Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Carmel McCaffrey
Subject: Re: As though everything I had ever loved and lost...
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Emotions, emotions - why are some scholars always so suspicious
[frightened?] of them? Emotions very often turn the wheels of fortune
and burrow out our historical paths. I find this discussion very
interesting.

Cymru66[at]AOL.COM wrote:
> I must admit to find this discussion a bit sentimental for one that is about
> scholarly discourse. I know my late husband, John Hickey, would have cringe
> to see this.
>
> Susan Hickey
>
> .
>
>

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan
Subject: Book Noticed, Roma and Gypsy-Travellers in Europe
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Email Patrick O'Sullivan

The following item has fallen into our nets...

I have not read the book, but... There has long been a need for a book =
that
put the experiences of the nomadic peoples of Britain and Ireland into a
European perspective.

Note that Angus Bancroft's Introduction is freely available on the
publisher's web site...

P.O'S.


Roma and Gypsy-Travellers in Europe
Modernity, Race, Space and Exclusion
Angus Bancroft
Series: Research in Migration and Ethnic Relations Series

$94.95/=A349.95 =09
This is the first account of Roma and Gypsy-Travellers from a =
pan-European
perspective. With a comparative focus on Britain and the Czech Republic, =
it
considers their contemporary experiences and needs in the context of =
their
relationship with the rest of society. It is a must-read for those =
concerned
with racism, social and ethnic exclusion, nationalism and the =
development of
a European identity and citizenship.

Angus Bancroft provides an outline of Gypsy life across Europe and =
explores
ghettoization, racial violence, legislative change, immigration and =
asylum.
These issues are placed in the context of national development, changes =
in
European society, modernity, post-modernity and globalization. The book =
also
applies sociological theories to the relationship between Gypsies and
European societies and the emergence of European institutions and
identities.


Contents
Europe and its internal outsiders; Modernity, space and the outsider; =
The
gypsies metamorphosed: race, racialization and racial action in Europe;
Segregation of Roma and Gypsy-Travellers; The law of the land; A panic =
in
perspective; Closed spaces, restricted places; A =9121st century =
racism=92?;
Bibliography; Index.

Reviews
Prize: Shortlisted for The British Sociological Association Philip =
Abrams
Memorial Prize 2006

=91History, mobility, identity, law and space are brought together in =
this
study to provide a fascinating and detailed insight into the effects of
racism on a group of people who have a right to expect more from what is
characterised as a civilised, modern Europe.=92 Tim May, Director, =
Centre for
Sustainable Urban and Regional Futures, UK

=91This powerful and authoritative book analyses the fate of Roma and
Gypsy-Travellers in Europe, where they are seen as an embarrassing relic =
of
pre-modern times, perhaps even a drag on the processes of modernization. =
The
geographical scope of the book is huge but detailed case studies help us =
to
understand variations in the experiences of this outsider minority in =
the
different European countries. The work draws on a very wide range of
contemporary writers to achieve a high level of analytical =
sophistication,
but it speaks with the authority of classical sociology. In fact it is a
work that Max Weber might have been proud of and, as in Weber=92s work, =
the
book ranges over geography, history, public policy and the law...The =
wider
insights Bancroft brings us are hard-won from many years of research and
Europeans cannot afford to ignore the questions he raises about =
refugees,
economic migrants and European citizenship.=92 Professor Ralph Fevre, =
Cardiff
University, UK

=91Dr Bancroft=92s work in this area is well known and highly respected. =
In this
important book he tells a theoretically sophisticated and empirically =
rich
story that vividly illustrates the place of the Roma in "modern" =
European
societies and their political and cultural significance within this part =
of
the world. This text contributes to a range of ongoing and often
controversial debates in the social sciences =96 such as space, =
exclusion
[and] "race" =96 and thus deserves to be widely read by undergraduates =
and
postgraduates alike across a number of subject areas.=92 Dr Colin Clark,
University of Strathclyde, UK

=91Bancroft=92s analysis is insightful, and the comparison of =
Gypsy-Travellers
in the British Isles with Central European Roma brings a fresh approach =
to
Romani studies.=92 Transitions Online

About the Author/Editor
Angus Bancroft is a lecturer in Sociology at the University of =
Edinburgh. He
has conducted research with Gypsy-Travellers in Britain and Roma in the
Czech Republic.

Further Information
Affiliation: Angus Bancroft, University of Edinburgh, UK
ISBN: 0 7546 3921 5
Publication Date: 02/2005
Number of Pages: 204 pages
Binding: Hardback
Binding Options: Available in Hardback only
Book Size: 234 x 156 mm
British Library Reference: 305.8'91497
Library of Congress Reference: 2004025166
Extracts from this title are available to view:
Contents list
Chapter 1 - Europe and its internal outsiders

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Joan Allen
Subject: Re: As though everything I had ever loved and lost...
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Maybe if we concentrate upon the why-not the what-we may find a
scholarly way through the emotional minefield...
Joan Allen=20

-----Original Message-----
From: The Irish Diaspora Studies List [mailto:IR-D[at]JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On
Behalf Of Carmel McCaffrey
Sent: 14 September 2006 16:36
To: IR-D[at]JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Re: [IR-D] As though everything I had ever loved and lost...

Emotions, emotions - why are some scholars always so suspicious
[frightened?] of them? Emotions very often turn the wheels of fortune
and burrow out our historical paths. I find this discussion very
interesting.

Cymru66[at]AOL.COM wrote:
> I must admit to find this discussion a bit sentimental for one that is

> about scholarly discourse. I know my late husband, John Hickey, would

> have cringe to see this.
> =20
> Susan Hickey
>
> .
>
> =20

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan
Subject: TOC Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Volume 12,
Number 3-4 / Autumn-Winter 2006
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Email Patrick O'Sullivan

From Jennifer Todd's Introduction

'...The rapid socio-political changes of the past two decades have =
produced
a new intensive phase of research on ethnicity and nationality.
Globalization, European integration, transitions to democracy, the
relatively successful settlement of long-standing conflicts in South =
Africa
and Northern Ireland, the failed settlement of the Israeli=96Palestinian
conflict, and, more recently, the highlighting of ethno-religious
distinction and conflict following 9/11, form the context of this =
research.
One of the most striking aspects of the new literature is a convergence =
of
the concerns of political scientists, sociologists and social =
psychologists
around questions of the changing content and salience of nationality, =
and
the role of national identifications in the new forms of politics.1 This
volume arises directly out of these concerns, and focuses upon the fact =
of
change in national identity.2 How and when does national identity =
change?
How is such change to be conceived and investigated?...

Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 1 to 15 of 15
Publisher: Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group
Issue: Volume 12, Number 3-4 / Autumn-Winter 2006
URL: Linking Options
=20
Introduction pp. 315 - 321
Jennifer Todd
=09
Fluid or Frozen? Choice and Change in Ethno-National Identification in
Contemporary Northern Ireland pp. 323 - 346
Jennifer Todd, Theresa O'keefe, Nathalie Rougier, Lorenzo Ca=F1=E1s
Bottos
=20
The Social Map: Cohesion, Conflict and National Identity pp. 347 -
372
John Bone
=20
The Increasing Monopolization of Identity by the State: The Case of the =
UK
and the US pp. 373 - 387
Roland Robertson
=09
When Politics and Social Theory Converge: Group Identification and Group
Rights in Northern Ireland pp. 389 - 410
Richard Jenkins
=09
After 1989, Who Are the Czechs? pp. 411 - 430
Stefan Auer
=09
Subjective National Identities in Catalonia pp. 431 - 454
Jordi Argelaguet
=09
=93Dollar Diplomacy=94: Globalization, Identity Change and Peace in =
Israel pp.
455 - 479
Guy Ben-Porat

Economic Integration and National Identity in Mexico pp. 481 - 507
Joseph L. Klesner
=09
Majority=96Minority Conflicts and their Resolution: Protestant =
Minorities in
France and in Ireland pp. 509 - 532
Joseph Ruane
=09
Basque Militant Youths in France: New Experiences of Ethnonational =
Identity
in the European Context pp. 533 - 553
Zoe Bray
=09
Race, Religion and Identity in South Africa: A Case Study of a =
Charismatic
Congregation pp. 555 - 576
Gladys Ganiel
=09
Being English in North Wales: Inmigration and the Inmigrant Experience =
pp.
577 - 598
Graham Day, Howard Davis, Angela Drakakis-Smith
=20
Religion, Ethnicity and Group Identity: Irish Adolescents=92 Views pp.
599 - 616
Katrina McLaughlin, Karen Trew, Orla T. Muldoon
=09
Generations on the Border: Changes in Ethno-national Identity in the =
Irish
Border Area pp. 617 - 642
Lorenzo Ca=F1=E1s Bottos and Nathalie Rougier
=09
=09

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: James Walsh
Subject: Re: As though everything I had ever loved and lost...

I agree with Bill that this topic is certainly worthy of our time and energy and scholarship. In many ways, it touches the emotional trauma that results from centuries of Ireland exporting its people and dividing its families. If the people whom we study experienced such deep emotion, should we not allow ourselves to feel and understand it as well?

