Strange Country

Strange Country

Ireland’s Politics and Culture, 1998–2021

Flore Coulouma / Cornelius Crowley / Florence Schneider (eds)

Oxford - Berlin - Bruxelles - Chennai - Lausanne - New York

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Coulouma, Flore, editor. | Crowley, Cornelius, editor. | Schneider, Florence, 1967- editor.

Title: Strange country : Ireland’s politics and culture, 1998–2021 / Flore Coulouma, Cornelius Crowley, Florence Schneider (eds.).

Other titles: Ireland’s politics and culture, 1998-2021

Description: Oxford ; New York : Peter Lang, [2025] | Series: Reimagining Ireland, 1662-9094; volume 141 | Collection of essays by Callum Bateson and 10 others. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2024059809 (print) | LCCN 2024059810 (ebook) | ISBN 9781803746012 (paperback) | ISBN 9781803746029 (ebook) | ISBN 9781803746036 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: National characteristics, Irish. | Collective memory--Ireland. | Ireland--Civilization--21st century. | Ireland--In popular culture. | Ireland--History--21st century.

Classification: LCC DA966.2 .S77 2025 (print) | LCC DA966.2 (ebook) | DDC 941.5083--dc23/eng/20250121

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024059809

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024059810

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Cover image: © Sean Hillen, 1996, “Boating on The Liffey”

Cover design by Peter Lang Group AG

ISSN 1662-9094

ISBN 978-1-80374-601-2 (Print)

E-ISBN 978-1-80374-602-9 (E-PDF)

E-ISBN 978-1-80374-603-6 (E-PUB)

DOI 10.3726/b22608

© 2025 Peter Lang Group AG, Lausanne, Switzerland

Published by Peter Lang Ltd, Oxford, United Kingdom

info@peterlang.com

Flore Coulouma, Cornelius Crowley and Florence Schneider have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this Work.

All rights reserved.

All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.

This publication has been peer reviewed.

www.peterlang.com

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

DR NESSA CRONIN

Preface: ‘We are all made of stories’

FLORE COULOUMA, CORNELIUS CROWLEY, FLORENCE SCHNEIDER

Introduction. Panic and Pandemic: How the Strange Country Volume Came Together

I. LIMINAL IDENTITIES

CHAPTER 1 — CALLUM BATESON

Between an Ocean and a Rock: Exploring Liminality and Irish Identity in Song of the Sea

CHAPTER 2 — NEMO GORECKI

An Mhuruch: Irishness and Transness Through the Mermaid Figure, Nuala Ní Dhomnhaill and Mia Gallagher

CHAPTER 3 — LÉA SINOIMERI

Strange Soundscapes of Past and Present Migrations in Lucy Caldwell’s Martians

CHAPTER 4 — TOM HEDLEY

Kafka’s Belfast. Modernism, Metaphor and Magic in Jan Carson’s The Fire Starters

II. TERRITORY, SENSE OF PLACE, LANDSCAPE AND THE ARTS

CHAPTER 5 — DANIELLE BARAKA

Rural Ireland in Irish Cinema and Photography Since the Celtic Tiger Years: A Cartographic Dimension

CHAPTER 6 — HELEN PENET

Photography, Memorialising and Bearing Witness in Dermot Bolger’s A Second Life

CHAPTER 7 — DENNIN ELLIS

Late Capitalism Meets Gas Cuntism: The Rubberbandits

III. MEMORY POLITICS IN POST-TROUBLES IRELAND

CHAPTER 8 — FRÉDÉRIC ARMAO

Robinson, McAleese, Higgins: The Fire Festivals of Reconciliation

CHAPTER 9 — ÉMILIE BERTHILLOT

Shootings, Intimidations and Undercover Surveillance Operations: A Post-Devolution Northern Ireland

CHAPTER 10 — FABRICE MOURLON

Bones of Contention: Dealing with the Past and the NI Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023

CHAPTER 11 — NATHALIE SEBBANE

The Magdalene Laundries: Looking Back, Moving Forward

List of Illustrations

Chapter 1

Fig. 1: Saoirse discovers the selkie coat (Song of the Sea 2014:00:15:52).

Fig. 2: Conor cradles Saoirse (Song of the Sea 2014:00:59:01).

Fig. 3: The grandmother’s hallway (Song of the Sea 2014: 00:27:04).

Fig. 4: The brooch of the grandmother (Song of the Sea 2014: 00:26:41).

Fig. 5: The brooch of the Daoine Sí (Song of the Sea 2014: 00:32:54).

Fig. 6: The entrance to the Holy Well (Song of the Sea 2014: 00:45:29).

Fig. 7: Ben’s descent (Song of the Sea 2014: 00:48:01).

Fig. 8: Tynan’s Repeal campaign video (00:01:44).

Chapter 2

Fig. 1: A miscellaneous metaphor (non-exhaustive).

Chapter 4

Fig. 1: The Möbius Strip.

