if we were cold, it doesn’t. A hot sausage would be quite nice in the cold! QUINN — Obviously not if we were cold, Fitz. Had we been sitting in a yurt in Mongolia, shivering into a herd of yaks and I was clutching this sausage… I would look you each in the eyes and smile… “Gentlemen, this is a hot sausage! The last hot sausage! The final sausage, heated!” What do you feel about that then, lads? FITZ — Jealous. And cold. DUNNE — Leaning in trying to get a modicum of heat off that delicious-looking banger, no doubt. (p. 6-7)
15 This passage prepares the audience for the rest of the play in at least three ways. First, it uses inflated language to talk about inconsequential matters, and thus is rather like the play itself, which offers a very amusing fusion of the epic with the trivial. The second is how the men constantly narrate stories to and about themselves. One of the key features of Walsh’s plays generally is not just that his characters tell stories about themselves, but that those stories are almost always told in the present tense. Performance thus becomes a way for his characters to imagine the lives they would be living if they were not trapped somewhere that made living impossible. And the third is the notion that meaning is dependent upon context and location, that it can shift between places, that there can be times when a man can offer you some hot sausage without the offer seeming unwholesome
16 This idea that meaning is fluid, and that it is dependent upon place, might appear to contradict one of the play’s other important ideas, however, which is that there are no new stories, that everything is a repetition of something else, including of course the play itself. Many such repetitions exist. Walsh has been known to reject comparisons with Beckett as being too limiting, but there are countless Beckettian allusions in the play, as well as imitations of his style. As I mentioned above, the play also echoes Mamet’s Glengarry Glenn Ross in equating business with male competition for sexual dominance. Quinn, for example, explains that he persuaded Murray to kill himself because Murray “always [had] the better sale than me, always the clearer presentation! … We are all men of business” (p. 30). Many other allusions can be identified: the play concludes with Quinn’s cabaret show, which mixes the stories of real people such as Napoleon and John F. Kennedy with the fictional romances of Rhett Butler and Scarlet
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O’Hara, and Romeo and Juliet. Walsh’s point appears to be that everything can be retold as a version of some earlier story – and this is true even for reality: it is not so much that life imitates art, but that art gives us the frame through which we interpret life. The men themselves seem aware of the fact that they too are repeating themselves, as if trapped in a looping film: each man is bored not only by his companions but by himself – Burns describes the group as “the talking dead” (p. 29), and he is not far wrong.
17 This fictionalisation of the real helps us to understand the status of Penelope in the men’s eyes: she operates for them not as a real person but as an objectification of their own desires, so that it become apparent that the men are competing for her not because of who she is but rather because there are other men nearby who want to possess her, both as sexual object and symbol of status. Walsh has received some criticism for the fact that Penelope exists in the play only as an object:4 she never delivers any lines and it is not made clear whether she is in control of the CCTV system that allows the men to address her. Put against Joyce’s Ulysses, this criticism could seem valid: in that book, after all, we are shown how men objectify Molly Bloom, and Joyce handles this characterisation in such a way that we see such objectification as being emblematic of what is wrong with the men, rather than as any kind of statement about Molly herself.5 But Joyce does give Molly a voice of her own at the end of his novel, and while we can debate whether in doing so he gives her subjectivity, he is in any case doing something that Walsh does not do. When asked about Penelope’s voicelessness, Walsh admits that her development surprised him as he was writing the play: I kept thinking “This woman is going to get involved”, but the more it went on the more I thought, “I can’t actually have her talk, it would just completely lessen her by having her talk. Her story is much larger than [the suitors’] and to have her even begin to open her mouth is a whole new piece6.”
18 I return to the topic of Penelope’s voicelessness below, but first it seems important to assert that these passages show how the men in the play are capable of thinking of women only in symbolic terms, and only in relation to themselves. We also see this trait in their discussion of their mothers. Fitz, for example, says that: She was never a woman for words, my mother. She could talk but I was always of the opinion that she hated the debris that conversation let behind. She couldn’t see the point of offering an opinion on anything. (p. 13)
19 Quinn later asks a surprising question: “Your mother was a woman, right?’ FITZ — Oh completely! And rather than thinking of her as a halfwit, I like to think of her as a revolutionary! Had her ideas on vocal abstinence caught on, you could image, boys, a world with absolutely no wars. (p. 14)
20 Fitz’s response – “oh completely” – implies that it is possible for someone to be more or less womanly: gender is not an inherent trait but a way of being seen. Dunne is rather more negative about his mother, but he too considers her only in relation to her impact on himself: She left little impact on the world, my mother, except for her size. She was a fat lady and unpleasant with it. I was still wetting my bed as a teenager and I put that down to a total absence of a physical affection. I found the only way to get a hug off her was to season my neck with a little gravy. (p. 14)
21 Hence, women in the play operate at the pinnacle of a hierarchy of symbols for the men’s own appetites, needs and desires. This explains why Fitz complains of the barbecue being “pornography” because it is “placing unworkable images in our heads”
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(p. 16): the men’s world is a world of objects, desire for which can only be construed in sexual terms. Earthly power and sexual power over women operate as metaphors for each other’s dysfunction.
22 Walsh has described the play as a “cranky love story”: “the most moving moments are when the suitors manage to articulate their ideas of love, only to be faced with imminent extinction”, he observes7. He might have expressed that sentence the other way around, though, since in the play it is because the suitors are faced with imminent extinction that they manage to articulate their ideas of love. As Walsh states: These four men… have been having conversations about nothing – for like, ever – but when faced with their death, they begin to reset themselves in some way. It’s like everything is blank and then they begin to create actual worlds to place themselves in. They have a need to find something to leave behind them, to try and leave something good behind8.
23 The play asks whether that kind of change is possible, and shows that, in fact, it is – and that love is possible too. But what he is also doing is dramatizing his idea that his characters’ lives are trapped in patterns that make both love and change almost impossible. And that too is one of his major themes.
24 How then does Penelope map on to the Celtic Tiger period? The audience knows at the end of the play that the four men are soon to be slaughtered: and if the characters are to be seen as emblems of the crass materialism of the Celtic Tiger years, then the appearance of Odysseus can be seen as the arrival of the long-overdue reckoning. But Walsh’s use of performativity and allusion allows for a more nuanced interpretation of the play to be put forward. By suggesting that everything that we see on that stage (and by extension, everything that we do in our lives) has been performed before, Walsh presents the idea that human history needs to be seen in cyclical rather than linear terms. That thinking can undermine the notion of historical progress that underpinned commentary about the Celtic Tiger, which was often portrayed as a kind of evolutionary development from earlier versions of the Irish state and society. But what is crucial here is how the men respond to their imminent death, even as they acknowledge its cyclical inevitability: they do so not by embracing their materialism but by rejecting it for such values as love and the appreciation of the beautiful. Walsh’s suggestion seems to be that crisis is a recurrent feature of Irish life – that the Celtic Tiger and its collapse are examples of a cycle of rise and fall that has happened countless times before. But he also reminds us that another constant is the extent to which people seek to overcome those crises: to go on even when they can’t go on, to use that well-worn but apt Beckettian construction.
25 What I wish to do in the remainder of this article is to show how this direct attempt to address the Celtic Tiger era can be seen to have its roots in two earlier Walsh plays, thereby underscoring the importance for Walsh of the theme of repetition and the cyclical. I want to do so firstly by considering New Electric Ballroom. The most obvious approach to comparing Ballroom and Penelope is not to focus on crisis but rather to think of gender. One way of defending Walsh against the charge of misogyny in relation to Penelope, to return to that topic briefly, could be to point towards the end of the play: the four men are “ready for the end” but Penelope is looking into “her new future” (p. 51). As Walsh states, Penelope’s story is much bigger than those of the men, and the play’s conclusion emphasises the validity of his assertion. It is not that the men’s perspective is prioritised over hers but instead that the men’s view of the world is
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shown to be so narrow that the play cannot accommodate hers. Another defence could be to point out that, to an extent that we have not seen in Irish drama since Beckett, Walsh’s plays need to be seen not individually but as parts of an interlinking body of work: it would not be entirely unfair to claim that Walsh is writing the same play over and over again, from slightly different perspectives each time (a characteristic in his work that Walsh himself acknowledges). In such a context, The New Electric Ballroom can be put forward as one possible response to the criticisms of Penelope, though of course it was written many years before, premiering in Germany in 2004 before having its English-language premiere in Galway in 2008.
26 Given that the play features three sisters, it is immediately apparent that one objective of The New Electric Ballroom is (as in Penelope) to recycle old images, to take over-familiar stories and to find ways to make them seem fresh: the New Testament looms as large in the play as Chekhov does, for instance. What Walsh is doing, though, is offering us a glimpse of what reality from Penelope’s perspective might look like, since The New Electric Ballroom shows that, for its three female protagonists, having one’s life constantly narrativised is not a form of celebration but a way to be imprisoned.