Jim Walsh
Univ. of Colorado at Denver, Dept. of History
-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "William Mulligan Jr."
> I am not sure what aspects of the discussion, which has really been quite
> brief, people find overly sentimental and inappropriate for a scholarly
> list.
>
> One of the themes within the Diaspora has been a sense of longing and exile
> from Ireland among those who left, who often passed on to their children and
> grandchildren an idealized view of Ireland, certainly a view frozen at the
> time they left. Irish identities formed within the Diaspora generally had
> no direct connection to Ireland. It existed for subsequent generations as
> an idealized image, a place from which people had been cut off. This sense
> of longing and exile has been developed in both scholarly discourse and in
> literature and seems like fair game to discuss. Some of us are both
> scholars of the Diaspora and members of it - so the line can be blurred.
> And, as someone pointed out, there have been people willing to die for
> Ireland. From Young Ireland, at least, forward there has been a strand of
> highly romantic ideas about the land of Ireland and its power. This, too,
> appears in literature as well. So there seem to be a range of legitimate
> questions about the images of Ireland among the Diaspora and how people
> react when their idealized image comes into contact with the reality of
> Ireland.
>
> Among the group I study, the Irish in Michigan's Copper Country, there were
> many programs and performances with "Irish" themes that drew large
> audiences. I use the quotation marks because over time many of the musical
> pieces were from Tin Pan Alley not Ireland and were highly sentimental in
> theme, as were many of the presentations about Ireland, -- but they had
> strong appeal to Irish Americans. That phenomenon is certainly worth
> discussing as well.
>
> Bill Mulligan
>
> William H. Mulligan, Jr., Ph.D.
> Professor of History
> Murray State University
> Murray KY 42071-3341 USA
>
>

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan
Subject: As though...
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From:
To: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
Subject: Re: [IR-D] As though

The writer of the original piece which Brian drew to the attention of the
list, Katherine Holmquist, is neither Irish-American nor 'in-Ireland Irish'.

The phenomenon which has been identified and discussed occurs around what
seems to be a kind of spiritual experience or 'epiphany', to which many
Irish-descent people are in a sense culturually predisposed, as has already
been pointed out.

What most interested me most was the prevalent view that, whilst individuals
of all races might be understandably susceptible, only those of 'Irish'
stock could be expected to respond from of some sort of 'race memory'. Ms.
Holmquist is obviously of Scandinavian origin and I wondered why no one
should have considered whether her ancestors might have belonged to one of
the many Danish settlements in early Ireland.

As for Jack's suggestion that the subject should be dropped beacuse the
'in-Ireland Irish'(of whom I am one) are unable to bear this sort of thing,
I think that would constitute a very bad precedent.

The 'in-Ireland Irish' as we speak are busy putting their country under
concrete to enrich themselves and vandalising the very physical mystique to
which so many travellers, Irish-descent or otherwise, have always responded.


More pertinently, the majority would be only too delighted to see the Irish
Diaspora in all its manifestations (other than the Ireland Funds of course!)
'dropped' forthwith.

Don't give an inch...

Ultan Cowley




The Irish Diaspora Studies List wrote:

<
< I think the divide here is the familiar one between the Irish and the
< Irish-Americans. The in-Ireland Irish cannot bear this kind of thing.
< For their benefit, let's drop it.
<
< Jack Morgan
<

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan
Subject: Call for Contributions: Ireland, Mexico and Central America
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Forwarded on behalf of
contact[at]irlandeses.org
Edmundo Murray & Claire Healy, Editors,
"Irish Migration Studies in Latin America"

Subject: Call for Contributions: Ireland, Mexico and Central America

"Irish Migration Studies in Latin America"
ISSN 1661-6065 (Vol. 5, No. 1, March 2007) Special Issue: Ireland,
Mexico and Central America

The editors of "Irish Migration Studies in Latin America" invite
contributions for a special issue of the journal (Vol. 5, No. 1, March
2007). Articles on any aspect of connections between Ireland and Mexico,
Panama and Central America, and in any discipline, will be considered
for publication. We also welcome book reviews, biographies, sources and
website reviews. Please refer to http://www.irlandeses.org/contact.htm
for style guidelines. Articles in Spanish or Portuguese must be emailed
to the editors no later than 15 January 2007, and articles in English no
later than 1 February 2007.

contact[at]irlandeses.org
Edmundo Murray & Claire Healy, Editors,
"Irish Migration Studies in Latin America"

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: "MacEinri, Piaras"
Subject: Re: As though everything I had ever loved and lost...
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Thanks to Brian and all the other contributors on this topic. If I am being
very honest, as one of the Irish in Ireland (but who lived in a number of
other countries for almost ten years) my initial reaction to some of the
discussion was also one of irritation. I don't want to be an exhibit in
someone else's zoo; I am not comfortable with the idea of some kind of
inchoate essentialism of place and emotional ties and I haven't any time as
a self-respecting agnostic for the faux-Celtic 'spirituality' which is doing
the rounds these days(I think it has something to do with the huge sales of
Enya's wallpaper musak... Ok, ok, only joking). I think there are also
darker elements of the place of Ireland in some imaginations - when I lived
in France I met right-wing 'integriste' (fundamentalist in today's language)
Catholics who regarded Ireland as the last bastion of White Catholic
identity in a world engulfed in the filthy tide of modernism. And perhaps it
is no coincidence that the logo of a number of European and other far-right
racist movements is the Celtic Cross (check out http://www.stormfront.org
which has more than a few Irish contributors)

But I think there are also ways of inserting these questions within wider
debates about identity, history and scholarly enquiry. A few questions:

(a) 'orientalist' positionings of Ireland. I think there are strong elements
of this in popular discourses especially in the English speaking world: we
are the 'near Other'. It's not for nothing that Seamus Heaney is so popular
in Britain - his is an Ireland of essence, clay, potatoes, digging,
ruralism. Matthew Arnold and others have been responsible for much of this
imagining of Ireland as pre-modern (sometimes the opposite of 'modern').
This Ireland of the imagination is a place of retreat and reassurance,
almost like returning to the womb, where threatening modernity and
complexity never intrude.There is a vast literature on this topic.

(b) There is another debate about the way in which the Irish in Ireland have
cynically chosen to package and commodify the wish of others including the
Irish outside Ireland, and others with no connection, to be 'connected' to
this 'homeland' and have invented a pastiche Irishness to sell to them. For
me this is exemplified by the use of the term 'crack' as in 'having the
crack'. The word is actually an English one, not Irish at all, but we have
taken this kind of nonsense a step further by inventing an fake Irish
orthography for it 'craic'. Other examples are the kind of codology embodied
in slogans such as 'strangers are friends you haven't met yet'. The Irish
Tourist Office in France ran a phenomenally successful campaign in the 1980s
with the evocative slogan 'aller loin sans aller loin' (go far without going
far). Ultimately we started to swallow this nonsense ourselves, which is a
lot more worrying! Think 'Riverdance'.

(c) On the other hand, I'm interested in the notion of the Diaspora as a
place where aspects of Irish culture and a certain idea of Ireland, to
borrow de Gaulle's phrase about his own country, were, so to speak,
preserved in aspic. Reading the novels of Alice McDermott, especially
Charming Billy and At Weddings and Wakes, brought me sharply back to the
customs and practices of rural Catholic Ireland in the late 1950s (to be
fair, this was the period in which the novels themselves were set). Those in
the Diaspora who come to Ireland looking for 'a certain Ireland' may not
find it, but paradoxically those living in postmodern Ireland may find
echoes of this earlier Ireland in the Diaspora.

(d) There is a whole debate about the notion of identity and return. If I
can quote from something I wrote a number of years ago,

Feminist scholar Caren Kaplan opens her book Questions of Travel with a
quotation from the poet, Elizabeth Bishop:

Continent, city, country, society:
the choice is never wide and never free.
And here, or there...No. Should we have stayed at
home, wherever that may be?

and goes on to comment

'For many of us there is no possibility of staying at home in the
conventional sense - that is, the world has changed to the point that those
domestic, national or marked spaces no longer exist. So I cannot respond to
Bishop's more modernist question by "staying put" or fixing my location or
promising not to leave my national borders. There is not necessarily a
preoriginary space in which to stay after modern imperialist expansion. But
identities cling to us, or even produce us, nonetheless. Many of us have
locations in the plural. Thus, rather than assuming that we'll never return
to these homes again, rather than celebrating the rootless traveller of
Bishop's text, I suggest that the fragments and multiplicities of identity
in postmodernity can be marked and historically situated. As Iain Chambers
argues, historicizing displacement leads us away from nostalgic dreams of
"going home" to a mythic, metaphysical location and into the realm of
theorizing a way of "being at home" that accounts for "the myths we know to
be myths yet continue to cling to, cherish and dream" alongside "other
stories, other fragments of memory and traces of time".'