Chapter 5

Fig. 1: Pastoral Landscape, Asher Brown Durand (1861).

Fig. 2: Maureen O’Hara and John Wayne in The Quiet Man by John Ford.

Fig 3: Collecting Meteorites at Knowth, IRELANTIS, collage 1995 © Courtesy of Sean Hillen.

Fig 4: The Littoral Flâneuses © Courtesy of Ruby Wallis and Michaele Cutuya.

Chapter 9

Fig. 1: Number of shootings incidents during 2021/22.

Fig. 2: Number of bombing incidents during 2021/22.

Fig. 3: Number of casualties as a result of paramilitary style assaults during 2021/22.

Fig. 4: Number of casualties as a result of paramilitary style shootings during 2021/22.

Fig. 5: Statistics 1990–2020.

Fig. 6: Comparison between 2020/21, 2021/22 and 2012/13.

Fig. 7: Comparison 1 August 2020–31 July 2021 and 1 August 2021–31 July 2022.

Chapter 11

Fig. 1: Picture 1 (origin and date unknown).

Fig. 2: Picture 2 (origin and date unknown).

Fig. 3: Picture 3, an unknown Magdalene laundry in Ireland.

Figs. 4, 5, 6: Pictures 4, 5 and 6, still shots from Father Delany’s film (1940s).

Preface: ‘We are all made of stories’ Dr NESSA CRONIN,
CENTRE FOR IRISH STUDIES, SCHOOL OF GEOGRAPHY,
ARCHAEOLOGY AND IRISH STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF GALWAY

Seamus Deane’s final book Small World: Ireland 1798–2018, published during the pandemic in 2021, includes new essays on Irish literary traditions along with older material familiar to readers of his earlier works such as the groundbreaking and startling Celtic Revivals published in 1985.¹ In the final chapter to Strange Country: Modernity and Nationhood in Irish Writing Since 1790, Deane tracks the development of a self-conscious national tradition in the English language within an Irish colonial context and tersely argues that ‘Normality is an economic condition; strangeness a cultural one’.² The distinction made between economic ‘realities’ and the mark of cultural ‘strangeness’ in Ireland serves as an example of the sharpness of thought and incisive commentary that was the hallmark of Deane’s long and distinguished career as the most prominent and influential Irish public intellectual and cultural critic over the last half century.

Deane’s contribution to the project of Irish Studies, both at home and abroad, and to Irish cultural politics more widely, was immense. His explorations of the intersections between theory and practice, and in particular the insights gleaned from the French historiographical and philosophical traditions which he translated onto the Irish socio-cultural realm, were key to informing his writings on the relationship between nationhood, identity, language and politics in Ireland.³ From the foundational recovery work of Field Day, and the revisiting of that project with the debates on women’s writings and traditions that ensued, Deane displayed an openness to acknowledging critically significant blindspots both within his own line of vision as editor but also within the broader context of Irish Studies as then comprised at the time. Building on earlier debates that emerged from articles in The Crane Bag in the late 1970s, there was a growing commitment to making interventions within a distinct cultural space (a fifth province) which was quickly recognised as being urgently needed at this time across the island of Ireland. Between the mounting pressures of the Troubles, and the growing frustrations and concerns as expressed by the women’s movement, the critical and creative explorations of what was meant by the categories of ‘Ireland’ and ‘Irishness’ were hotly debated. However, within this ‘transitional paradigm’, as noted by Richard Kearney, some notable gaps emerged that would later to be critiqued and developed by feminist critics.⁴ As Patricia Coughlan argued in her influential essay ‘“Bog Queens”: The Representation of Women in the poetry of John Montague and Seamus Heaney’, ‘[th]e social and cultural construction of gender is a continuously occurring process, in which it is certainly not yet time to stop intervening’.⁵ Before neoliberal universities co-opted the idea of ‘engaged scholarship’, Deane was involved in creating engaged and engaging spaces for public debate on what Ireland’s complex heritage meant for the present and helped to reset the agenda in posing alternative paradigms in relation to what the future of the island might encompass.