27 The two elder sisters in the play, Breda and Clara, have both been traumatised by separate but interlinking encounters forty years earlier with a showband leader called Roller Royce. Their younger sister Ada – whose birth, somewhat ambiguously, occurred not long after the events described by her sisters – forces them daily to retell the story of their heartbreak; Ada thus acts as a kind of demented director figure, rather like the director in Beckett’s Catastrophe (1982). Breda and Clara are affected not just by having been betrayed by Roller Royce, but also by the gossip that ensued from those events. Walsh thus dramatizes the way in which gossip operates a form of control and surveillance over the lives of people in small communities, especially in the case of women who challenge taboos relating to sexual agency. The impact of gossip on these women’s lives is revealed very poignantly when Clara imagines winning a baking competition, thus showing her superiority to the other women in her village. “You’re the best Clara” she imagines them saying. “Better than all them who locked you inside. Who spun out the gossip in the canneries and locked the door behind you9.”
28 There is one male figure in the play. When this man, whose name is Patsy, arrives in the house, he often finds himself desperate for something to say – and he too turns always to gossip, most of which is about women whose bodies are in some state of degradation. These include the one-hundred year old Nana Cotter who has “Little bones like summer kindling, hands like pigeon’s feet, hearing shot from years of working in the cannery but by Jesus can she eat trifle? Eat it? Like a hoover” (p. 11). It also includes Mary Calley who is “fighting fit after her fall at bingo” – because, Patsy says, “she had a few to drink” – as well as Phyllis Ryan who “went to the doctor’s to get him to move his car and walked away with a burst appendix” (p. 21). Patsy’s stories show how women will constantly be spoken about in relation to their deviation from ideas of physical perfection and desirability, and in terms of their appetites, whether for drink or trifle. He may seem to be connecting Ada, Breda and Clara to the outside world by visiting them every day with these stories but, by reminding them of the gossip that they might face outside, he is inadvertently reinforcing their determination to stay indoors.
29 Walsh also shows that this process of surveillance over women does not just involve talking, but also involves language itself. We see this at the beginning of the play when
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Breda refers to the way in which birth is undignified because it happens in what she calls “the waterworks department” (p. 6). Her use of euphemism shows an inability to talk about sexuality explicitly – which in turn makes evident a sense of shame over her body. Both of those traits explain but also complicate some features of the story that follows. Clara likewise is limited, though more by the language of religion than by bodily shame; this is shown by her references to the Virgin Mary as a kind of role model whose example she can never quite live up to. She also describes how her mother determined that she was a “born baker”. Their mother “said I had a gift for coffee cake the way Jesus had a gift for sacrifice”, she remembers, boasting gently (p. 8): Clara’s skill is thus described not in a positive light but as a form of martyrdom. The pair experience different forms of inhibition, but they are linked in many ways. Walsh provides a vivid image that shows that the two women understand what is expected of them when Breda speaks of how, cycling to the ballroom, they “move through the evening with pleated skirts hiding the busy legs beneath” (p. 16). Outwardly they are expected to display tranquillity and peace, even if beneath the surface there is a flurry of motion.
30 The problem that identities can be fixed by our communities’ intolerance is not felt exclusively by the women. As Patsy says, “in a town this size we’ve all got our roles to play and mine is to play a man of no great purpose” (p. 34). And all of the characters show a capacity to imagine themselves as being objectified by others, from Patsy who sees himself as if in a photograph, to Breda who prepares herself carefully by looking in the mirror (p. 27). As the two elder sisters say, we are all “stamped by our stories” (p. 35). However, it is Patsy who is offered the chance to begin again. Two of the sisters wash him clean, though their claim that they are giving him a new identity by freeing him from stories is undercut somewhat by the fact that their actions evoke the Christian sacrament of baptism while also alluding to the story of the anointing of Christ by Mary in John 12: 1-8. Patsy and Ada then co-create a new scene for themselves, again delivering their shared story in the present tense, as Walsh’s characters always do. In that story, they imagine having a life together: one that would give both of them what they want, which, in Patsy’s case, is certainty and in Ada’s is possibility. Things begin to unravel, however, when Patsy reveals that he is the son of Roller Royce, and that his mother was the Doris Day look-alike who distracted Roller from the competing claims of Breda and Clara. The baptism of Patsy is then ironically reconfigured when Breda pisses herself in response to Patsy’s revelation of his parentage: the masculine ritual of renewal is thus reimagined in terms of female incontinence. Patsy soon talks himself out of taking the opportunity to live with Ada: his fear of change causes him to flee. Like so many of Walsh’s characters, he shows himself to be too frightened to live in the real world of uncertainty and instead falls back on stories.
31 As the play concludes, Ada has created a new story, this time about herself and her abandonment by Patsy – and by now the power has shifted: where Ada dominated her sisters, now they dominate her. Ada’s story matches the sisters’ in crucial ways, with Ada being let down by the false promises of the son, just as Clara and Breda were let down by the father. So the story of the elder generation is visited upon the younger one, with the elder sisters taking the power, as symbolised by the fact that they finally have the cup of tea that they have craved throughout the play.
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32 It is clear that Walsh intends for this play to have wide-ranging impact and relevance, but it can also be placed in the specific context of its Irish premiere. With its discussion of the relationship between women’s bodies, imprisonment, and the use of discourse about sexuality as a means of surveillance and control, the play speaks directly to matters of Irish concern. Its premiere in 2008 coincided with the publication of the Ryan Report into the treatment of women and children in institutions run by the Catholic Church in Ireland – a theme explored more explicitly by such plays as Eclipsed (Patricia Burke Brogan, 1992) or Laundry (Anu Productions, 2011), and by films such as The Magdalene Sisters, which starred Eileen Walsh (whose breakthrough role was in the premiere of Walsh’s Disco Pigs). Walsh’s play should not be seen as a direct (or even indirect) treatment of those themes, but its characterisation of Irish women locked in a cycle of imprisonment and abuse certainly resonates with contemporary concerns. The New Electric Ballroom shows that traumas are never fully left behind; there is often a risk that they will merely be translated into something new that is derived from the same root cause. Irish audiences might choose to see a message from this theme: we cannot assume that the closure of the Magdalene Laundries means that the attitudes that caused them have been banished fully. As is shown by recent controversies about the Irish system of direct provision for asylum seekers, the country still finds reasons to limit the movement of vulnerable people, using the language of blame and authority to legitimise their imprisonment.
33 Stepping back further into Walsh’s career, it can be argued that The Walworth Farce also speaks to matters of contemporary concern, including both immigration and emigration. Yet is also can be seen as an attempt to write a play that deals with a very conventional Irish theme: the dramatization of a reversal of the natural order, whereby younger generations have to give way to older ones (instead of the other way around). We can see evidence of this theme in plays such as Synge’s The Shadow of the Glen (1903), in which an old man is left holding the stage, his young wife banished; it also can be detected more subtly in such plays as Brian Friel’s Philadelphia Here I Come! (1964) or Tom Murphy’s A Whistle in the Dark (1961). In this case, we find a father who attempts to force his two sons to atone for his own past sins. As in The New Electric Ballroom, we have in the character of Dinny (the father) a demented director figure who forces two others to enact a series of events from the past. Walsh’s stage directions tell us that the performance style resembles The Three Stooges but it is apparent that Dinny wants to believe that his story is, if not a reality, then certainly a representation of a truth. As he says to his son Sean, “the story doesn’t work if we don’t have the facts10”. The trauma that Dinny is trying to escape through his performance is that he murdered his brother and sister-in-law in a dispute about their mother’s will some twenty years earlier. As Dinny says, “the family routine keeps things safe” (p. 68), so for him the performance of the farce involves making a new routine that will allow him to retrieve the sense of safety he destroyed through his act of fratricide. When confronted with the accusation that the farce is not reality, Dinny says that “It’s my truth, [and] nothing else matters”. (p. 70)
34 The problem for Dinny, however, is that the real world repeatedly intrudes upon the performance. We see this in his discovery that Sean – whose job is to go to the local shop each day to purchase food that can be used as props in the performance – has brought home Ryvita rather than bread; and Dinny’s violent reaction to Sean’s mistaken purchase of sausage rather than chicken is shocking in performance. These
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intrusions multiply, each time making Dinny seem more unhinged, until the first act concludes with the arrival of a young black woman called Hayley. A Tesco checkout girl, Hayley appears to have formed an attachment to Sean and is perhaps using the opportunity to return his shopping as an excuse to get closer to him. And in doing so – by being kind, by seeking the possibility of love, by offering Sean redemption – she inadvertently ruins everything for Dinny and his sons.
35 As Nicholas Grene has pointed out, one of the most frequently used motifs in Irish drama is that of the stranger in the house – whereby an outsider figure arrives into a settled domestic environment and, through flaunting the conventions established in that environment, destabilises but ultimately renews it11. Hayley clearly fits into such a category, as indeed does Patsy in The New Electric Ballroom. She is a woman intruding into an all-male world, black where the others are white, English where the others are Irish and, perhaps most importantly, from the real city of London rather than the characters’ imagined version of Cork. Her presence makes Dinny’s stories unravel; it also provides Blake with the evidence that he needs to go through with his decision to kill Dinny.