In this view of identity and place, Caplan does not simply opt for the
notion of modern rootlessness. As she says, identities cling to us, or even
produce us, even though our "pre-originary space" may have disappeared.
Place and space do matter in this perspective, just as myth does, even
though we know the myths are myths. The important point has less to do with
our ability to return to some idealised past - what she calls a nostalgic
dream of "going home" - and more to do with our ability to historicise
ourselves and our own various, multiple senses of identity - what she calls
a way of "being at home". In a sense, it is the act of historicisation, the
remembering, the performance, that constitutes the identity. We may make
our own choices, but the circumstances are not entirely of our own choosing.
There are givens over which we have no control, other than in our ability to
incorporate them, and their multiple meanings, into our own landscapes of
subjectivity.

The self is thus constituted by an ongoing process of becoming, and an
ongoing process of interaction. We cannot ignore boundaries and formative
factors The past, our family, place and culture are relevant and
constitutive of identity but there is not and cannot be closure - except in
the grave.

(e). Finally, I fully agree with Ultan. Modern Ireland is busy concreting
over its own past at a rate of knots. We have long welcomed American dollors
while sneering behind their backs at the donors. A corrosive cynicism
combines with a collective amnesia where the Diaspora is concerned.

Piaras

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Liam Clarke
Subject: Re: As though everything I had ever loved and lost...
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I havent made a head count but is there a gender divide in this??

Liam Clarke=20

-----Original Message-----
From: The Irish Diaspora Studies List [mailto:IR-D[at]JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On
Behalf Of Carmel McCaffrey
Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2006 4:36 PM
To: IR-D[at]JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Re: [IR-D] As though everything I had ever loved and lost...

Emotions, emotions - why are some scholars always so suspicious
[frightened?] of them? Emotions very often turn the wheels of fortune
and burrow out our historical paths. I find this discussion very
interesting.

Cymru66[at]AOL.COM wrote:
> I must admit to find this discussion a bit sentimental for one that is

> about scholarly discourse. I know my late husband, John Hickey, would

> have cringe to see this.
> =20
> Susan Hickey
>
> .
>
> =20

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Brian Lambkin
Subject: Re: As though everything I had ever loved and lost...
MIME-Version: 1.0
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A recent book which has an interesting take on this theme is Derek Lundy =
(2006), Men that God made Mad: a journey through truth, myth and terror =
in Northern Ireland, Jonathan Cape, London.
=20
Lundy is a Canadian writer whose Protestant parents emigrated from =
Belfast when he was a child. He has returned periodically to visit =
relatives. At the end of the book he describes his feelings after a =
visit inside the former family home in Cadogan Street:
=20
... I wanted this meeting in this house to be a pleasant one; I was, =
after all, a self-invited guest. I felt the need to reassure Leona =
[current tenant, student, Catholic] that I wasn't a returning Prod come =
to scare or harass her; that I was just a Canadian looking for my roots =
- the usual North American superficial fascination with the 'old =
country'. But that wasn't what I was, and that wasn't how I felt. ...
I left the little house on the edge of the Holy Land for, I was =
sure, the last time. The real purpose of my visit had been to assuage =
nostalgia, but it hadn't worked. On the contrary, the renonovations, =
Leona's odd and unexpected mindlessness, and my own surprising - if =
brief - anger had intensified my sense of estrangement. What a pair we =
were: the young, intelligent, and educated woman, blind to her own =
prejudice; the sore man who had never even lived there. Instead of =
putting to rest the emotional artifacts of my half-remembered childhood =
and the things my father had told me about his city, I felt more than =
ever the strange longing for them, their pull and rasp, like a thirst =
that couldn't be satisfied. (320-1)
=20
Brian

________________________________

From: The Irish Diaspora Studies List on behalf of MacEinri, Piaras
Sent: Fri 15/09/2006 11:38
To: IR-D[at]JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Re: [IR-D] As though everything I had ever loved and lost...



Thanks to Brian and all the other contributors on this topic. If I am =
being
very honest, as one of the Irish in Ireland (but who lived in a number =
of
other countries for almost ten years) my initial reaction to some of the
discussion was also one of irritation. I don't want to be an exhibit in
someone else's zoo; I am not comfortable with the idea of some kind of
inchoate essentialism of place and emotional ties and I haven't any time =
as
a self-respecting agnostic for the faux-Celtic 'spirituality' which is =
doing
the rounds these days(I think it has something to do with the huge sales =
of
Enya's wallpaper musak... Ok, ok, only joking). I think there are also
darker elements of the place of Ireland in some imaginations - when I =
lived
in France I met right-wing 'integriste' (fundamentalist in today's =
language)
Catholics who regarded Ireland as the last bastion of White Catholic
identity in a world engulfed in the filthy tide of modernism. And =
perhaps it
is no coincidence that the logo of a number of European and other =
far-right
racist movements is the Celtic Cross (check out =
http://www.stormfront.org
which has more than a few Irish contributors)

But I think there are also ways of inserting these questions within =
wider
debates about identity, history and scholarly enquiry. A few questions:

(a) 'orientalist' positionings of Ireland. I think there are strong =
elements
of this in popular discourses especially in the English speaking world: =
we
are the 'near Other'. It's not for nothing that Seamus Heaney is so =
popular
in Britain - his is an Ireland of essence, clay, potatoes, digging,
ruralism. Matthew Arnold and others have been responsible for much of =
this
imagining of Ireland as pre-modern (sometimes the opposite of 'modern').
This Ireland of the imagination is a place of retreat and reassurance,
almost like returning to the womb, where threatening modernity and
complexity never intrude.There is a vast literature on this topic.

(b) There is another debate about the way in which the Irish in Ireland =
have
cynically chosen to package and commodify the wish of others including =
the
Irish outside Ireland, and others with no connection, to be 'connected' =
to
this 'homeland' and have invented a pastiche Irishness to sell to them. =
For
me this is exemplified by the use of the term 'crack' as in 'having the
crack'. The word is actually an English one, not Irish at all, but we =
have
taken this kind of nonsense a step further by inventing an fake Irish
orthography for it 'craic'. Other examples are the kind of codology =
embodied
in slogans such as 'strangers are friends you haven't met yet'. The =
Irish
Tourist Office in France ran a phenomenally successful campaign in the =
1980s
with the evocative slogan 'aller loin sans aller loin' (go far without =
going
far). Ultimately we started to swallow this nonsense ourselves, which is =
a
lot more worrying! Think 'Riverdance'.

(c) On the other hand, I'm interested in the notion of the Diaspora as a
place where aspects of Irish culture and a certain idea of Ireland, to
borrow de Gaulle's phrase about his own country, were, so to speak,
preserved in aspic. Reading the novels of Alice McDermott, especially
Charming Billy and At Weddings and Wakes, brought me sharply back to the
customs and practices of rural Catholic Ireland in the late 1950s (to be
fair, this was the period in which the novels themselves were set). =
Those in
the Diaspora who come to Ireland looking for 'a certain Ireland' may not
find it, but paradoxically those living in postmodern Ireland may find
echoes of this earlier Ireland in the Diaspora.

(d) There is a whole debate about the notion of identity and return. If =
I
can quote from something I wrote a number of years ago,

Feminist scholar Caren Kaplan opens her book Questions of Travel with a
quotation from the poet, Elizabeth Bishop:

Continent, city, country, society:
the choice is never wide and never free.
And here, or there...No. Should we have stayed at
home, wherever that may be?

and goes on to comment

'For many of us there is no possibility of staying at home in the
conventional sense - that is, the world has changed to the point that =
those
domestic, national or marked spaces no longer exist. So I cannot respond =
to
Bishop's more modernist question by "staying put" or fixing my location =
or
promising not to leave my national borders. There is not necessarily a
preoriginary space in which to stay after modern imperialist expansion. =
But
identities cling to us, or even produce us, nonetheless. Many of us have
locations in the plural. Thus, rather than assuming that we'll never =
return
to these homes again, rather than celebrating the rootless traveller of
Bishop's text, I suggest that the fragments and multiplicities of =
identity
in postmodernity can be marked and historically situated. As Iain =
Chambers
argues, historicizing displacement leads us away from nostalgic dreams =
of
"going home" to a mythic, metaphysical location and into the realm of
theorizing a way of "being at home" that accounts for "the myths we know =
to
be myths yet continue to cling to, cherish and dream" alongside "other
stories, other fragments of memory and traces of time".'

In this view of identity and place, Caplan does not simply opt for the
notion of modern rootlessness. As she says, identities cling to us, or =
even
produce us, even though our "pre-originary space" may have disappeared.
Place and space do matter in this perspective, just as myth does, even
though we know the myths are myths. The important point has less to do =
with
our ability to return to some idealised past - what she calls a =
nostalgic
dream of "going home" - and more to do with our ability to historicise
ourselves and our own various, multiple senses of identity - what she =
calls
a way of "being at home". In a sense, it is the act of historicisation, =
the
remembering, the performance, that constitutes the identity. We may =
make
our own choices, but the circumstances are not entirely of our own =
choosing.
There are givens over which we have no control, other than in our =
ability to
incorporate them, and their multiple meanings, into our own landscapes =
of
subjectivity.

The self is thus constituted by an ongoing process of becoming, and an
ongoing process of interaction. We cannot ignore boundaries and =
formative
factors The past, our family, place and culture are relevant and
constitutive of identity but there is not and cannot be closure - except =
in
the grave.