Irish Studies more broadly, and Irish cultural criticism more specifically, has arguably had a double turn in addressing the societal changes since the 2000s. The first has been a shift in scale, with both a larger movement away from national questions to ones of transnational and global import while also examining the small-scale, yet layered, tapestry of microhistories - with the pioneering work of local historian Catherine Corless and her activist scholarship on uncovering the history of the unmarked graves of babies and children in Tuam coming immediately to mind. In addition, a second turn, concerned with the politics of representation, interrogates how many communities or constituencies ‘below’ the level of the nation in Ireland have been undervalued or ignored, and so the development of intersectional research and writings in this area is to be much celebrated.⁶ As Paige Reynolds argues in her edited volume, The New Irish Studies, ‘Irish writing plays a crucial role in helping to stoke understanding and compassion, not only by lodging critique but also by identifying progressive and positive change’.⁷ The category of the ‘national’ has had its limitations, as there are questions that the ‘national’ frame cannot sufficiently address and encompass, let alone answer. Taking the lead from Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the competing versions of Ireland and Irishness still serve as an important reminder that Ireland is ‘not a single story’, and that plurivocal histories offer futures, and indeed vital presents, full of progressive potential.⁸ In his essay ‘Wherever Green is Read’, Deane argues that ‘history is discourse; events and conditions are not. They are outside discourse, but can only be reached through it – to paraphrase Barthes’.⁹ He further emphasises this point by clarifying that ‘We do not know the past except through interpretations of it. Historians do not write about the past; they create the past in writing about it. And when they do that, they are also writing in and of and for the present.’¹⁰ Here, Deane reminds us how history doubly operates as heritage-making, where heritage tells us as much about the present (and its preoccupations and concerns) as about the past. In echoing the themes of Brian Friel’s play Making History, Deane is reminding us that history is made only when its narrative is written.

In the essay, ‘The End of the World’, Deane notes the central role that translation has had, and continues to bear, on the creation and circulation of the Irish literary tradition. As he observes, ‘translation, mostly between Irish and English but also, in Beckett’s case, between French and English, is such a central activity, that it regularly raises questions of major and minor writings, of colonial and native, of original and copy, themselves regular victims of ambush in the guerilla war between the folkloric and the historical over the legitimacy of the oral or the written’.¹¹ Does this, he queries, create ‘a set, a series, a hierarchy, an echelon, a double helix?’.¹² Here he is reminding us of the structural dialectics of tradition and modernity, the poetic and the prosaic, that mark much of the history of the relationship between Irish and English social worlds. While linguistic translation may have been the key that permitted an anglophone Irish literature entry into les belles lettres tradition, as posited by Pascale Casanova in La République mondiale des lettres: Histoire structurale des révoltes et des revolutions littéraires, there is however the consideration that any Deleuzian weighting of ‘major’ or ‘minor’ in Irish literary culture should be tempered with the acknowledgement that, as Deane astutely notes, ‘there is a major tradition of writing in the Irish language, preceding any such in English, [which] makes everything more fissile and can lead readers to cry halt and settle for a plain and gross binary division that keeps life simple and literature simpler’.¹³ Indeed, given the sometimes blinkered hyperfocus on the Irish and English language contexts, John Carey offers an important reminder in outlining how Irish vernacular literature emerged ‘in the face of a dominant Latin culture’ around 600AD, and that ‘[n]o vernacular literature in Europe has had such a lengthy run and this very fact places Irish literature in a special position’.¹⁴ In addition, we also need to remain mindful of the dangers of such simplifications when the categories of ‘language’, ‘culture’ and ‘identity’ are reduced into and employed as singular monolithic terms. Bríona Nic Dhiarmada calls attention to the intersectional and plurivocal nature of the Irish experience and points out that, ‘cultural dislocation as a condition is not confined to Irish speakers alone, nor is linguistic identity monocultural or monolithic: Irish-language writers write from a constellation of identities’.¹⁵

In positioning public scholarship and debate within the development of the nascent space of Field Day and the broader public sphere, Deane’s legacy can be seen to this day, where Irish Studies as a field of enquiry continues to permeate the disciplines of English, History and Gaeilge, but has also expanded greatly in the cognate fields of Music and Dance Studies, Theatre and Performance, Film and Digital Media, Art History and Creative Arts Practice, Geography and Environmental Studies, to name but a few that are also represented in this collection. Increasingly in Irish Studies, there is a balancing act between the critical and the creative, with both increasingly seen as essential faculties that can help us understand the multiplicity of Ireland’s histories and aid to create alternative spaces for the stories yet to be written. If Strange Country carries with it an undertone of recalcitrance, otherness and the uncanny in its affirmation of the production of strangeness as a feature of modern Irish writing, then Small World also demonstrates how Ireland’s modes of cultural expression (particularly through Irish) get flattened by space and time, and denied a place in the modern world through what anthropologist Johannes Fabian famously termed the ‘denial of co-evalness’ and Irish literature’s problematic grounding in a non-anglophone milieu.¹⁶ The individual contributions in this present collection, Strange Country: Ireland’s Politics and Culture, 1998-2021, bear testament to Deane’s influence across such disciplines, languages, national traditions and frontiers. The guiding skills of close reading, translation, and critical reflection are admirably displayed throughout the present collection of essays, again reminding us of the centrality of language as discourse that allows the very possibility of continuity and change, encounter and exchange. The contributions help us navigate new wordscapes, imagescapes and soundscapes associated with the Irish experience, on all scales, and bring new perspectives to bear on modern and contemporary forms of Irish cultural production. Indeed, the very theme of the collection carries with it not just a sense of urgency as to how best to ‘read’ or ‘interpret’ the strangeness of Ireland within the present moment, but also a sense of the plaisir du texte, the joy of critical reflection and epiphanic illumination that only the best writing can bring.