THE QUESTION OF IRISH IDENTITY IN THE WRITING OF W. B. YEATS AND JAMES JOYCE ii THE QUESTION OF IRISH IDENTITY IN THE WRITING OF W. B. YEATS AND JAMES JOYCE BY EUGENE O’BRIEN iii iv To Áine, Eoin, Dara and Sinéad v vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword ix Preface xi Acknowledgements xiii INTRODUCTION: NEGATIVE IDENTITY: ADORNO, LEVINAS, DERRIDA 1 CHAPTER 1: SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL NOTIONS OF IRISH IDENTITY (i) The backward look: the centripetal past 25 (ii) Vectors of national definition 34 (iii) Tara to Holyhead: The Centrifugal Vector 50 (iv) Defenders and United Irishmen: Two Views of Irish Identity 64 CHAPTER 2: THE QUESTION OF LANGUAGE (i) What ish my language? 87 (ii) Centripetal Revival 94 (iii) Revival or redefinition? 109 CHAPTER 3: YEATS: VOICES OF MYTH – VOICES OF CRITIQUE (i) Yeats and the creation of an Irish mythology 123 (ii) From creation to critique 150 (iii) Cuchulain discomforted 164 CHAPTER 4: JOYCE: A COMMODIUS VICUS OF RECIRCULATION (i) Joycean epistemology of identity 183 vii (ii) Nets that must be flown by 207 (iii) Emigration as trope 216 (iv) Patrick W. Shakespeare 225 CONCLUSION: TOWARDS AN ETHICS OF COMMUNITY 249 WORKS CITED 253 BIBLIOGRAPHY: W. B. YEATS AND JAMES JOYCE 265 INDEX 273 viii Foreword The purpose of this study is to foreground the ethical consequences of the attitudes to Irishness, and to Irish identity, that are to be found in the writings of William Butler Yeats and James Joyce. It is my contention that their work enunciates an ethical definition of Irishness which has overt and covert political and societal implications for Ireland today. While there are many justified caveats entered in the field of academic study about the dangers of any imbrication of the literary, the aesthetic, and the political, nevertheless, I intend to argue that there are concomitant positive and emancipatory results of such an imbrication, and that these results have ethical implications for notions of Irishness and of community. Hence, I propose to theorize the different aspects of Irishness that are to be found in both writers, by contrasting them with others that were hegemonic at that time through an articulation of the theoretical writings of Theodore Adorno, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida. Given that this study has been written during the ongoing peace talks in Northern Ireland, talks wherein definitions and categorizations of ‘Irishness’ have been crucial, I feel that this book is a timely exploration of issues dealing with the literary, political and ethical dimensions of Irish culture and identity. ix x Preface A turning point in deconstructive critique is signalled in Jacques Derrida’s 1994 book, Specters of Marx. The voicing is in a confessional idiom, the historical site clearly acknowledged, the reader treated as an honoured guest. Derrida’s much-deliberated rapprochement with Marx forms part of a larger project that seeks out affinities and disturbances between the philosophical requirements of deconstruction and ethical notions of the subject, civic and political responsibilities, the function of Otherness and the dark necessities of an epistemological rationality. Simon Critchley, in The Ethics of Deconstruction, refers to the legacy of Kant in this discussion of the issues involved: Ethics, properly speaking, is restricted to imperatives that are categorical; and for Derrida, the ethical moment is the interruption of the general context of conditioned hypothetical imperatives by an unconditional hypothetical imperative. Ethics arises in and as the undecidable yet determinate articulation of these two orders (page 40) Eugene O’Brien, in this sensitive and inspiring inquiry into Irish identity, links Derrida’s aporetic commitment to the ethical work of Emmanuel Levinas. And in so doing, is able to use the tools of a negative theology; the Kantian imperative, reconstituted by the “unconditional” is here read with the concentrated pessimism of post-Holocaust thought initiated by Adorno, and rendered as an ethics of deconstruction in the concepts ‘alterity’ and ‘difference’ developed by Levinas. xi This line of thought is sharply differentiated from modish notions of the Irish as ‘post-national’, ‘post-subjects’. And O’Brien is clear about the dangers of this approach. The Irish people, representative of the Other for so much of their history, have been read as a paradigm of the post-modern, as possessing a plurality of identity - located variously in myth, saga and fiefdom, in the ‘British’ Empire, in diasporic communities, in fractured territories, religions and languages. Indeed, as perfect candidates for the ‘new internationalism’, globalized subjects whose cultural manifestations are far more fascinating to Lyotard or Baudrillard than the micro- processor plants of Limerick and Tipperary. This text, by placing its discussion firmly within the