(e). Finally, I fully agree with Ultan. Modern Ireland is busy =
concreting
over its own past at a rate of knots. We have long welcomed American =
dollors
while sneering behind their backs at the donors. A corrosive cynicism
combines with a collective amnesia where the Diaspora is concerned.

Piaras

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Ultan Cowley
Organization: Eircom Net (http://www.eircom.net/)
Subject: Re: As though everything I had ever loved and lost...
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
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As an 'independent scholar' whose primary interest is the history of Irish male migrant labour I have had to look for my understanding into the heads and hearts of living people who, by and large, were not educationally equipped to analyse their own experience.

Memoir and anecdote, so often anathema to academic historians, are therefore central to my methodology and so I fully endorse Jim's call for an attempt to feel and understand the emotions of the Diaspora both past and present. A little empathy can be a useful tool as well as a link to the rest of humanity...

To quote Bernard Canavan, '...individual experience is everywhere contradicted by the expert and rendered insignificant by the infinite quantity of our knowledge of human life...and the individual's experience is correspondingly devalued in the process' (Story-tellers and writers: Irish identity in emigrant labourers'autobiographies, 1870-1970' in The Irish worldwide, Vol. Three, pp.154-5).



Ultan




The Irish Diaspora Studies List wrote:


I am not sure what aspects of the discussion, which has really been quite
brief, people find overly sentimental and inappropriate for a scholarly
list.

One of the themes within the Diaspora has been a sense of longing and exile
from Ireland among those who left, who often passed on to their children and
grandchildren an idealized view of Ireland, certainly a view frozen at the
time they left. Irish identities formed within the Diaspora generally had
no direct connection to Ireland. It existed for subsequent generations as
an idealized image, a place from which people had been cut off. This sense
of longing and exile has been developed in both scholarly discourse and in
literature and seems like fair game to discuss. Some of us are both
scholars of the Diaspora and members of it - so the line can be blurred.
And, as someone pointed out, there have been people willing to die for
Ireland. From Young Ireland, at least, forward there has been a strand of
highly romantic ideas about the land of Ireland and its power. This, too,
appears in literature as well. So there seem to be a range of legitimate
questions about the images of Ireland among the Diaspora and how people
react when their idealized image comes into contact with the reality of
Ireland.

Among the group I study, the Irish in Michigan's Copper Country, there were
many programs and performances with "Irish" themes that drew large
audiences. I use the quotation marks because over time many of the musical
pieces were from Tin Pan Alley not Ireland and were highly sentimental in
theme, as were many of the presentations about Ireland, -- but they had
strong appeal to Irish Americans. That phenomenon is certainly worth
discussing as well.

Bill Mulligan

William H. Mulligan, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor of History
Murray State University
Murray KY 42071-3341 USA


<



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Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Ultan Cowley
Organization: Eircom Net (http://www.eircom.net/)
Subject: Re: As though everything I had ever loved and lost...
Mime-Version: 1.0
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To some degree Ireland, as an experience for outsiders, has always been as much about Place as about People and as has already been observed in this it is not unique. For me the clean air (I live in the South Wexford countryside) the stars in the silence of the night and, when on the Western seaboard, the special quality of the landcape, are what matter most.

However as we busily pollute and disfigure the physical landscape with golf courses,rampant ribbon develpment, SUVs and 'palazzi gombini'it is becoming increasingly difficult to find much to enthuse about. I say good luck any stranger who can experience epiphany in Celtic Tiger Ireland.

Ultan








The Irish Diaspora Studies List wrote:




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Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: "William Mulligan Jr."
Subject: Story of the First Through Ellis Island Is Rewritten
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

This may be of interest to the list.=20

Story of the First Through Ellis Island Is Rewritten (New York Times
9/14/06)

Annie Moore is memorialized by bronze statues in New York Harbor and =
Ireland
and cited in story and song as the first of 12 million immigrants to =
arrive
at Ellis Island. Her story, as it has been recounted for decades, is =
that
she went west with her family to fulfill the American dream - eventually
reaching Texas, where she married a descendant of the Irish liberator =
Daniel
O'Connell and then died accidentally under the wheels of a streetcar at =
the
age of 46.=20

The first part of the myth seems authentic enough.=20

Hustled ahead of a burly German by her two younger brothers and by an =
Irish
longshoreman who shouted "Ladies first," one Annie Moore from County =
Cork
set foot on Ellis Island ahead of the other passengers from the =
steamship
Nevada on Jan. 1, 1892, her 15th birthday. She was officially registered =
by
the former private secretary to the secretary of the treasury and was
presented with a $10 gold piece by the superintendent of immigration.=20

"She says she will never part with it, but will always keep it as a =
pleasant
memento of the occasion," The New York Times reported in describing the
ceremonies inaugurating Ellis Island.=20

As for what happened next, though, history appears to have embraced the
wrong Annie Moore.=20

"It's a classic go-West-young-woman tale riddled with tragedy," said =
Megan
Smolenyak Smolenyak, a professional genealogist. "If only it were true."

In fact, according to Mrs. Smolenyak Smolenyak's research, the Annie =
Moore
of Ellis Island fame settled on the Lower East Side, married a bakery =
clerk
and had 11 children. She lived a poor immigrant's life, but her =
descendants
multiplied and many prospered.=20

The story of the immigrant girl who went west, however, became so =
commonly
accepted that even descendants of the Annie Moore who died in Texas came =
to
believe it. Over the years, several have been invited to participate at
ceremonies on Ellis Island and in Ireland.=20

It took some genealogical detective work to find the proper Annie. After
offering a $1,000 reward on the Internet a few months ago for =
information
about Annie Moore, Mrs. Smolenyak Smolenyak teamed up with New York =
City's
commissioner of records, Brian G. Andersson, and discovered the woman =
who
they have concluded is, in fact, the iconic Annie Moore.=20

Joined by several of her descendants, they are scheduled to announce the
results of their research tomorrow at the New York Genealogical and
Biographical Society in Manhattan.=20

Mrs. Smolenyak Smolenyak (a genealogist's dream: she's a Smolenyak =
married
to a previously unrelated Smolenyak) became interested in Annie Moore =
four
years ago while researching a documentary film on immigration. Pursuing =
the
paper trail, she found that the Annie who died instantly when struck by =
a
streetcar near Fort Worth in 1923 was not an immigrant at all but was
apparently born in Illinois. Moreover, she traced that Moore family to =
Texas
as early as 1880.=20

"I realized it was the wrong Annie," she recalled.=20

Then, what had happened to the Ellis Island Annie?=20

Mrs. Smolenyak Smolenyak made little progress for a few years, but her
search was reinvigorated this year after she moved to southern New =
Jersey
and visited a genealogical exhibition in Philadelphia featuring a 1910
photograph of the Texas Annie. (The photograph might also have been a =
model
for Jeanne Rynhart's two bronze sculptures, one of which is at Ellis
Island.)=20

She posted a challenge on her blog for information about the immigrant =
Annie
Moore. She also mentioned it to Mr. Andersson, who she knew was very
interested in genealogy.=20

"With the power of the Internet and a handful of history geeks we =
cracked
this baby in six weeks," she said. "Brian found this one document, and =
we
knew we had the right family. We had the smoking gun."

What Mr. Andersson found was the naturalization certificate belonging to
Annie's brother Phillip, who arrived with her on the steamship. He was =
also
listed in the 1930 census with a daughter, Anna. They found Anna in the
Social Security death index. That identification led to her son, who is
Annie Moore's great-nephew.

On her first try, Mrs. Smolenyak Smolenyak was lucky enough to find the
great-nephew listed in a directory. "As soon as I said 'Annie Moore,' he
knew instantly - 'That's us,' " she said. "They had been overlooked, but
they had sort of resigned themselves. I think they're very happy to be
found."=20

Her $1,000 reward is to be split between Mr. Andersson, who is donating =
it,
and Annie's great-niece.=20

As for Edward P. Wood, a New Jersey plumbing contractor who is descended
from the Texas Annie Moore and has been feted on Ellis Island, Mrs.
Smolenyak Smolenyak said that when she told him of her findings, he =
said,
"I'm disappointed, but I'm not heartbroken."=20

The Annie Moore who arrived in steerage and inaugurated Ellis Island
initially joined her parents, who had arrived several years earlier,
apparently in a five-story brick tenement at 32 Monroe Street in =
Manhattan.
(One of many problems that complicated Mrs. Smolenyak Smolenyak's =
search,
she said, is there is also a 32 Monroe Street in Brooklyn.)=20

Records indicate that Annie Moore later moved to, among other places, a
nearby apartment on New Chambers Street - near the Newsboys' Lodging =
House
and the Third Avenue El on the Bowery.

The area now includes the Alfred E. Smith Houses, a public project
constructed in the early 1950's and named for the governor who grew up
nearby, and the Knickerbocker Village complex of rental apartments built =
in
the 1930's.=20

"She had the typical hardscrabble immigrant life," Mrs. Smolenyak =
Smolenyak
said. "She sacrificed herself for future generations."