36 In an Irish context, we can read Hayley’s presence back into Irish debates about race and citizenship. The Walworth Farce premiered in 2006, just a year after an Irish referendum withdrew the right to citizenship from parents of children born in Ireland. With the memories of that debate still fresh in everyone’s mind at the time of the play’s premiere, the arrival in the play of a black woman who disrupts an idealised story about Ireland was certainly provocative. Again this shows how Walsh’s plays are rooted in an Irish social context – even as they draw on and evoke other resonances and meanings.
37 A concern for the three men upon Haley’s arrival, however, is not whether to reject her but to consider how she can be assimilated into the performance. Dinny asks her two questions when she arrives: does she have the shopping and can she cook chicken? He has decided immediately that she can play the mother figure that the performance so badly needs. There is a problem though: as Dinny says, “You’re black. What are we going to do about that Maureen?” That is, he calls her not by her own name, but by the name of his absent wife. Dinny’s solution will be to whiten her face by using moisturiser; her age and nationality do not seem to require similar kinds of adjustment or disguise. Blake is more interested in Hayley’s gender than her race: he imitates her from the moment of her arrival and copies her “perfectly” according to Walsh’s stage directions. This initially might seem like his attempt to perform a female identity more realistically, but as we later discover, he is instead trying to contrive a situation that will result in his father’s death and Sean’s freedom. And at the play’s conclusion, in what is perhaps its most upsetting scene, Sean will cover his own face in brown shoe polish in order to act out Hayley’s part. That action calls to mind the history of racism that is inherent in western performance, evoking memories of minstrelsy and its relationship with Irish clowning and melodrama. But Sean’s use of blackface also has more immediate thematic consequences: what we see in the play is that the markers of identity that we may regard as inherent – which may, in fact, trap us – are not realities but performances: that is, they are presences that must be constantly re-asserted before an audience that is willing to believe in the reality of those markers12. We cannot change the fact of being born in one country rather than another, or being born one
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gender rather than another or of having one particular colour of skin – but the play is showing how none of those facts should determine our sense of how to live.
38 Shortly after her arrival, Hayley points out to the men how easy it is to get “stuck in a pattern” in a job like hers at Tesco. By doing so, she shows how Dinny’s lust for routine has real world correspondences: he is a fantastical figure but his desires are easy enough to identify with. So too is his desire to invent an Ireland in his own London living room, since that too gives him safety. Indeed, Walsh provides an overarching metaphor for the play in Blake’s story about being an astronaut (as retold by Sean): “Blake’s full of talk about being an astronaut. He’s read a book on it and knows some big words to do with space. He says he’d feel safe up there. He said if he got nervous he’d hide the Earth behind his thumb” (p. 58). The farce is a way for those men to hide the Earth behind their thumb. As a critique of Irish history, Irish performance and the representation of Irish culture – or, more precisely, the uses to which those things are put – The Walworth Farce has a devastating and harsh impact. But its dramatization of how easy it is for people to isolate themselves in the parochial because of their fear of the vastness of choice available now has universal importance.
39 The tragedy is that the sons cannot help repeating the past: as Dinny predicts, Sean is fated to become his own father. This happens when Blake kills Dinnny and then tricks Sean into killing him. Blake’s last action is to kiss his brother and say “Now go, love” (p. 81). That gesture repeats exactly their mother’s actions towards Dinny twenty years previously – so that, like his father, Sean has killed the brother that he loved and been forgiven by a female figure who wants him to be free. But instead of grasping that freedom, keeping faith with Blake’s act of love, Sean instead does what Dinny did. He slams the door of the flat shut and creates a new play, but this time with all of the roles played by himself alone: that is, he performs in five minutes the play that the audience has been watching for the previous two hours. “What are we… if we’re not out stories?” asks Dinny. Blake replies, “We’re the lost and the lonely” (p. 82). And that is the sadness of the play: Sean chooses to begin a new story to lose himself in rather than allowing himself to choose uncertainty and freedom.
40 Again this is a play that has multiple resonances and potential meanings: if its 2006 premiere seemed rooted in the context of the Irish citizenship revival, its first major Irish revival in 2015 seemed most responsive to the renewal of Irish emigration. Or put another way, the first production was contextualised by the movement of people into the country while the revival can be contextualised by the movement of people away from it. Here again we find evidence of the truth of Walsh’s theme: that history has a way of repeating itself, with minor (but telling) variations arising from one iteration to the next.
41 I have suggested above that the three plays under discussion can be seen in the context of contemporary Irish crises: that The Walworth Farce dramatized concerns about citizenship and emigration, that The New Electric Ballroom explored the issues of gender and imprisonment, and that Penelope can be seen as a response to the collapse of the Celtic Tiger period. I made the decision to begin with Penelope and work backwards because it is the play that most directly and explicitly seeks to respond to an actual Irish situation; the other two in contrast do so only implicitly. As Walsh told me at the 2013 Synge Summer School, he does not directly address matters of Irish life, but he cannot help being influenced by events that occur in his country. I believe it would be incorrect to state that The New Electric Ballroom is in any meaningful way “about” the
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closure of the Magdalene Laundries or the publication of the Ryan Report, but it must not be read in isolation from those events. The same is true of The Walworth Farce: it is not about the Irish citizenship referendum, but it can be located in the context of a culture’s attempts to come to terms with the mobility of people to and from Ireland. In this context, it is useful to be reminded that the premiere production of Penelope removed the story of the Magic Porridge Pot – because it was too directly relevant to the Celtic Tiger. These contextual elements are a starting point for the plays but they are not their primary concern or focus. My suggestion, therefore, is that specific Irish crises are the basis upon which Walsh writes plays that address the theme of crisis much more generally.
42 What these three plays have in common is a focus on the capacity of the individual to respond to moments of crisis. The businessmen in the pool in Penelope know that they are doomed; what matters is that they struggle to prevent their demise with play rather than falling into despair. The three sisters of The New Electric Ballroom and the three men in The Walworth Farce are traumatised by earlier crises but in their ultimate fate comes a warning: the moment when a governing illusion falls apart offers us the opportunity to break free – but it also provides the chance to create new illusions, new stories, that can entrap us anew. This is Walsh’s most valuable message for an Irish audience: on the surface, things may be different, but we always run the risk of repeating our stories (or our parents’ stories). His plays therefore come as a challenge to consider how damaging cycles can be broken, how traumas can be healed, how rituals can be brought to a conclusion.
43 Where the three plays have an international impact and relevance is in their articulation of a sense of the transformative power of the outsider (especially when that outsidedness relates to gendered differences). Patsy and Hayley open out to the trapped characters in the respective plays the chance to renew, to be free, to live in the “real world”; Penelope offers her suitors a literal salvation – albeit one that they are too self-absorbed to fully understand or grasp. Those opportunities are lost upon the plays’ other characters, who fail to see how difference can offer the potential for change.
44 Walsh’s plays can map readily onto Irish culture during the years of their composition and production. Ireland in 2006 (the year when The Walworth Farce appeared) was dominated by the Celtic Tiger period, which by 2008 (the year of The New Electric Ballroom’s premiere) had been revealed to be a mirage: a story that people believed in because they kept telling it to themselves, over and over again. Penelope offered some hope, however, in showing that the destruction of the story need not rule out the possibility of new forms of expression being created. What these plays do, in other words, is to remind Irish audiences of their country’s enduring capacity for myth- making in the face of crisis – for storytelling, for moving in endlessly recurrent cycles rather than linear development. These themes have broad resonances of course, and not just in Ireland – and this accounts for Walsh’s growing success internationally too. Yet as Ireland emerges from (yet another) crisis and faces into a period of re-imagining and re-inventing its identities (again), these plays challenge us to answer a question that Walsh’s characters never seem able to fully respond to: what are we if not our stories?
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NOTES
1. These remarks were made at the Synge Summer School, 2013, in a public interview that I conducted. 2. He confirmed this at the 2013 Synge Summer School. 3. Enda Walsh, Penelope, London, Nick Hern Books, 2010, p. 9. Subsequent references appear in parentheses in the text. 4. Peter Crawley, “Stage Struck”, Irish Times. The Ticket Supplement, 30 July 2010, p. 32. 5. Consider, for example, the characterization of Lenehan in the Wandering Rocks episode of the novel: his crude remarks about Molly make Bloom seem dignified by comparison. 6. Charlie McBride, “Enda Walsh: From the Odyssey to Penelope”, Galway Advertiser, 10 June 2010. [http://www.advertiser.ie/galway/article/27155]. 7. Aleks Sierz, “Waiting for Walsh”, The Stage, 4 February 2011. 8. Hilary Whitney, “Interview: Enda Walsh”, The Artsdesk.com, 4 February 2011. [http:// www.theartsdesk.com/theatre/interview-playwright-enda-walsh]. 9. Enda Walsh, The New Electric Ballroom, London, Nick Hern Books, 2008, p. 14. Subsequent references appear in parentheses in the text. 10. Enda Walsh, The Walworth Farce, London, Nick Hern, 2006, p. 14. Subsequent references appear in parentheses in the text. 11. This idea is developed in Nicholas Grene’s The Politics of Irish Drama, Cambridge University Press, 1999, passim. 12. The subject of Irish performances of blackface has been widely explored, most notably in Eric Lott’s Love and Theft (OUP, 1995).