framework of an ethics of Irish identity, avoids the pitfalls of a deconstruction that would do no more than set text against itself. The writer takes his task to be that of an active intervention: the disentangling of concealed textual hegemonies, of received readings, is conducted through a scrupulous attention to historical context and to the conflictual politics that have been generated by abstract polarities. The line of argument pursued here and the form of the text is designed to elicit questioning, creative, and thoughtful responses and in this respect, it is perhaps best read as a philosophic performative. In working in this genre, O’Brien pays homage to that densely sourced deconstructive tradition from which the book takes its values. Brian Coates University of Limerick xii Acknowledgements As this is a first book, my debts, both academic and personal, are many and heartfelt. First and foremost I would like to thank my wife, Áine McElhinney, for her help, support, long hours of discussion, extremely accurate and painstaking proof-reading, and generally for putting up with me during the writing of this book. Her help in compiling the index was invaluable, and much appreciated. From an academic standpoint, I owe initial debts of gratitude to Sr Marie Thérèse Courtney, Gerry Dukes and Florrie O’Connor for setting me on the right path. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Dr Brian Coates, who began as my thesis advisor and ended up as a friend and mentor. I would like to put on record his many fine suggestions which contributed to the final shape of this work. What seems like a long time ago, my oldest friend, Dr Tony Corbett, posed some of the issues which this book sets out to discuss; the issues have remained relevant, and the friendship has remained intact and for both I am grateful. His reading of the final draft provided many penetrating insights. To Sinéad Corbett, I owe heartfelt thanks for her computer expertise, her accurate proof-reading, and her overall support during this project, and before. Liam Ó Dochartaigh gave me the opportunity to teach courses on Yeats and Joyce in the University of Limerick, and I would like to thank him for his confidence in me. Similarly, Dr John Hayes provided me with the opportunity of teaching courses on literary and cultural theory in Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, an experience from which I gained much, and for this I thank him. To Dr Bruce Stewart, of the University of Ulster, I am grateful for his encouragement and information, both of which were much needed, and very much appreciated. I must also acknowledge the Coleraine Centre for Irish Literature and Bibliography, and the Irish Literary Records Dataset which I consulted with no little reward. For help with the printing of this book, I would like to thank Owen and Suzanne Cobbe and Desmond McCafferty. For providing the early stimulus for this project, and for facilitating its final stages, I am extremely grateful to Marie Kirwan. Teresa McElhinney took the photograph, and achieved wonders with a poor subject. xiii Finally, I owe an unmeasurable debt to Eoin, Paul, and Katie for being a constant source of inspiration and enlightenment. xiv INTRODUCTION Negative Identity: Adorno, Levinas, Derrida There is hardly a more quoted line from Shakespeare in the overall context of Irish Studies than the famous question from Henry V: ‘what ish my nation?’ (Shakespeare: 1965; II, ii, 124). Given the agonies of identity that have plagued Irish social and cultural history, it assumes the status of what Prufrock might term an ‘overwhelming question’ (Eliot: 1963; 13). It is certainly of overwhelming importance in the context of the ongoing violence and tension between the two communities in Northern Ireland, as well as in the context of the often vexed relationship between Ireland and Britain. Therefore, this question must be studied in some detail if one is to come to any reasonable modus operandi regarding the search for some form of answer. The context of this question is a fictive one, the final part of Shakespeare’s second tetralogy, Henry V, where the four captains, English (Gower), Scottish (Jamy), Welsh (Fluellen), and Irish (MacMorris) meet in Harfleur. It comes from the Irish captain, MacMorris, in the midst of a discussion wherein the nature of Irishness, expressed in a dialect form of English that seems to point to the creation of the first ‘stage Irishman’, is predicated on violence: It is no time to discourse, so Chrish save me! The day is hot, and the weather, and the wars, and the King, and the Dukes; it is no time to discourse; the town is beseeched, and the trumpet call us to the breach, and we talk, and, be Chrish, do nothing; ’tis shame for us all, so God sa’ me, ’tis shame to stand still, it is shame, by my hand! And there is throats to be cut, and works to be done, and there ish nothing done, so Chrish sa’ me, law.