According to her latest research, Annie's father was a longshoreman. She
married a bakery clerk. They had at least 11 children. Five survived to
adulthood and three had children of their own. She died of heart failure =
in
1924 at 47. Her brother Anthony, who arrived with Annie and Philip on =
the
Nevada, died in his 20's in the Bronx and was temporarily buried in =
potter's
field.

Annie lived and died within a few square blocks on the Lower East Side,
where some of her descendants lived until just recently. She is buried =
with
6 of her 11 children (five infants and one who survived to 21) alongside =
the
famous and forgotten in a Queens cemetery.=20

Her living descendants include great-grandchildren, the great-nephew and =
the
great-niece. One of the descendants is an investment counselor and =
another a
Ph.D.=20

Mrs. Smolenyak Smolenyak described them as "poster children" for =
immigrant
America, with Irish, Jewish, Italian and Scandinavian surnames. "It's an
all-American family," she said. "Annie would have been proud."

So far, this turns out to be one of the few cases in which historical
revisionism may have enhanced a legacy instead of subverting it. As one
guidebook says: "Annie Moore came to America bearing little more than =
her
dreams; she stayed to help build a country enriched by diversity."=20

William H. Mulligan, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor of History
Murray State University
Murray KY 42071-3341 USA=20
=20
=20

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Dymphna Lonergan
Subject: Re: Where's the craic
In-Reply-To:
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Just wondering where Ultan got his etymology for 'crack'.
I always understood that it was from Ir. craic 'chat, conversation', but I=
=20
also have my own theory that it may be related to bualadh craiceann 'sexual=
=20
intercourse'.




At 11:38 15/09/06 +0100, you wrote:
>Thanks to Brian and all the other contributors on this topic. If I am being
>very honest, as one of the Irish in Ireland (but who lived in a number of
>other countries for almost ten years) my initial reaction to some of the
>discussion was also one of irritation. I don't want to be an exhibit in
>someone else's zoo; I am not comfortable with the idea of some kind of
>inchoate essentialism of place and emotional ties and I haven't any time as
>a self-respecting agnostic for the faux-Celtic 'spirituality' which is=
doing
>the rounds these days(I think it has something to do with the huge sales of
>Enya's wallpaper musak... Ok, ok, only joking). I think there are also
>darker elements of the place of Ireland in some imaginations - when I lived
>in France I met right-wing 'integriste' (fundamentalist in today's=
language)
>Catholics who regarded Ireland as the last bastion of White Catholic
>identity in a world engulfed in the filthy tide of modernism. And perhaps=
it
>is no coincidence that the logo of a number of European and other far-right
>racist movements is the Celtic Cross (check out http://www.stormfront.org
>which has more than a few Irish contributors)
>
>But I think there are also ways of inserting these questions within wider
>debates about identity, history and scholarly enquiry. A few questions:
>
>(a) 'orientalist' positionings of Ireland. I think there are strong=
elements
>of this in popular discourses especially in the English speaking world: we
>are the 'near Other'. It's not for nothing that Seamus Heaney is so popular
>in Britain - his is an Ireland of essence, clay, potatoes, digging,
>ruralism. Matthew Arnold and others have been responsible for much of this
>imagining of Ireland as pre-modern (sometimes the opposite of 'modern').
>This Ireland of the imagination is a place of retreat and reassurance,
>almost like returning to the womb, where threatening modernity and
>complexity never intrude.There is a vast literature on this topic.
>
>(b) There is another debate about the way in which the Irish in Ireland=
have
>cynically chosen to package and commodify the wish of others including the
>Irish outside Ireland, and others with no connection, to be 'connected' to
>this 'homeland' and have invented a pastiche Irishness to sell to them. For
>me this is exemplified by the use of the term 'crack' as in 'having the
>crack'. The word is actually an English one, not Irish at all, but we have
>taken this kind of nonsense a step further by inventing an fake Irish
>orthography for it 'craic'. Other examples are the kind of codology=
embodied
>in slogans such as 'strangers are friends you haven't met yet'. The Irish
>Tourist Office in France ran a phenomenally successful campaign in the=
1980s
>with the evocative slogan 'aller loin sans aller loin' (go far without=
going
>far). Ultimately we started to swallow this nonsense ourselves, which is a
>lot more worrying! Think 'Riverdance'.
>
>(c) On the other hand, I'm interested in the notion of the Diaspora as a
>place where aspects of Irish culture and a certain idea of Ireland, to
>borrow de Gaulle's phrase about his own country, were, so to speak,
>preserved in aspic. Reading the novels of Alice McDermott, especially
>Charming Billy and At Weddings and Wakes, brought me sharply back to the
>customs and practices of rural Catholic Ireland in the late 1950s (to be
>fair, this was the period in which the novels themselves were set). Those=
in
>the Diaspora who come to Ireland looking for 'a certain Ireland' may not
>find it, but paradoxically those living in postmodern Ireland may find
>echoes of this earlier Ireland in the Diaspora.
>
>(d) There is a whole debate about the notion of identity and return. If I
>can quote from something I wrote a number of years ago,
>
>Feminist scholar Caren Kaplan opens her book Questions of Travel with a
>quotation from the poet, Elizabeth Bishop:
>
>Continent, city, country, society:
>the choice is never wide and never free.
>And here, or there...No. Should we have stayed at
>home, wherever that may be?
>
>and goes on to comment
>
>'For many of us there is no possibility of staying at home in the
>conventional sense - that is, the world has changed to the point that those
>domestic, national or marked spaces no longer exist. So I cannot respond to
>Bishop's more modernist question by "staying put" or fixing my location or
>promising not to leave my national borders. There is not necessarily a
>preoriginary space in which to stay after modern imperialist expansion. But
>identities cling to us, or even produce us, nonetheless. Many of us have
>locations in the plural. Thus, rather than assuming that we'll never return
>to these homes again, rather than celebrating the rootless traveller of
>Bishop's text, I suggest that the fragments and multiplicities of identity
>in postmodernity can be marked and historically situated. As Iain Chambers
>argues, historicizing displacement leads us away from nostalgic dreams of
>"going home" to a mythic, metaphysical location and into the realm of
>theorizing a way of "being at home" that accounts for "the myths we know to
>be myths yet continue to cling to, cherish and dream" alongside "other
>stories, other fragments of memory and traces of time".'
>
>In this view of identity and place, Caplan does not simply opt for the
>notion of modern rootlessness. As she says, identities cling to us, or even
>produce us, even though our "pre-originary space" may have disappeared.
>Place and space do matter in this perspective, just as myth does, even
>though we know the myths are myths. The important point has less to do with
>our ability to return to some idealised past - what she calls a nostalgic
>dream of "going home" - and more to do with our ability to historicise
>ourselves and our own various, multiple senses of identity - what she calls
>a way of "being at home". In a sense, it is the act of historicisation, the
>remembering, the performance, that constitutes the identity. We may make
>our own choices, but the circumstances are not entirely of our own=
choosing.
>There are givens over which we have no control, other than in our ability=
to
>incorporate them, and their multiple meanings, into our own landscapes of
>subjectivity.
>
>The self is thus constituted by an ongoing process of becoming, and an
>ongoing process of interaction. We cannot ignore boundaries and formative
>factors The past, our family, place and culture are relevant and
>constitutive of identity but there is not and cannot be closure - except in
>the grave.
>
>(e). Finally, I fully agree with Ultan. Modern Ireland is busy concreting
>over its own past at a rate of knots. We have long welcomed American=
dollors
>while sneering behind their backs at the donors. A corrosive cynicism
>combines with a collective amnesia where the Diaspora is concerned.
>
>Piaras


le gach dea ghu=ED
Dymphna


Dr Dymphna Lonergan
Professional English Convener
Room 282, Humanities, Flinders University
(08) 8201 2079

1966-2006
Flinders 40th Anniversary

Research interests: Business English, Plain English, Australian English,=20
Hiberno English, Irish language words in English, Anglo-Irish literature,=20
Irish Australian literature

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Jim Doan
Subject: Re: Where's the craic
In-Reply-To:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

"Bualadh craicinn" would mean literally "striking skin" (obviously a
euphemism originally). The English (possibly derived from Old Norse =
krakkr)
etymology for "craic, crack" is correct. The word is cited in Middle
English texts as well as 18th-century Ulster Scot poetry with exactly =
the
same meaning as the present word and is also quite likely the origin of =
the
U.S. term "cracker" (as in Georgia or Florida cracker), since these were
most likely descended from Scotch-Irish herdsmen who enjoyed the =
"crack."

James E. Doan, Ph.D., Professor of Humanities, Humanities Major=20
Chair, and President, South Florida Irish Studies Consortium
Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences
Nova Southeastern University
3301 College Ave., Davie-Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33314
954-262-8207; Fax: 954-262-3881
=20
-----Original Message-----
From: The Irish Diaspora Studies List [mailto:IR-D[at]JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On =
Behalf
Of Dymphna Lonergan
Sent: Sunday, September 17, 2006 7:30 PM
To: IR-D[at]JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Re: [IR-D] Where's the craic

Just wondering where Ultan got his etymology for 'crack'.
I always understood that it was from Ir. craic 'chat, conversation', but =
I=20
also have my own theory that it may be related to bualadh craiceann =
'sexual=20
intercourse'.