ABSTRACTS
This article explores the theme of crisis in three plays by Enda Walsh: Penelope (2010), The New Electric Ballroom (2008) and The Walworth Farce (2006). By showing how Penelope directly addressed the collapse of the Celtic Tiger, the article identifies major themes that can help to understand Walsh’s work more generally. This is demonstrated by a discussion of the other two plays, which are placed in the context of events in Ireland before and after the collapse of its Celtic Tiger in 2008.
Cet article explore le theme de la crise dans trois pieces d’Enda Walsh: Penelope (2010), The New Electric Ballroom (2008) et The Walworth Farce (2006). En montrant comment Penelope traite directement de l’effondrement du Tigre celtique, l’article identifie d’autres thèmes majeurs qui peuvent contribuer à une meilleure compréhension de l’œuvre de Walsh en général. Ceci est
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démontré par une discussion des deux autres pièces qui sont resituées dans le contexte des événements en Irlande avant et après la mort du tigre celtique en 2008.
INDEX
Keywords: financial crisis, drama, emigration, influences/intertextuality, Walsh Enda Mots-clés: crise financière, émigration, théâtre, influences/intertextualité, Walsh Enda
AUTHOR
PATRICK LONERGAN National University of Ireland, Galway
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Comptes rendus de lecture Book Reviews
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A Chastened Communion: Modern Irish Poetry and Catholicism
Eamon Maher
RÉFÉRENCE
Andy AUGE, A Chastened Communion: Modern Irish Poetry and Catholicism, New York, Syracuse University Press, 2013, 288 p. ISBN 978 0 8156 3329 7.
1 In this most welcome and insightful book of essays, Andy Auge sets about analysing the role of Catholicism in the work of 7 modern Irish poets: Austin Clarke, Patrick Kavanagh, John Montague, Seamus Heaney, Eiléan NÍ Chuilleanáin, Paul Durcan and Paula Meehan. Clearly, you have in this choice a mixture of highly decorated figures, one a Nobel Laureate, and some less well-established voices, although all extremely well-established among the reading public. The overall impression given as one reads through the chapters is that the author has a genuine feeling for the Catholic sensibility of the writers which leads them to incorporate rituals, beliefs and practices from their religious background into their work. What is admirable also is the way in which each poet is situated in relation to the socio-religious context in which he/she wrote. Most would be what we describe as “lapsed Catholics” but, as is so often the case, the memories from the past nurtured their art and Catholicism was the language of their youth, something that could not be dispensed with lightly.
2 The Introduction sets out its stall in a clear manner, discussing the way in which Ireland has moved from being a very religious country to one where Catholicism is now “an increasingly endangered species”. The clerical abuse scandals have left their mark, as have the various Reports that emerged in their wake. 2009 is cited as the year when both the Ryan and the Murphy Reports were published, with disastrous consequences for the reputation of the Catholic Church. The Cloyne Report in 2011 added more fuel to an already overheated fire and it prompted an unprecedented attack in Dáil Éireann by An Taoiseach Enda Kenny, who accused the Vatican of frustrating “an inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic”. Coming as this did from a practicing Catholic and the
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leader of a centre-right party traditionally considered close to the Catholic Church, made Kenny’s intervention all the more remarkable and highlighted the hugely changed religious landscape in Ireland.
3 The poets dealt with in this study drew “imaginative sustenance” from the Catholic atmosphere in which they grew up, as Auge so correctly states:
4 However divergent their poetic styles may be, a common pattern persists: a demythologizing critique of some elemental feature of Irish Catholicism – the sacraments of confession and the Eucharist, the pilgrimages to holy wells and Lough Derg, the worshipping of relics and adoration of the Blessed Virgin, the imperative to self-sacrifice, the narrowly patriarchal nature of the institution – elicits, in turn, a radical reshaping of these traditional religious phenomena (3).
5 This analysis reveals a commentator who is well-attuned to his subject and who is capable of expressing his views in a clear, accessible and insightful manner. Reference is made to the way Joyce abandoned Catholicism to adopt the religion of art and yet continued to make use of his religious training in his work – quotes from Augustine abound in Joyce and his anti-clericalism was often more of a mask than a sincerely held belief. His real target was not so much the Catholic Church as the paralysis that it helped to induce in Irish people. Beckett’s comment about poetry being analogous to prayer is quoted and the author rightly points out how Catholicism formed part of the dominant culture of the poets and entered their artistic mindset almost by osmosis. So, this is a balanced and well-argued Introduction that sets the tone for what is to follow.
6 The individual chapters are very well researched and thought through. They begin by situating the poet and his/her background and influences. Often a theorist is invoked to enforce some point about the work. For example, Foucault is used to analyse Clarke and to a lesser extent Kavanagh, Jean-Luc Marion for Montague, Nietzsche and Derrida for Heaney, Levinas for NÍ Chuilleanáin, Bakhtin for Durcan, and so on. This works well in general, but one does have the impression at times that the theory is leading the analysis a bit too obviously. This is not meant to indicate that Auge is anything other than a skilled practitioner with a great understanding of both theory and text: it is just that there are places where the discussion becomes somewhat dense and impenetrable to this reader.
7 One major challenge for the collection that is also not completely overcome is to segue the various poets and the period during which they wrote. It is important that one chapter move seamlessly into the next and allow the reader to feel that s/he is not reading a book of essays that have little or nothing to do with each other. This is probably easier said than done, however, and the theme does provide an overarching narrative that is developed throughout. Nevertheless, there are still places where more cross-referencing of the poets and their approach could yield rich dividends and show differences as well as similarities in their approach. For example, the period separating Clarke and Meehan was seismic, and the Ireland in which both poets were brought up would have been completely different in terms of religious practice and socio-economic climate. Hence it would have been worthwhile to chart this development and the impact it wrought on the poetry of both writers.
8 But this is probably a moot point when one considers the imposing scholarship and classic insights that are contained in Auge’s commentary. This work is clearly the fruit of long reflection and study. The reading of the main texts by the poets is supplemented by a keen knowledge of the critical material available on them and the
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biographical and technical details that are so necessary to understand how they perfected their art. The chapters that caught my eye in particular were the ones on Heaney and Paul Durcan – the latter’s treatment of priests was a real discovery and convinces me of just how steeped Durcan is in Catholic culture and how fascinated he was with clerical stereotypes, many of whom he turns into figures of fun. With Heaney, it was a more visceral attachment, as can be seen from the following extract quoted in the Introduction.
9 Far from being deprived of religion in my youth, I was oversupplied. I lived with, and to some extent lived by, divine mysteries: the sacrifice of the Mass, the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, the forgiveness of sin, the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come, the whole disposition of the cosmos from celestial to infernal, the whole supernatural population, the taxonomy of virtues and vices and so on (2).
10 Reading these lines, one is reminded of just how precious a reference Heaney was when it came to charting religious sensibility in Ireland. His poetry flowed out of his native Derry, the rituals of the farm, his parents’ simple faith, the commitment to doing the small things well and leaving the big things to God. Auge has an excellent feel for Heaney and for all the other poets he deals with in the essays. Time does not unfortunately allow a more indepth discussion of the individual chapters of this fine book. I will conclude simply by saying that anyone with even a passing interest in modern Irish poetry and its links to Catholicism will find in Auge’s book much satisfaction, information and enjoyment. The Catholic angle is shown to be an essential component of what the poets strive to achieve. A Chastened Communion is the first study of its kind and it will be the template on which further scholars who come to explore this fascinating area would do well to follow and attempt to emulate. Syracuse deserve great credit for the extremely high production quality of the book, which does credit to the fine traditions of this Press.
AUTEURS
EAMON MAHER National Centre for Franco-Irish Studies, IT Tallaght, Dublin
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Irish Culture and Wartime Europe
Bertrand Cardin
RÉFÉRENCE
Dorothea DEPNER, Guy WOODWARD (eds). Irish Culture and Wartime Europe, 1938-1948, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2015, 205 p. ISBN 978 1 84682 562 0
1 Cet ouvrage collectif propose d’analyser les effets de la Seconde Guerre mondiale sur la littérature et la culture irlandaises. Les treize articles qui le composent s’intéressent à des écrivains irlandais (Samuel Beckett, Patrick Kavanagh, Francis Stuart, Kate O’Brien, Louis McNeice), mais également non-irlandais (Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh ou W. G. Sebald), voire à d’autres catégories d’artistes, comme le peintre Nevill Johnson.
