Imagining Irelands: Migration, Media, and Locality in Modern Day Dublin by Aaron Christopher Thornburg Department of Cultural Anthropology Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Naomi Quinn, Supervisor ___________________________ Lee D. Baker ___________________________ Katherine P. Ewing ___________________________ John L. Jackson, Jr. ___________________________ Suzanne Shanahan Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Cultural Anthropology in the Graduate School of Duke University 2011 ABSTRACT Imagining Irelands: Migration, Media, and Locality in Modern Day Dublin by Aaron Christopher Thornburg Department of Cultural Anthropology Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Naomi Quinn, Supervisor ___________________________ Lee D. Baker ___________________________ Katherine P. Ewing ___________________________ John L. Jackson, Jr. ___________________________ Suzanne Shanahan An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Cultural Anthropology in the Graduate School of Duke University 2011 Copyright by Aaron Christopher Thornburg 2011 Abstract This dissertation explores the place of Irish-Gaelic language (Gaeilge) television and film media in the lives of youths living in the urban greater Dublin metropolitan area in the Republic of Ireland. By many accounts, there has been a Gaeilge renaissance underway in recent times. The number of Gaeilge-medium primary and secondary schools (Gaelscoileanna) has grown throughout the 1990s and into the twenty-first century, the year 2003 saw the passage of the Official Languages Act (laying the groundwork to assure all public services would be made available in Gaeilge as well as English), and as of January 2007 Gaeilge has become a working language of the European Union. Importantly, a Gaeilge television station (TG4) was established in 1996. This development has increased the amount of Gaeilge media significantly, and that television and film media is increasingly being utilized in Gaeilge classrooms. The research for this dissertation was based on a year of fieldwork conducted in Dublin, Ireland. The primary methodology was semi-structured interviews with teenage second-level-school students who were enrolled in compulsory Gaeilge classes at two schools in the greater Dublin area. Simultaneous examination of social discourses, in the form of prevalent television and film media, and the talk of the teenage students I interviewed led me to discern a “locality production” process that can be discerned in both these forms of discourse. While it is noted that this process of locality production iv may be present anywhere, it is suggested that it may be particularly pronounced in Ireland as a result of a traditional emphasis on “place” on the island. This dissertation thus makes a contribution to Irish and Media Studies through an analysis of Gaeilge cultural productions in the context of increased effects of globalization on the lives of the youth with whom I did my research. Additionally, this dissertation contributes to an on-going critique of identity-based theorizations through contribution of an alternative framework. v Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... x 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 My Project and its Predecessors: Positioning my Project in the Context of Prior Research on Ireland ................................................................................................................ 5 1.1.1 Irish Studies .................................................................................................................. 5 1.1.2 Ethnography ................................................................................................................. 8 1.2 Appadurai in my Project ............................................................................................... 12 1.3 Locality Framework ....................................................................................................... 18 1.4 Foucault on Ethics .......................................................................................................... 23 1.4.1 Reevaluation/Rearticulation of Foucault’s Framework on Ethics ...................... 30 1.4.1.1 The Determinist/Decisionist Debate and its Implications ............................ 30 1.4.1.2 Multiple and Parallel Subjectivation ............................................................... 34 1.5 Questions of generalizability/particularity ................................................................. 38 1.6 Chapter Conclusion and the Layout of this Work ..................................................... 40 2. The Production of (Colonial) Ireland ................................................................................... 42 2.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 42 2.2 History ............................................................................................................................. 44 2.2.1 Romans ....................................................................................................................... 44 2.2.2 Normans ..................................................................................................................... 50 2.2.2.1 Norman Overlords Arrive in Ireland .............................................................. 53 vi 2.2.3 Reformation and Renaissance .................................................................................. 58 2.2.4 Irish Rebellion of 1641 ............................................................................................... 65 2.2.5 The “Grand Tour” to Ireland and the Irish Landscape and Character .............. 69 2.2.6 Victorian Irish ............................................................................................................ 73 2.3 Manifesting Colonial Ireland ........................................................................................ 83 2.4 Chapter Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 87 3. The Production of (Alternate) Ireland(s) ............................................................................. 88 3.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 88 3.2 Degenerationism ............................................................................................................. 88 3.3 Irish Nationalism ............................................................................................................ 92 3.3.1 Degenerationism in Irish Nationalism ................................................................... 96 3.4 From Nationalism to Independence ............................................................................ 99 3.4.1 The Case of Language ............................................................................................. 103 3.5 From Free State to Republic ........................................................................................ 109 3.6 European Ireland .......................................................................................................... 112 3.7 Chapter Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 133 4. The Locality Framework and Film ..................................................................................... 135 4.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 135 4.2 A Locality Framework of Film.................................................................................... 135 4.2.1 Frampton’s Filmosophy.......................................................................................... 135 4.2.2 The Para-social Framework of Horton and Wohl ............................................... 139 4.2.3 Para-sociality in Frampton’s Filmosophical Framework ................................... 143 vii 4.2.4 de Zengotita’s Mediated ........................................................................................... 146 4.2.5 The Locality Framework and What It Offers....................................................... 149 4.3 Hall and La Haine (Hatred) .......................................................................................... 149 4.3.1 Hall ............................................................................................................................ 149 4.3.2 La Haine (Hatred) ..................................................................................................... 153 4.4 Blue Man Movies: A Modest Proposal ...................................................................... 159 4.5 Chapter Conclusion .....................................................................................................