At 11:38 15/09/06 +0100, you wrote:
>Thanks to Brian and all the other contributors on this topic. If I am =
being
>very honest, as one of the Irish in Ireland (but who lived in a number =
of
>other countries for almost ten years) my initial reaction to some of =
the
>discussion was also one of irritation. I don't want to be an exhibit in
>someone else's zoo; I am not comfortable with the idea of some kind of
>inchoate essentialism of place and emotional ties and I haven't any =
time as
>a self-respecting agnostic for the faux-Celtic 'spirituality' which is
doing
>the rounds these days(I think it has something to do with the huge =
sales of
>Enya's wallpaper musak... Ok, ok, only joking). I think there are also
>darker elements of the place of Ireland in some imaginations - when I =
lived
>in France I met right-wing 'integriste' (fundamentalist in today's
language)
>Catholics who regarded Ireland as the last bastion of White Catholic
>identity in a world engulfed in the filthy tide of modernism. And =
perhaps
it
>is no coincidence that the logo of a number of European and other =
far-right
>racist movements is the Celtic Cross (check out =
http://www.stormfront.org
>which has more than a few Irish contributors)
>
>But I think there are also ways of inserting these questions within =
wider
>debates about identity, history and scholarly enquiry. A few questions:
>
>(a) 'orientalist' positionings of Ireland. I think there are strong
elements
>of this in popular discourses especially in the English speaking world: =
we
>are the 'near Other'. It's not for nothing that Seamus Heaney is so =
popular
>in Britain - his is an Ireland of essence, clay, potatoes, digging,
>ruralism. Matthew Arnold and others have been responsible for much of =
this
>imagining of Ireland as pre-modern (sometimes the opposite of =
'modern').
>This Ireland of the imagination is a place of retreat and reassurance,
>almost like returning to the womb, where threatening modernity and
>complexity never intrude.There is a vast literature on this topic.
>
>(b) There is another debate about the way in which the Irish in Ireland
have
>cynically chosen to package and commodify the wish of others including =
the
>Irish outside Ireland, and others with no connection, to be 'connected' =
to
>this 'homeland' and have invented a pastiche Irishness to sell to them. =
For
>me this is exemplified by the use of the term 'crack' as in 'having the
>crack'. The word is actually an English one, not Irish at all, but we =
have
>taken this kind of nonsense a step further by inventing an fake Irish
>orthography for it 'craic'. Other examples are the kind of codology
embodied
>in slogans such as 'strangers are friends you haven't met yet'. The =
Irish
>Tourist Office in France ran a phenomenally successful campaign in the
1980s
>with the evocative slogan 'aller loin sans aller loin' (go far without
going
>far). Ultimately we started to swallow this nonsense ourselves, which =
is a
>lot more worrying! Think 'Riverdance'.
>
>(c) On the other hand, I'm interested in the notion of the Diaspora as =
a
>place where aspects of Irish culture and a certain idea of Ireland, to
>borrow de Gaulle's phrase about his own country, were, so to speak,
>preserved in aspic. Reading the novels of Alice McDermott, especially
>Charming Billy and At Weddings and Wakes, brought me sharply back to =
the
>customs and practices of rural Catholic Ireland in the late 1950s (to =
be
>fair, this was the period in which the novels themselves were set). =
Those
in
>the Diaspora who come to Ireland looking for 'a certain Ireland' may =
not
>find it, but paradoxically those living in postmodern Ireland may find
>echoes of this earlier Ireland in the Diaspora.
>
>(d) There is a whole debate about the notion of identity and return. If =
I
>can quote from something I wrote a number of years ago,
>
>Feminist scholar Caren Kaplan opens her book Questions of Travel with a
>quotation from the poet, Elizabeth Bishop:
>
>Continent, city, country, society:
>the choice is never wide and never free.
>And here, or there...No. Should we have stayed at
>home, wherever that may be?
>
>and goes on to comment
>
>'For many of us there is no possibility of staying at home in the
>conventional sense - that is, the world has changed to the point that =
those
>domestic, national or marked spaces no longer exist. So I cannot =
respond to
>Bishop's more modernist question by "staying put" or fixing my location =
or
>promising not to leave my national borders. There is not necessarily a
>preoriginary space in which to stay after modern imperialist expansion. =
But
>identities cling to us, or even produce us, nonetheless. Many of us =
have
>locations in the plural. Thus, rather than assuming that we'll never =
return
>to these homes again, rather than celebrating the rootless traveller of
>Bishop's text, I suggest that the fragments and multiplicities of =
identity
>in postmodernity can be marked and historically situated. As Iain =
Chambers
>argues, historicizing displacement leads us away from nostalgic dreams =
of
>"going home" to a mythic, metaphysical location and into the realm of
>theorizing a way of "being at home" that accounts for "the myths we =
know to
>be myths yet continue to cling to, cherish and dream" alongside "other
>stories, other fragments of memory and traces of time".'
>
>In this view of identity and place, Caplan does not simply opt for the
>notion of modern rootlessness. As she says, identities cling to us, or =
even
>produce us, even though our "pre-originary space" may have disappeared.
>Place and space do matter in this perspective, just as myth does, even
>though we know the myths are myths. The important point has less to do =
with
>our ability to return to some idealised past - what she calls a =
nostalgic
>dream of "going home" - and more to do with our ability to historicise
>ourselves and our own various, multiple senses of identity - what she =
calls
>a way of "being at home". In a sense, it is the act of historicisation, =
the
>remembering, the performance, that constitutes the identity. We may =
make
>our own choices, but the circumstances are not entirely of our own
choosing.
>There are givens over which we have no control, other than in our =
ability
to
>incorporate them, and their multiple meanings, into our own landscapes =
of
>subjectivity.
>
>The self is thus constituted by an ongoing process of becoming, and an
>ongoing process of interaction. We cannot ignore boundaries and =
formative
>factors The past, our family, place and culture are relevant and
>constitutive of identity but there is not and cannot be closure - =
except in
>the grave.
>
>(e). Finally, I fully agree with Ultan. Modern Ireland is busy =
concreting
>over its own past at a rate of knots. We have long welcomed American
dollors
>while sneering behind their backs at the donors. A corrosive cynicism
>combines with a collective amnesia where the Diaspora is concerned.
>
>Piaras


le gach dea ghu=ED
Dymphna


Dr Dymphna Lonergan
Professional English Convener
Room 282, Humanities, Flinders University
(08) 8201 2079

1966-2006
Flinders 40th Anniversary

Research interests: Business English, Plain English, Australian English, =

Hiberno English, Irish language words in English, Anglo-Irish =
literature,=20
Irish Australian literature

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From: Ultan Cowley
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Dymphna

Although I do use the word in the title of my multimedia presentation on the navvies, The Craic was good in Cricklewood: Songs & Stories of the Irish Navvies, I wasn't the originator of the current Ir-D reference to the etymology of the word Craic, Piarais was.

Ultan








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Subject: The Israeli-Irish troubles
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From: p.maume[at]qub.ac.uk [mailto:p.maume[at]qub.ac.uk]=20
Sent: 18 September 2006 12:02
Subject: RE: [IR-D] The Israeli-Irish troubles

From: Patrick Maume
A couple of points about this:
(a) The identification of Ireland with the Palestinians has not always
been the case. In the mid-century there was quite a lot of sympathy for
the Israelis among the IRA because they were seen as opposing the
British at the end of the Palestine mandate. The late J. Bowyer Bell is
best-remembered for his work on the IRA but he first got involved in
Ireland because he was studying LEHI (the ideological ancestors of
Likud) and was surprised to find how strongly they regarded the IRA as
models (see his book TERROR OUT OF ZION). Similarly, he records that
many of the IRA men he met in the 1960s met & admired Menahem Begin's
memoir THE SIEGE.
(b) The reference to Jews in the 1937 constitution was not included
when the Republic was declared in 1949 but when the Constitution was
drawn up in 1937. The inclusion of Judaism as a "recognised religion"
(in the same proviso of Article 44 which referred to "the special
position of the Catholic Church" and which was repealed in 1972) was
seen as having contemporary significance: Fr. Denis Fahey, the most
vicious & influential anti-semite Ireland produed in the twentieth
century, referred to it in his correspondence as a sign that "Ireland
was doomed".
BTW the present Oireachtas is the first since 1923 not to have a
Jewish member. (The Countess of Desart served in the Free State senate
throughout the 1920s and the Briscoes, father and son, were TDs from
Bob's election in 1926 until Ben's retirement in 2001. Mervyn Taylor
was a Labour TD 1981-97 and Alan Shatter was a Fine Gael TD for Dublin
South 1981-2001 (he is a candidate for the same constituency in the
forthcoming election.) For much of the 1980s there were three Jewish
TDs and only one Protestant, which is remarkable considering the
respective size of the two communities.=20

Patrick Maume


-----Original Message-----
From: The Irish Diaspora Studies List [mailto:IR-D[at]jiscmail.ac.uk] On
Behalf Of Patrick O'Sullivan
Sent: 08 September 2006 11:45
To: IR-D[at]JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: [IR-D] The Israeli-Irish troubles


From: Joe Bradley [mailto:j.m.bradley[at]stir.ac.uk]=20
Sent: 08 September 2006 12:22

I thought this might be of interest...