2 Il vise à montrer que l’isolationnisme de l’Irlande des années 1940 n’était que politique et que le monde artistique, au contraire, entretenait un dialogue fertile avec l’étranger. Cette théorie remet en cause le grand récit de la neutralité de l’Irlande en tout domaine, et atteste du décalage entre les sphères politico-diplomatique et culturelle. Parallèlement à une attitude de repli sur soi manifestée par les autorités, un réseau complexe d’échanges interculturels se tissait entre l’Irlande, la Grande-Bretagne et l’Europe continentale.
3 L’ouvrage a le mérite d’analyser le dialogue culturel de l’époque non seulement à travers les œuvres, mais aussi, de manière alternative, à l’aide d’archives jusqu’à maintenant peu exploitées, comme les manuscrits, les correspondances ou les journaux intimes, lesquels laissent transparaître les réflexions personnelles des écrivains. Ces sources permettent de (re)lire les productions à la lumière des expériences de leurs auteurs en un contexte de guerre.
4 Les réactions de ces artistes face au conflit sont, de façon plus ou moins explicite, comparées à celles d’artistes étrangers vivant en Irlande durant ces années. De la même façon, les comportements des écrivains en réponse à cette situation particulière se distinguent selon leur religion. Dans sa préface, R. F. Foster remarque que, face aux événements, les écrivains irlandais de souche protestante témoignèrent d’un
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engagement sans ambiguïté, contrairement à leurs homologues de tradition catholique et nationaliste. Bien sûr, les réactions d’artistes nord-irlandais (Louis McNeice en particulier) sont inévitablement mises en lien avec leurs prises de position lors des conflits qui les affectèrent plus directement, que ce soit avant ou après la Seconde Guerre. De telles approches donnent lieu à une réflexion stimulante sur l’articulation entre production artistique, Histoire et société.
5 Inspiré d’un colloque intitulé “Writing Home: Irish Culture and Wartime Europe, 1938-1948”, organisé à Trinity College Dublin en 2013, cet ouvrage est publié sous la direction de deux titulaires d’un doctorat de ce même établissement. Sans doute est-ce la raison pour laquelle neuf contributeurs sur treize sont issus de cette université. Outre un auteur nord-irlandais, seulement trois auteurs d’articles sont extérieurs à l’Irlande (Angleterre, Autriche et Bosnie). Il est regrettable que les nationalités des contributeurs ne soient pas plus diversifiées. En égard à la thématique générale de l’ouvrage, une plus large représentativité de chercheurs d’Europe continentale eut été souhaitable. L’échange de points de vue en eut été d’autant enrichi.
6 De la même façon, outre Kate O’Brien dont l’œuvre fait l’objet d’un chapitre, tous les écrivains étudiés ici sont des hommes. Il eut été bienvenu à cet égard, et pertinent sur le plan scientifique, d’inclure un chapitre sur la production littéraire d’Elizabeth Bowen, écrivaine irlandaise qui s’impliqua si activement lors du conflit qu’elle fut soupçonnée d’espionnage. Bowen est évoquée à plusieurs reprises et citée dans la préface, mais de façon insuffisante. Or, la présence d’un article sur son œuvre eut été tout à fait justifiée dans un ouvrage comme celui-ci.
7 Indépendamment de ces réserves, cette étude est passionnante et d’une lecture très agréable. Elle permet de revisiter une décennie culturellement riche et, selon les termes de R. F. Foster, de « découvrir un territoire imaginaire resté trop longtemps inexploré ».
AUTEURS
BERTRAND CARDIN Université de Caen Normandie
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Essays on James Clarence Mangan
Claude Fierobe
RÉFÉRENCE
Sinéad STURGEON (ed.), Essays on James Clarence Mangan, The Man in the Cloak, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, XVI + 242 p., ISBN 978 1 137 27337 6.
1 Au début un poème de Paul Muldoon « A Night on the Tiles With J. C. Mangan » suivi d’une préface tonique de J. Chuto – Mangan n’est pas seulement the « Nameless One » mais aussi the « Dispossessed One » – à la fin une passionnante postface où Ciaran Carson, évoque la « ghostly presence » de Mangan qui hante son roman Exchange Place (2012). Dans ce cadre, dix essais de haute tenue, sans exception, qui balaient et balisent une œuvre protéiforme. Pour David Lloyd la traduction d’un poème de Uhland (« Auf der Überfahrt », devenu « Spirits Everywhere ») est à la fois « a form of possession or necromancy », et une réflexion sur le travail du traducteur. Sur le même sujet, David Wheatley montre le danger de priver de sa complexité une œuvre plus centrifuge que centripète qui échappe au schéma binaire « Irish/English », et fait émerger « the polyglot energies dormant in any language ». « Night Singer : Mangan Among the Birds » (S. Sturgeon) : romantisme et rossignol, mais aussi perroquet et corbeau, tous deux images du traducteur, le premier se contentant de répéter mais à sa manière bien à lui, le second pillant le bien d’autrui. Dans les « psychological narratives », Richard Haslam explore les modes du surnaturel, « the phantasmagoria of the mind », à travers le prisme irlandais de l’ironie romantique. Souvent décrit comme « existing in, or haunted by, ancient Ireland », Mangan doit, selon Joseph Lennon, être situé dans le contexte culturel plus vaste d’une véritable vision, « distinguishing an Irish past to create an Irish future ». Allant encore plus loin, Cóilin Parsons écoute une voix qui, à l’instar de Goethe et de la Weltliteratur, certes avec des différences, vise à saisir la totalité du monde « in all its glorious and gruesome reality ». Dans Ulysses Stephen Dedalus est peint « in the gothic shadow of Mangan’s restless ghost », écrit John McCourt : Mangan est un « internal exile », à la fois emblème et victime de son pays, écrivain si novateur que même Joyce « struggled to keep up with him ». Au sein des débats contemporains sur les pouvoirs respectifs de la
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science et du spiritualisme, Anne Jamison étudie la « spiritualist vastation » d’un homme fasciné par figure du magicien et par le surnaturel, pour qui la réalité n’est sans doute qu’une illusion. Vu la complexité déroutante d’une œuvre qui échappe à toute orthodoxie, Sean Ryder (« Unauthorized Mangan ») conclut : « Every edition is a construct… The fantasy of getting back to the original is absurd in a fundamental sense » : à chacun son Mangan. Dans « Mangan in England », Matthew Campbell dresse un parallèle convaincant entre Browning et Mangan, « writing a contorted art in terrible times », pour révéler, dans le contexte victorien, le sens profond de la marginalité d’un poète qui, sous le masque de « Selber » dans « Twenty Golden Years ago », se disait « tortured torturer of reluctant rhymes ».
2 Rappelant les acquis et ouvrant en même temps de nouvelles perspectives, ce recueil d’essais fait honneur à Sinéad Sturgeon et aux auteur(e)s. Bibliographie, index et notes le complètent pour constituer un remarquable outil de travail. Sur la couverture d’une élégante reliure, verte bien sûr, se détache l’énigmatique silhouette noire de « l’homme à la cape », comme une invitation à s’aventurer plus loin, en sa compagnie, dans un territoire où beaucoup reste à découvrir.
AUTEURS
CLAUDE FIEROBE Université de Reims Champagne-Ardennes
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Hooleygan: Music, Mayhem and Good Vibrations
Tim Heron
RÉFÉRENCE
Terri HOOLEY, Richard SULLIVAN, Hooleygan: Music, Mayhem and Good Vibrations, Belfast, Blackstaff, 2010, 234 p. ISBN 978 0 85640 851 9
1 First published in 2010, two years before the release of the film Good Vibrations film which was based on Terry Hooley’s life and which renewed interest in Northern Ireland’s 1970s punk scene, Hooleygan: Music, Mayhem, Good Vibrations is a biography written by journalist Richard Sullivan and is based on his conversations with Terri Hooley and his entourage. The book begins with an account of how Hooley acquired his glass eye: when he was six years old, a stray toy arrow shot by a neighbour blinded him in his left eye, and as the young boy climbed into the ambulance, the Hank Williams song “I Saw the Light” played in his mind. The tale of the accident brings together the two factors that would define Hooley’s life: his status as an outsider and a passion for popular music. As the son of a church-going Methodist and an English socialist, the one-eyed eccentric never identified with the sectarian politics of the loyalist East Belfast street he grew up in or with that of Northern society at large. While the first chapters of the book deal with Hooley’s life before the onset of the Troubles – his first sexual encounters, his involvement with various 1960s counter-culture groups and the drugs and sex parties where he acted as DJ – the central chapters are devoted to the 1970s and 1980s, by which time hippie optimism had given way to a climate of increased sectarianism. Hooley, who identified fully with neither side of the Northern Ireland conflict, concentrated on his passion for music. In 1977, despite the volatility of inner Belfast, he opened up a record shop, Good Vibrations, in the centre of the city. It soon became one of the focal points of the North’s burgeoning punk scene, which helped bring young people together regardless of their religious or class background. Hooley also started a record label on which the singles of some of the scene’s most
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important bands were released and which came to the attention of the wider world of punk music, but failed to attract the commercial success that the bands had hoped for – the Undertones being the notable exception. The rest of the book charts the flagging fortunes of his various record shops and music projects while stressing his continuing love of music and unfaltering embrace of the rock’n’roll lifestyle.
2 In the introduction to Hooleygan, Glen Patterson writes that “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth only applies in a court of law. The unlikely, the improbable, the frankly incredible, are acceptable if the punch line is good enough”. This may make for a compelling story, but recourse to such literary license is problematic, especially when applied to the highly collaborative punk scene. The back cover states that Hooley is the “undisputed Godfather of Punk” in Northern Ireland, and the biography, along with the 2012 Good Vibrations film, give credence to that narrative. The focus on Hooley’s involvement in the world of music occasionally runs the risk of diverting from the contribution of other key facilitators and of playing down the agency of the young punks themselves. However, there is no denying that Terry Hooley played a crucial role by championing the Northern punk scene and by putting his energy, his contacts, and his material and financial resources at the disposal of young bands, often with the awareness that it was not in the interest of business. Besides, the book’s tendency to overplay the part played by its antihero as well as its colourful tales of drug- and alcohol-fuelled parties, encounters with rock icons and fisticuffs are well-established within the genre of rock biography. What sets Hooleygan apart is the way in which the realities of the Troubles and of the North’s peripheral nature are shown to intersect with and complicate the usual challenges faced by actors of the music world: efforts such as organizing a festival, finding a venue, managing a band, going on tour or dealing with the barons of the music industry become significantly more difficult when one has to deal with sectarian tensions, hostile local authorities, security forces and paramilitaries. But this is no grim account of the Northern conflict: on the whole, Richard Sullivan has managed to capture Terri Hooley’s buoyancy and charisma – no easy feat when considering his idiosyncratic speech pattern and the fact that his anecdotes are best told in person – but what truly brings Hooley to life are the short interstitial testimonies written by a range of people associated with the North’s music scene, which act as a chorus and as a counterweight to the larger-than-life voice that sometimes threatens to become overpowering, and which remind the reader that Hooleygan is at its heart a love letter to music and to Belfast.
AUTEURS
TIM HERON Université de Reims-Champagne Ardennes
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Undoing Time: The Life and Work of Samuel Beckett
Thierry Robin
RÉFÉRENCE
Jennifer BIRKETT, Undoing Time: The Life and Work of Samuel Beckett, Sallins, Irish Academic Press, 2015, XII + 226 p., ISBN: 978 0 7165 3290 3.
1 This new monograph by Jennifer Birkett, Emeritus Professor of French Studies at the University of Birmingham, explores the paradox inherent in the concept of “undoing time” in Beckett’s work. While “doing one’s time” initially refers to jail slang to describe prisoners waiting for the moment when they are released, with Beckett, every man has to do his time on Earth, oscillating between tedium and suffering, waiting more or less eagerly or consciously for the liberation that is death, like Krapp’s “intense longing for death: ‘drowned in dreams and burning to be gone’” in Krapp’s Last Tape, (132). Birkett though is not satisfied with this univocal claustrophobic dark reading of Beckett. She highlights the converse process of undoing time in his writings. To do so, she looks chronologically, in seven chapters, at Beckett’s poetry, novels, shorter prose, theatrical works and then again shorter dramatic works to identify a refining process in Beckett’s treatment of time and failure. Her book investigates Beckett’s collaboration with the BBC Radio and Television – in chapter 7 – as well as his bash at cinema with Alan Schneider in Film in 1967.
2 Negation, substraction, alongside a fierce lucid sense of humour – as in Molloy or Endgame – are Beckett’s best known weapons. These, Birkett posits, allow readers to “enter […] into a different understanding of not what, but how it is to be human” (1). By writing about futility and exhaustion, Beckett defeats, “dilates” time, turning failure into play, impasses into inner journeys, even verging on the lyrical towards the end of his life as in Ohio Impromptu.
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3 Though chapter one – inevitably dealing with the Joycean father figure – and the coda focus more on biographical data, quoting from James Knowlson’s work, the great bulk of Birkett’s study aims to outline Beckett’s singular innovative stance on the postwar literary scene. She shows the enduring Irishness of Beckett’s work despite his aversion to realist details. The notion of gender often proves apt. As Birkett notes “the figure of the Mouth [in Not I] was […] inspired by the many bent old women who staggered along the country roads of Ireland” (146). She pays special attention to women characters in plays, as in Happy Days, Footfalls or Not I and insists on the real women Beckett encountered throughout his life, from Suzanne Déchevaux-Dumesnil – his wife –, Barbara Bray – BBC script editor, translator, critic and lover – to Billie Whitelaw – his “perfect actress”. Finally, this study focuses on reception, especially theatrical reception, developing the taunting bourgeois figure of the “thousand-arsed Spectator” (123) that Beckett disliked but gradually grew indifferent to, concentrating on the increasingly choreographic minimalist forms he could give to his work.
4 In this thorough yet concise academic survey, the reader will find a readable introduction to Beckett’s philosophy. Life is nothing doing, “even dying is a form of bluff” (128).
AUTEURS
THIERRY ROBIN Université de Brest, UBO
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East German Intelligence and Ireland
Christophe Gillissen
RÉFÉRENCE
Jérôme AAN DE WIEL, East German Intelligence and Ireland, 1949-90: Espionage, terrorism and diplomacy, Manchester, Manchester UP, 2015, XIV + 313 p., ISBN 978 0 7190 9073 8
1 En 1989, à la veille de l’implosion de la République démocratique allemande, sa police politique – la « Stasi » – comptait plus de 91 000 agents, et si ses archives furent partiellement détruites en 1990, il en demeure encore 158 km linéaires, sans compter les milliers de sacs de documents déchirés que des volontaires recomposent petit à petit. Les anciens de la Stasi ont beau jeu d’affirmer que tout cela n’était qu’« un jeu d’enfant » comparé aux pratiques de la NSA mises en lumière par Edward Snowden (p. 107). Sans chercher à minimiser les dérives affolantes des services de renseignement à l’heure d’internet et de la lutte contre le terrorisme, au nom de laquelle bien des libertés sont bradées, c’est oublier un peu vite les 173 000 agents non-officiels de la Stasi, c’est-à-dire des informateurs recrutés bon gré mal gré pour surveiller leurs proches, qui firent de la rda une société conforme aux prédictions les plus pessimistes d’Orwell.
2 Il n’en demeure pas moins que le fonds d’archives de la Stasi est une véritable aubaine pour les chercheurs. Jérôme aan de Wiel, dont le savoir-faire en matière d’archives n’est plus à démontrer, est le premier à l’avoir exploité dans le domaine des études irlandaises. L’ouvrage est organisé en deux temps : la première partie propose une histoire des relations entre la RDA et l’Irlande, nord et sud, tandis que la seconde s’attache aux enjeux liés au renseignement.
3 Le résultat est passionnant à bien des égards. Jusqu’aux années 1960, Dublin ne chercha pas à établir de relations avec l’Allemagne de l’Est. Outre le contexte de la Guerre froide et le peu d’enthousiasme pour le communisme en Irlande, les pressions de la
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République fédérale allemande en faveur de la réunification ne pouvaient avoir qu’un écho favorable à Dublin, où la partition fut longtemps un enjeu central. Le gouvernement irlandais adhéra ainsi à la doctrine Hallstein, par laquelle les autorités de Bonn s’érigeaient en seuls représentants légaux de l’Allemagne et menaçaient de rompre leurs relations avec tout Etat qui reconnaîtrait la RDA. En outre, Londres s’inquiétait des possibilités d’infiltration d’agents est-allemands basés à Dublin, qui pourraient profiter de la libre circulation des personnes entre les deux îles. Si l’Irlande en soi n’était pas une priorité pour les autorités est-allemandes, la soif de reconnaissance internationale les amena à presser Dublin en vue d’inaugurer des relations diplomatiques. Cela fut fait en 1980, au terme du rapatriement de la dépouille de Frank Ryan. Membre de l’ira, il avait combattu en Espagne lors de la guerre civile, avant d’être capturé puis livré aux services de renseignements allemands, qui cherchèrent à l’utiliser pour déstabiliser l’Irlande du Nord. En 1944, il mourut d’une pneumonie à Dresde, où il fut enterré.
4 Dans les années qui suivirent il y eut quelques tentatives de la part de ses proches pour rapatrier son corps, afin qu’il soit enterré en Irlande. Les autorités est-allemandes y furent initialement favorables, au vu de l’engagement de Ryan du côté républicain en Espagne, mais les méandres de son parcours refroidirent leurs ardeurs. Au bout du compte, sa dépouille fut rapatriée et inhumée à Glasnevin Cemetary, le 21 juin 1979. Les contacts officiels noués à ce moment aboutirent peu après à l’inauguration de relations diplomatiques entre deux Etats que tout semblait opposer, hormis un intérêt partagé pour le conflit en Irlande du Nord.