>From the Jerusalem Post online...
=A0
Sep. 6, 2006 22:28=A0|=A0Updated Sep. 7, 2006 20:38
The Israeli-Irish troubles
By MANFRED GERSTENFELD

'If one were to throw a sack of flour over the Irish parliament, it is
unlikely that anybody pro-Israeli would get white," says Rory Miller.
"Among the 120 members of the D il - the Irish parliament's lower house
- and the 100 members of the Senate, not one name springs to mind as a
regular defender of Israel. There are either those who do not care or
pro-Palestinians."=20
According to Dr. Miller, senior lecturer in Mediterranean Studies at
King's College, London, Irish political sympathies have always been
firmly with the Palestinians.=20
In February 1980, Ireland became the first EEC (European Economic
Community) member to call publicly for the inclusion of the PLO in the
political process at a time when Yasser Arafat's group not only refused
to recognize Israel's right to exist, but was engaged in a relentless
campaign of terror against Israeli and Jewish targets across the globe.=20
More surprisingly, he says, throughout the 1980s successive Irish
governments were prepared to overlook PLO terrorism that directly
attacked Irish troops serving in Lebanon with the UN.=20
"The Irish see themselves as anticolonial victims of partition and
ultimately victors over the British... In Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat and
Hamas, they see those who struggle against a colonial ruler. The Irish
cannot shake off the belief that Israel is a colonial oppressor," says
Miller.=20
But, he continues, "Analytically speaking, it is easy to show that they
have much more in common with Israel than with the Palestinians."=20
Born in Dublin in 1971, Miller holds a BA in history from Trinity
College, Dublin, an MA in war studies, and a PhD in Mediterranean
studies from King's College, where his lectures focus on US and EU
involvement in the Middle East. He has published two books: Divided
against Zion: Anti-Zionist Opposition to a Jewish State in Palestine,
1945-48 and more recently Ireland and the Palestine Question, 1948-2004.

Speaking in a lengthy telephone interview, Miller says Ireland's
positions during the recent fighting in Lebanon were, as ever, in line
with those of much of the rest of the European Union, including
criticism of Israel for perceived excessive use of force, and demands
that Hizbullah return the kidnapped soldiers and stop the rocket-fire on
Israel.=20
He stresses that, in contrast to some European countries, there are no
Irish politicians who make a career out of attacking Israel.=20
But at the root of his overview of Irish-Israel relations - and this
interview covers matters such as trade ties and the Irish Muslim
community as well as politics and diplomacy - is Miller's sense that a
natural affinity should long since have grown up between two countries
that share so many significant aspects yet so often find themselves at
odds.=20
The Irish Jewish community=20
Although in recent decades the Jews were remarkably well represented in
the Irish parliament, Jews were always insignificant in number in
Ireland. Even at its most vibrant in 1949, the Jewish community only
numbered 4,000-5,000. Today it numbers around 1,500. There are also
about 600 Israelis, with the number of Jews who are moving to Ireland
for work, particularly to Dublin, increasing. Many are active in the
community; a few, however, are leaders in anti-Israeli activities, says
Miller. They were not involved in the politics of the Northern Ireland
crisis between Catholics and Protestants, or "the Troubles" as it came
to be known.=20
"When Ireland became a republic upon leaving the British Commonwealth in
1949, it was written in the Irish constitution that Judaism was a state
religion. It thus had the same rights as Catholicism and Protestantism,"
says Miller.

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Peter Hart
Subject: Re: The Israeli-Irish troubles
In-Reply-To:
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I'm not sure if I've mentioned this here before, so I'll keep it brief. I
can confirm Piaras' account of Irish soldiers' reactions to the Lebanese
situation in the 1980s, at least from my own conversations with many
officers and men in the late 80s and early 90s. They not only blamed the
Israeli army for most of the violence, they also identifed with the local
farmers (of several faiths, I assume) who suffered as a result: small
farmers such as many soldiers were familiar with back home. And this blame
dervied not from any preconcieved ideology or prejudice (one could easily
hear/see many positive references to Israel in the Irish media) but from
first-hand experience over a long period of time.

Peter Hart

At 02:10 PM 18/09/2006 +0100, MacEinri, Piaras wrote:
>I am not sure we should stray into this territory on this list. But since we
>have already done so insofar as the views of Rory Miller have been
>forwarded, I would like to have some possibility of replying and to say that
>I have rarely read such as a farrago of inaccuracies and biased views
>(except, possibly, on any of the other occasions when Rory Miller has been
>given a platform).
>
>The "Bahrain Declaration" by Minister for Foreign Affairs Brian Lenihan in
>1980 was a courageous and far-sighted initiative which was later taken up by
>the entire EEC (now EU) in its so-called Venice declaration. Yes, it did
>recognise the PLO, which clearly had a claim to represent the wish of the
>Palestinian people for an independent homeland at a time when Israel still
>took the position there the Palestinian people did not even exist. Yes, it
>recognised a movement whose methods included the use of unacceptable forms
>of violence, but so did the Stern Gang in their day and the IRA in its time.
>The initiative was part of a broader process designed to create the
>conditions for a long-term settlement. Incidentally, if Rory Miller or
>anyone else bothered to read the Dail record of the time, which is on-line,
>they will see that there were senior politicians in Ireland who were
>perfectly ready and willing, as was their right, to criticise the
>Declaration and to defend what they saw as Israel's interests.
>
>The next part, where Dr Miller says that 'throughout the 1980s successive
>Irish governments were prepared to overlook PLO terrorism that directly
>attacked Irish troops serving in Lebanon with the UN' is laughable. I was
>the Irish Government's official representative in Beirut most of the time
>for the period 1982-85 in Lebanon. My main brief was UNIFIL and I travelled
>extensively and frequently in all parts of South Lebanon. My clear memory,
>and I have no doubt the clear memory of the many Irish officers and soldiers
>with whom I dealt on a daily basis, is that the vast majority of incidents
>were fomented by the Israelis and their proxies, the 'South Lebanon Army' as
>well a a rag-tag assortment of other local militia paid and controlled by
>the IDF. This is in no way to suggest that the PLO were angels - indeed they
>themselves were often extremely unpopular with many of the local population.
>Dr Miller is evidently ignorant of the situation as it existed on the
>ground. Moreover, I think it would also be fair to say that most Irish
>military, like other military people (there is a camaderie between armies)
>arrived in Lebanon with a degree of natural empathy towards the IDF, men and
>women in uniform like themselves. What changed their views was their own
>first-hand witnessing of the brutal oppression visited by the Israelis and
>their proxies upon a helpless and largely defenceless population. Ultimately
>that led to the discrediting of all moderate Shia political opinion, the
>rise of Hizbollah, their successful guerilla campaign against the Israeli
>occupation and the terrible events of last summer.
>
>I do not think it would be helpful or useful to comment on the situation
>last summer, except to say that war crimes were committed by both Israel and
>Hizbollah but a greater responsibility surely lies on a functioning
>independent state which also caused, through its actions, death and serious
>injury to thousands while leaving a legacy of cluster bombs and hatred which
>will poison the region for decades to come.
>
>Piaras
>

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: "MacEinri, Piaras"
Subject: Re: The Israeli-Irish troubles
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I am not sure we should stray into this territory on this list. But since we
have already done so insofar as the views of Rory Miller have been
forwarded, I would like to have some possibility of replying and to say that
I have rarely read such as a farrago of inaccuracies and biased views
(except, possibly, on any of the other occasions when Rory Miller has been
given a platform).

The "Bahrain Declaration" by Minister for Foreign Affairs Brian Lenihan in
1980 was a courageous and far-sighted initiative which was later taken up by
the entire EEC (now EU) in its so-called Venice declaration. Yes, it did
recognise the PLO, which clearly had a claim to represent the wish of the
Palestinian people for an independent homeland at a time when Israel still
took the position there the Palestinian people did not even exist. Yes, it
recognised a movement whose methods included the use of unacceptable forms
of violence, but so did the Stern Gang in their day and the IRA in its time.
The initiative was part of a broader process designed to create the
conditions for a long-term settlement. Incidentally, if Rory Miller or
anyone else bothered to read the Dail record of the time, which is on-line,
they will see that there were senior politicians in Ireland who were
perfectly ready and willing, as was their right, to criticise the
Declaration and to defend what they saw as Israel's interests.