AUTEURS
CHRISTOPHE GILLISSEN Université de Caen Normandie
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Ireland’s Harp
Erick Falc’her-Poyroux
RÉFÉRENCE
Mary Louise O’DONNELL, Ireland’s Harp: The Shaping of Irish Identity c.1770 to 1880, Dublin, UCD Press, 2014, x + 162 p., ISBN 978 1 906359 86 7.
1 This collection of research articles on extremely varied topics examines different aspects of the history of the harp during the 18th and 19th centuries, and how the instrument came to be a major signifier of Ireland and Irishness. It is richly illustrated with two sets of 8 pages in colour, and additional black and white documents inserted in the text, and also includes an index of names.
2 Mary Louise O’Donnell, the author, is a harp player and a researcher with a respectable list of publications on Irish music to her credit, and a PhD from the University of Limerick under the supervision of Prof. Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, presented in 2009.
3 The achievement of this book in placing Irish music in context cannot be over-stated: in one single volume, the author manages to cover more than 150 years of the history of harps in Ireland, from musical, iconographic and symbolic points of view. Mary Louise O’Donnell suggests that the harp became detached from its Gaelic tradition as it became linked to Protestant nationalism and gradually evolved into a symbol of colonial heritage, an idea reiterated throughout the book. The main thesis of the author, linking Irish politics and music and considered at length in the first chapter, leads the author to posit that the harp was “employed as an iconographic and metaphoric tool of the coloniser”, losing its musical voice in the process, in favour of an iconographic and metaphoric voice. An important portion of the book is also devoted to the musical and commercial innovations proposed by John Egan, the 19th-century harp- maker who, almost single-handedly, managed to modernise the harp in Ireland and save it from oblivion. Several other chapters deal with emblematic figures such as 19th- century harpers Patrick Byrne and Matthew Walls, with George IV’s visit to Ireland in 1821, or with Daniel O’Connell’s use of the harp and harpers from 1829 on.
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4 Still, some questions remain after reading this book : the issue of continuity and change in particular, and what Mary Louise O’Donnell means exactly by “Irish harp”, has been analysed in detail by Siobhán Armstrong in a long review in the Journal of Music, and it will not be necessary to underline here again the limitations of this study in this regard. I am however more concerned with analyses based on the idea that “From the fifteenth century onwards […] various decrees were issued to execute harpers and destroy their instruments”, when recent research has shown that such a vision was mostly a 20th-century nationalist construct and re-writing of Irish history.
5 But overall, the idea of the book, i.e. to explain why and how “the harp’s metaphoric significance eclipsed its musical one”, is an excellent one, even if not completely achieved, and there is undoubtedly room for many more volumes on the links between politics and music in 19th-century Ireland.
AUTEURS
ERICK FALC’HER-POYROUX Université de Nantes
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Traditional Music and Irish Society
Erick Falc’her-Poyroux
RÉFÉRENCE
Martin DOWLING, Traditional Music and Irish Society – Historical perspectives, Farnham, 2014, XVII + 350 p., ISBN 978 1 4724 6098 1.
1 A very personal book by an “outsider” can also constitute an exciting and novel approach to Irish music, combining different disciplines such as history, sociology, musicology, philosophy and, in this case, first and foremost, socio-economics. And this has to be the first book I have read which considers the social history of Irish music in an economic context, with great success and in a very readable style.
2 Martin Dowling, a fiddle player from the USA, belongs to the soaring number of performers who have gained academic training and gone out of their way to make Irish music a respectable subject in academic circles. As such, he laments in the introduction the almost complete disregard for traditional Irish music in the major explorations of Irish society and culture published in the eighties and nineties by authors such as T. Browne, L. Gibbons, B. Fallon, H. White or R. Pine.
3 The book then goes on to offer a broad panorama of the musical tradition of Ireland in the making, mostly from the 18th century to today in five thoroughly-researched and well-documented chapters, drawing on painstaking exploration of forgotten archives like the minutes of the Feis Ceoil Executive Committee meetings or the archives of original Gaelic Leaguer Eoin MacNeill.
4 The first three chapters probably represent the most consistent feature of his multi- faceted research, starting with the reconstruction of a musical tradition by the elites, through a careful assessment of the inchoate nature of the historical narrative of Irish traditional music, then follows an analysis of the impact of the Act of Union on musical practice and class delineations; the third chapter is a minute description of the tensions at work during the cultural revival between the Gaelic League and Feis Ceoil
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movements, with a general view to explaining how “traditional music evolved as response to […] economic change and the transformation of social life”.
5 The last two chapters of the book might not seem as well connected to this initial narrative, but the meticulous and convincing pages on James Joyce’s relationship with music and the revival movement bring to life the actual context of these formative decades, as did in the second chapter the portrayal of Mrs Delany, a major female figure of the Anglo-Irish elite in the 18th century.
6 The book closes on the author’s personal account and recollections of Northern Ireland’s trad scene in the eighties and nineties, and the deep connections between culture and politics that run beneath the surface, in particular in Belfast, where fragmented Protestant identities intensified rather than simplified the challenge of cultural reconciliation after the sixties.
7 Like most books on Irish music, Traditional Music and Irish Society necessarily lies at a crossroads, and appears torn between musicology and cultural studies. What is new here, however, is the feeling that Martin Dowling has gone one step further than his predecessors in the deconstruction of a tradition, with an unembarrassed Marxist approach, the first of its kind for Irish music: the simple juxtaposition of the words modernity and tradition in the introduction will remind us of Hobsbawm and Ranger’s classic “The Invention of Tradition” in 1983; freshness also appears throughout the book in the form of an analysis of the class issue, from the reconstruction of the musical tradition by the elites and their speculations on the validity of the peasantry as a reliable source to the more classic study of social classes in Joyce’s ‘The Dead’; and themes barely touched upon could easily be explored even further, such as the “process of identification based on consumption rather than production”, or the distinctively dialectical “culture as both a problem and solution” and the concept of “authentic inauthenticity”.
8 The absence of a general conclusion was my only disappointment when reading this book which nonetheless marks a turning point in the study of Irish music and we can only hope that, following such a significant contribution, academics around the world will prove the author wrong and “really engage with the importance of Irish music in Irish studies”.
AUTEURS
ERICK FALC’HER-POYROUX Université de Nantes
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Sexual Politics in Modern Ireland
Nathalie Sebbane
RÉFÉRENCE
Jennifer REDMOND, Sonja TIERNAN, Sandra MCAVOY, Mary MCAULIFFE (eds.), Sexual Politics in Modern Ireland, Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2015, 190 p. ISBN 978 0 71653 284 2.
1 Publié en 2015 par Irish Academic Press, Sexual Politics in Modern Ireland est un ouvrage collectif dirigé par quatre universitaires, historiennes des femmes et membres du réseau WHAI (Women’s History Association of Ireland). Comme d’autres ouvrages similaires, cette publication fait suite à un colloque organise par WHAI en 2011 à University College, Cork.
2 S’inscrivant dans la lignée et l’héritage de l’ouvrage pionnier de Margaret McCurtian publié en 1978, Women In Irish Society : The Historical Dimension, les essais de ce livre analysent l’inscription du corps féminin dans le discours sur la sexualité en Irlande, du dix-neuvième siècle à nos jours.
3 Dans un contexte politique qui a fait la lumière sur les aspects les plus sombres et dissimulés de l’histoire irlandaise - les Magdalen Laundries et Mother and Baby Homes, entre autres - les historiennes et historiens des femmes jouent désormais un rôle politique essentiel, non seulement en révélant l’ampleur du silence autour des questions de genre et sexualité mais également en prenant une part active aux combats législatifs.
4 Cet ouvrage répertorie quelques exemples de l’évolution de la politisation des discours autour du corps féminin et des comportements sexuels.
5 S’appuyant sur de nouvelles sources et méthodologies, Sexual Politics in Modern Ireland, ouvre un nouveau champ de connaissances sur les expériences personnelles de femmes restées marginalisées.
6 Les chapitres sur les relations lesbiennes au sein des prisons et sur l’intersexualité remettent en cause la lecture héteronormative du discours sur la sexualité, en
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interrogeant le lien entre sexualité, genre et identité. Ils posent également la question de la sexualité comme forme de dissidence.
7 La correspondance échangée par un couple de la bourgeoisie anglo-irlandaise avant leur mariage, dans le chapitre de Maeve O’Riordan, bouleverse les codes et les schémas victoriens de la femme pure et vierge, en révélant des échanges explicites qui traduisent désir et passion, physiques et émotionnels.
8 La manière dont l’alcoolisme était perçu au XIXe siècle révèle également qu’une double norme s’appliquait selon qu’il s’agissait de femmes ou d’hommes. La consommation excessive d’alcool représentait un danger moral et était souvent associé à la prostitution. Le chapitre de Conor Reidy examine le placement des femmes dans des institutions comme le State Inebriate Reformatory of Ireland, en s’appuyant sur des archives, pour montrer comment le processus de réforme morale était engagé et mis en œuvre pour contrôler l’intégrité physique et morale d’individus dont les comportements remettaient en cause l’ordre moral.