The next part, where Dr Miller says that 'throughout the 1980s successive
Irish governments were prepared to overlook PLO terrorism that directly
attacked Irish troops serving in Lebanon with the UN' is laughable. I was
the Irish Government's official representative in Beirut most of the time
for the period 1982-85 in Lebanon. My main brief was UNIFIL and I travelled
extensively and frequently in all parts of South Lebanon. My clear memory,
and I have no doubt the clear memory of the many Irish officers and soldiers
with whom I dealt on a daily basis, is that the vast majority of incidents
were fomented by the Israelis and their proxies, the 'South Lebanon Army' as
well a a rag-tag assortment of other local militia paid and controlled by
the IDF. This is in no way to suggest that the PLO were angels - indeed they
themselves were often extremely unpopular with many of the local population.
Dr Miller is evidently ignorant of the situation as it existed on the
ground. Moreover, I think it would also be fair to say that most Irish
military, like other military people (there is a camaderie between armies)
arrived in Lebanon with a degree of natural empathy towards the IDF, men and
women in uniform like themselves. What changed their views was their own
first-hand witnessing of the brutal oppression visited by the Israelis and
their proxies upon a helpless and largely defenceless population. Ultimately
that led to the discrediting of all moderate Shia political opinion, the
rise of Hizbollah, their successful guerilla campaign against the Israeli
occupation and the terrible events of last summer.

I do not think it would be helpful or useful to comment on the situation
last summer, except to say that war crimes were committed by both Israel and
Hizbollah but a greater responsibility surely lies on a functioning
independent state which also caused, through its actions, death and serious
injury to thousands while leaving a legacy of cluster bombs and hatred which
will poison the region for decades to come.

Piaras

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan
Subject: Book Review, Quinlan,
_Strange Kin: Ireland and the American South_
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Email Patrick O'Sullivan

-----Original Message-----
H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Atlantic[at]h-net.msu.edu (September 2006)

Kieran Quinlan. _Strange Kin: Ireland and the American South_. Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005. xi + 289 pp. Notes,
bibliography, index. $49.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-8071-2983-6.

Reviewed for H-Atlantic by Margaret Sankey, Department of History,
Minnesota State University Moorhead

Myth and History in Ireland and the American South

Despite receiving public acclaim, the Coen brothers' film _O Brother =
Where
Art Thou_ (2000) has also had its share of criticism for the way it =
makes
use of tried and true stereotypes of the South. Similarly,
_Ballykissangel_ (a television series first broadcast on BBC 1 from
1996-2001), in many ways an English view of Ireland, causes dismay among
many in Ireland for its portrayals of the emerald isle. These two
products of popular culture point to the challenge inherent in =
presenting
either of these cultures, let alone both, free of fable, myth, or worse.
Kieran Quinlan, born in Ireland and a professor at the University of
Alabama Birmingham, may be the perfect person to handle the strange and
wonderful relationship between Ireland and the South. Their inhabitants
have much in common: they both live in rural areas dominated by a more
urbanized and industrial region; they have a history of occupation and
warfare (both open and guerilla); and they have strong traditions of
religious piety and "lost causes" as well as the irony of being peoples
who can be characterized by a spectrum ranging from noble and heroic
warriors, writers, and musicians, at one end, to redneck and Paddy =
jokes,
at the other.

Fortunately, recent literature is cracking the old myth of the South as
Anglo-Saxon and Protestant, which typically described Irish emigrants as
Ulster Scots-Irish as opposed to Irish Catholics. Scholars are also
showing that emigration from Ireland was not nearly as monolithic as
originally seen. Irish men and women left their homes for reasons that
were not always dictated by religion or conflict with the British
government. Nevertheless, both of these myths of Irish emigration have
persisted for a long time due to patterns of cultural production that
nurtured them. Quinlan has some fascinating examples of the ways in =
which
history has been re-written on both sides of the Atlantic to include men
like the Scots-Irish Andrew Jackson, whom Eamon de Valera incorporated
into a 1919 wreath-laying ceremony that he led. Another part of this
process was the appropriation of other histories, which resulted, for
example, in non-sectarian French Revolutionary ideals having an effect =
on
the way American southerners and Irish people identified themselves.

The thorniest issue in Quinlan's account, which he lays out in absorbing
detail, is slavery. Slavery in the United States shaped the Irish
consciousness in fundamental, and ironic, ways, especially as regards =
the
roles of oppressor and oppressed. In Ireland, pro-independence leaders
like Daniel O'Connell waved banners with freed West Indian slaves
signifying a free man, while a white Irishman in chains represented
oppression and chattel slavery. Irish people in the American South, and
Irish visitors to the South, grappled with slavery, too, often =
influenced
by the nativist and anti-Catholic leanings of northern abolitionists.
These same Irish migrants could also, on occasion, evince clearly
proslavery views as well. Quinlan quotes a 1921 W. E. B. DuBois article
in which he claimed that African Americans were the most sympathetic to
the plight of the Irish seeking Home Rule (as Frederick Douglass was to
the increasing reports of famine during his lecture tour of Ireland in =
the
early 1840s). But regrettably, Du Bois noted, it was too often the
oppressed (e.g. Irish migrants) who were quick to abuse others (e.g.
African Americans) at the behest of an even bigger oppressor. There is
almost no better example of what DuBois was talking about than the =
career
of John Mitchel. A Young Ireland leader, Mitchel was tried and =
sentenced
to transportation to Van Diemen's Land in 1848, and, having escaped to =
the
United States in 1853, eventually landed in Tennessee and became a
pro-slavery newspaperman and lecturer. In another equally mind-boggling
episode, Oscar Wilde, soon to experience the machinery of British =
justice,
was unperturbed by the delay of his train to accommodate a lynching. =
And
yet, although born into slavery as the sons of an Irish-American planter
and a mother who was legally a mixed-race slave, the Irish-African Healy
brothers (James Augustine, Patrick Francis, and Alexander Sherwood) =
rose,
respectively, to positions as Bishop of Maine, head of Georgetown
University, and director of the seminary in Troy, New York even as Roman
Catholic orders in the south owned slaves for a good portion of their
lives. Moreover, one of their sisters rose to the rank of mother
superior.

These recombinations and juxtapositions of views and experiences also
point to another theme in Quinlan's work: exchange. Quinlan treats the
Atlantic much as his subjects did--as a permeable boundary crossed often
and with significant cultural baggage. He assembles ripples of
Irish-Southern influences to convey the flow of these Atlantic =
exchanges.
Thus, in Ireland, Daniel O' Connell considered his anti-slavery stance
(which compared slavery to Cromwellian "potato plantations") carefully =
in
light of American financial support to his cause. On the other side of
the Atlantic, he gives examples such as a case linking Oscar Wilde's =
visit
to Jefferson Davis; Davis's daughter Varina Anne's biography of Robert
Emmet (_An Irish Knight of the 19th Century: Sketch of the Life of =
Robert
Emmet_1888); and the "lost cause" poetry of Father Abram Ryan, author of
"The Sword of Robert E. Lee," which was popularized in musical form
(1867). Even more striking, Ryan, a Roman Catholic priest, was held in
esteem by the nascent Klu Klux Klan, which regarded him as an unofficial
Protestant for his contributions to the cause.

The themes of exchange and crazy-kilter _bricolage_ come together when
Quinlan takes on perhaps the most prolific generator of southern
stereotypes, _Gone with the Wind_ (1936), by delving into Margaret
Mitchell's family background and the extent to which the book has wedged
Irish Catholics into the vision of the Civil War south. Interestingly,
although Mitchell's own research was flawed by poor historical
interpretations available at the time, her social hierarchy of the =
Irish,
from the poor Slatterys to the storekeeping Kennedys to the plantation
O'Haras, may be more in line with a diversified Irish population as seen
in recent studies.

The cross pollination continues into Reconstruction, as both the Irish =
and
post-war southerners created heroes and educational vehicles to
memorialize their suffering and wrap it in explanations. Quinlan's use =
of
both literary and historical sources is particularly strong here, as he =
is
able to give evidence not only from secondary examinations like Wolfgang
Schivelbusch's examination of national defeats (_Die Kultur der
Niederlage: der amerikanische S=FCden 1865, Frankreich 1871, Deutschland
1918_ 2001), but also from poetry, speeches, and popular culture, not =
the
least of which is the prominence of Irish comedians touring in =
blackface.
The twentieth century has seen no lessening of the relationship, whether
it be Ian Paisley's southern college degree, or the admiration of Robert
Penn Warren for Yeats (but loathing for north-eastern Irish-Americans), =
or
the friendship of Eudora Welty and Elizabeth Bowen.

As Quinlan points out, both Irish and Southern history are seemingly
inexhaustible subjects with broad appeal, ensuring a reading audience =
for
popular, literary, and scholarly examinations of these areas. His deft
handling of the material, and the marvelous bits of detail he
provides--such as Atlanta being the largest consumer of Guinness in
America, post-bellum Mississippi spending one-fifth of its budget on
prosthetic limbs, or Wolf Tone's plans to colonize Hawaii-- ensure that
these provocative chapters will find their way into the way I think =
about
and teach British, American, and Atlantic history. As a monograph, this
book is suitable and extremely useful for courses across the disciplines
of literature, history, and religion.



Copyright (c) 2006 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits
the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit,
educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the
author, web location, date of publication, originating list, =
and
H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses
contact the Reviews editorial staff: hbooks[at]mail.h-net.msu.edu.