9 La quasi-obsession de l’Irlande post-indépendante par les pratiques sexuelles a fait du corps féminin l’objet et le lieu de la transgression. Le chapitre de Jennifer Redmond sur l’émigration des femmes, rend compte de la manière dont la femme émigrée était perçue à la fois comme vulnérable mais également pécheresse et soumise à toutes les tentations. La question de l’illégitimité était une préoccupation dominante de l’État Libre et, à ce titre, l’émigration spécifique des irlandaises célibataires ne faisait que renforcer les inquiétudes des hiérarchies religieuses, catholiques et protestantes.
10 Cet ouvrage offre un éclairage très pertinent sur la politisation du corps féminin et les discours sur la sexualité. En abordant de nouvelles problématiques et en utilisant de nouvelles sources, il remet en question une lecture de l’histoire nationale qui a passé sous silence les expériences des femmes et leur exploration d’une sexualité marginalisée. Il s’inscrit dans une mouvance historique qui tend à rendre aux femmes leur place à part entière dans le discours national.
AUTEURS
NATHALIE SEBBANE Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3
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A Formative Decade: Ireland in the 1920s
Steven O’Connor
RÉFÉRENCE
Mel FARRELL, Jason KNIRCK, Ciara MEEHAN (eds), A Formative Decade: Ireland in the 1920s, Sallins, Irish Academic Press, 2015, XII + 257 p., ISBN 978 0 7165 3281 1.
1 This collection of ten essays seeks to shed new light on the politics and political culture of the first decade of independent Ireland, from 1922 to 1932, and it makes an excellent companion to the 1999 collection of essays, Ireland in the 1930s. As pointed out by the editors in their introduction, the historiography of Irish politics in the 1920s concentrates overwhelmingly on the War of Independence (1919-1921) and the Civil War (1922-1923), leaving much terrain unexplored. While this volume does not claim to be comprehensive, it certainly succeeds in making an original and revitalising contribution to a much neglected area of study.
2 The volume is notable for the diversity of topics covered and for the number of essays which address gaps in the historiography. The opening chapter by Ciara Meehan takes a sample of election posters, in order to examine the nature of Irish political discourse during the decade. This chapter is richly illustrated with six posters from Cumann na nGaedheal, the party which governed the Irish Free State during the 1920s. Although it is a pity that none of Fianna Fail’s posters are reproduced. Meehan argues that while Cumann na nGaedheal’s posters grew more creative as the decade progressed, their concentration on attacking Fianna Fáil betrayed the party’s desperation as the electoral threat from Fianna Fáil grew. The posters are visually arresting and they reinforce Meehan’s point that they were conversation starters in a way that modern election posters, with their uniform headshots of candidates, utterly fail to achieve. New ground is also covered in essays on the Farmers’ Party, the work of the Irish Senate, the politicisation of the Shannon Hydroelectric Scheme by Cumann na nGaedheal and the tensions between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland surrounding
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the centenary celebration of Catholic emancipation in 1929 and the 1500th anniversary of St. Patrick’s arrival in Ireland in 1932. Moreover, Justin Dolan Stover’s contribution traces the shifting discourse on loyalty during the Irish revolution and the early years of the Free State.
3 The volume also offers new perspectives on existing topics, such as the 1923 Land Act, the origins of Fianna Fáil and the treatment of the Catholic minority by the Northern Ireland state. Significantly, Mel Farrell’s re-evaluation of Cumann na nGaedheal demonstrates that from its inception the party regarded itself as a cross-class “national party”. He also challenges the idea that by absorbing the remnants of the Irish Parliamentary Party, Cumann na nGaedheal became a reincarnation of John Redmond’s party. Farrell points out that both Cumann na nGaedheal and Fianna Fáil attracted former Home Rulers and that in their structures and methods both parties were influenced by previous nationalist movements. Overall, this volume makes an important contribution to our understanding of Irish politics in the 1920s and it will stimulate further research into the early decades of Irish independence.
AUTEURS
STEVEN O’CONNOR Trinity College Dublin
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After the Titanic
David Charles Rose
RÉFÉRENCE
Stephen ENNISS, After the Titanic: A Life of Derek Mahon, Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 2014. XX + 329 p. ISBN 978 0 7171 6441 7.
1 If the essence of drama is conflict, then the life of Derek Mahon as presented to us by Stephen Enniss has indeed been a dramatic one. In this reading, there scarcely seems to have been a conflict in which Mahon has not been a protagonist: conflict with his Belfast upbringing, conflict with employers, conflict with women, conflict with friends, conflict with writer’s block, conflict with publishers, conflict with alcohol, even conflict with conflict where Mahon opts for non serviam on the Northern Irish Troubles. But if this is a story of αγωνία, it is not told by a Homer. Enniss appears to have compiled his tale from index cards, some full, others only containing a phrase, as he tries to reconstruct Mahon from the recollections of his contemporaries and the manuscript material that as Emory University’s Librarian, he acquired for that institution before moving on to become Director of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas – Austin, self-described as “a place of unlimited discovery”.
2 Unlimited discovery is not, however, Enniss’s forte. Rarely stepping outside his theme of unremitting conflict, he is content to burrow within it, finding a few veins of ore with which he wishes to enrich his narrative. The most substantial of these is his fastening upon an incident when as an undergraduate with drink taken, Mahon jumped into the Liffey. To this Shelleian moment, Enniss returns many a time and oft, as if repetition alone can invest it with significance. Indeed, Enniss privileges drowning before all other experiences, as the title of his book conveys. Why, of all Mahon’s poem titles, did Enniss chose this one? He might have called the book Night-Crossing or Beyond Howth Head or Harbour Lights – many of Mahon’s titles would sit well as prefixing “A Life of Derek Mahon”. “After the Titanic” evokes images and associations that are all gloomy, from Hardy’s “The Convergence of the Twain (Lines on the loss of the Titanic)” to Adorno’s dictum “after Auschwitz no poetry1” to Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s “The
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Sinking of the Titanic”, and appears to be there only because it serves Enniss’s overarching aim of interpreting Mahon’s life as a series of drownings.
3 Mahon’s life, be it noted. Mahon’s work, that of one of the most distinguished poets now living, for the most part lies outside the critical faculties of his biographer. We learn little here of Mahon’s immersion in the literary culture of our world, from Euripides and Sophocles through Racine and Molière to Nerval and Wilde and beyond. And even with the life, instead of revealing the charm and intelligence of the man, we get (those index cards) a series of snippets that have neither pride of ancestry nor evidence of posterity. Of what use is it to be told without further explication that Mahon dined with Jean-Paul Pittion at the Café du Départ (miscalled the Café au Départ) (58) or that “It was on this second visit to Paris this year that he met, through [John] Montagu, the art critic Ann Cremin with whom he would become friends. He was back in Dublin few days later”? (195)
4 “With whom he would become friends”: we meet this curious grammatical form frequently and it well represents the pedestrian prose style in which the book is written. Thus (41), on the publication of a poem by Michael Longley, “while Mahon would have been happy for his friend, that happiness would have been tempered by no small measure of envy”. Well, was he happy or wasn’t he? Was he envious or wasn’t he? This is not simply stylistically clumsy; it suggests that Enniss is willing to wound but afraid to strike – this is also evident in Enniss’s mealy-mouthed euphemism that Mahon was “seeing” this or that woman, anglice having an affair with. These lexical contortions form a good introduction to his limited vision of both his subject and his task: Enniss is no Ellmann and he is not even a David Cecil.
5 The limitation is not, however, confined to his vision. After 2002, the narrative tails away, with Mahon’s important work in the last decade only treated in the three page Afterword, where it is noted that “there were prizes and late recognition for a lifetime devotion to his craft”, a cursory description of the 2007 David Cohen Prize for Literature, the Poetry Now Award in 2006 and 2009 and the Irish Times poetry prize in 2009. “Desultory” is David Wheatley’s description of this attenuated summation, “notably scant” is John McAuliffe’s2
6 This drying up of the narrative coincides with the drying up of Mahon’s confidence in Enniss and his ability to provide a dispassionate and balanced text. It is also clear that this held good for Mahon’s friends, whose initial co-operation withered away. This is no wonder, given the superficiality of Enniss’s accounts of Mahon’s relations with friends, lovers and fellow poets, many of which only suggest the flippant gossip that is the mainstay of conversation in Dublin bars. It is hard to square Enniss’s Mahon with the poet whose “peerless lyric gifts are responsible for some of the finest poetry of the past half-century” (David Wheatley), “one of our greatest lyric poets” (Nicholas Grene). Fortunately, we have Mahon’s work to show us that he is not drowning, but waving.
Études irlandaises, 40-2 | 2015 159
NOTES
1. Adorno actually wrote “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” – “nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch”. 2. Reviews respectively in the TLS and The Irish Times.
AUTEURS
DAVID CHARLES ROSE The Oscholars
Études irlandaises, 40-2 | 2015