Black-white mixed race young people in Ireland and their lived experiences of racialised exclusion

The multiracial family and the existence of mixed race children have come to be a regular feature of Irish familial life. Yet, nation-building discourses have promulgated notions of ethnic and religious homogeneity with Irish identity being racialised exclusively as white. Moreover, to date, there has been a dearth of academic scholarship related to racial mixedness in the Irish context. Through in-depth interviews, this paper sets out, therefore, to provide empirical insight into the lives of fifteen black (African) – white (Irish) mixed race young people (aged 4 to 18) with a particular focus on their experiences of racialised exclusion. Indeed, findings suggest that, as in other majority white national contexts, the black-white mixed race young people are racialised as black in the Irish public domain and as such, are positioned as ‘racialised outsiders’. In fact, their narrative accounts shed light on everyday encounters saturated by ‘us-them’ racial constructs based on phenotype. Thus, these young people, who are not fully recognised as mixed race Irish citizens, are effectively deprived of a space in which to articulate their belonging within the existing statist (i.e. inside/outside) framework.

Element of Irishness in Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Digging’

Seamus Heaney is considered one of the greatest poets of the postmodern era, his name and fame travelled across the Irish borders by winning the 1995 Nobel Prize in literature. Seamus Heaney was born in Ireland; he was the only child in his family to attend the school, His family members were traditional potato farmers. Seamus Heaney broke his family tradition of farming by choosing to become a writer. While growing up to become a first graduate among his family Seamus Heaney’s mind was captured by this sense of gloom that he was unable to follow his family tradition of farming. Seamus Heaney promises himself that he will pay rich tribute and let the world know about the hardships of Irish farming life. Seamus Heaney’s main concern for writing poetry was to keep alive Irish culture and its heritage alive. Since Ireland was under the colonial rule of England and Seamus Heaney was of the view that colonization is not only a political problem, but it destroys the country's culture and identity. This was the main reason that Heaney’s poetry revolves around Irishness, its people and culture. There is an enormous reflection of Irish identity and culture in his poetry. This paper will focus on elements of Irishness in Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Digging’.

Exploring Cath Maige Tuired through the Concept of Hybridity

This chapter examines the contemporary Irish identity and social reactions to the process of cultural hybridization, as they are depicted in the late Viking-Age narrative Cath Maige Tuired. The tale is a product of a transitional era whose preoccupations and prejudices are reflected in the narrative representations of the Fomoiri and the Tuatha Dé Danann. This chapter considers Cath Maige Tuired within its historical context as a narrative of hybridity in which the pivotal cultural identities are built on an ongoing comparison between the tale’s representations of the Self and the Other. At the same time the narrative illustrates a number of other cultural concerns at the forefront of the collective intellectual consciousness.

Bodies that Fester in the Holds of the “Coffin Ships”: Postcolonial Neo-Victorianism, Vulnerability and Resistance in Joseph O’Connor’s Star of the Sea (2003)

The presence of Empire in the Victorian period and its aftermath has become a new trope in neo-Victorian studies, introducing a postcolonial approach to the re-writing of the Victorian past. This, combined with the metaphor of the sea as a symbol of British colonial and postcolonial maritime power, makes of Joseph O’Connor’s novel Star of the Sea a story of love, vulnerability and identity. Set in the winter of 1847, it tells the story of the voyage of a group of Irish refugees travelling to New York trying to escape from the Famine. The colonial history of Ireland and its long tradition of English dominance becomes the setting of the characters’ fight for survival. Parallels with today’s refugees can be established after Ireland’s transformation into an immigration country. Following Judith Butler’s and Sarah Bracke’s notions of vulnerability and resistance together with ideas about ‘the other’ in postcolonial neo-Victorianism, this article aims to analyse the role of Empire in the construction of an Irish identity associated with poverty and disease, together with its re-emergence and reconstruction through healing in a contemporary globalised scenario. For this purpose, I resort to Edward Said’s and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s ideas about imperialism and new imperialism along with Elizabeth Ho’s concept of ‘the Neo-Victorian-at-sea’ and some critics’ approaches to postcolonial Gothic. My main contention throughout the text will be that vulnerability in resistance can foster healing.

A Stage of Transition: Locating European Identity, Culture and Memory at the Gate Theatre: Frank McGuinness’ ‘The Thrupenny Opera’ and Peer Gynt and Hugo Hamilton’s The Speckled People

This paper explores contemporary Irish-European identity as staged at the Gate Theatre, Dublin. The selected plays challenge contemporary Irish perspectives on form, style, politics and scenography and as the paper argues, highlight the interconnected influence of European theatre, culture, and identity as performed at the Gate Theatre. This paper examines European and Irish memory and identity with specific attention to the ‘language’ of performance as it is transposed cross-culturally and as performed to Irish audiences. Questions explored include the adaptation of memoir for/in performance, within German-Irish identity and as explored in The Speckled People (2011), a stage adaptation of family memoir by the German-born Irish-based writer, Hugo Hamilton. The paper, moreover, excavates the representation of identity and home in Frank McGuinness’ adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt (1988) and in the 2014 Gate production of Bertolt Brecht’s and Kurt Weill’s The Three Penny Opera. Drawing on newly released archive materials, this paper puts forward theoretical questions around the performance and reception of the concepts of home, memory and identity in the broader European context. This paper argues the Gate brought European stories and experimental styles to the Irish stage, but also how these identities and modes interacted and engaged audiences in new dialogues. Keywords: European Theatre, Gate Theatre Dublin, Frank McGuinness, Bertolt Brecht, Hugo Hamilton, Joe Vaněk, Scenography

Divided loyalties: St Joseph’s Nudgee College, the Great War and Anzac Day, 1915–39

St Joseph’s Nudgee College is an Irish Christian Brothers boys’ boarding school in Brisbane. It was established in 1891 to provide the children of Irish Catholics living in regional and remote Queensland and northern New South Wales with access to an education that would act as a vehicle for socio-economic advancement. The first decades of the college’s existence were nevertheless defined by two competing, sometimes contradictory imperatives. An often-belligerent determination to retain an Irish identity existed side by side with an awareness that a ‘ghetto mentality’ would hinder the socio-economic advancement of Queensland’s Catholics. The balancing act that this necessitated was particularly evident in the College’s mixed reaction to the outbreak of war in 1914 and the subsequent reticence to celebrate Anzac Day between 1916 and 1939. This article explores the College’s response through its Annuals (Year Books) and places it in the context of the Australian Irish Catholic experience of war and commemoration.

The intersection of nation and gender in the Linguistic Landscape of Ireland’s Eighth Amendment referendum campaign

In May 2018, voters in the Republic of Ireland passed a referendum proposal to repeal the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, lifting the Irish state’s near-total ban on abortion. Scholars have argued that Ireland’s abortion ban has historically played a key role in the construction of Irish national identity along Catholic, traditional, and heteronormative lines, meaning the lead-up to the vote allowed for key insights into the discursive construction of national identity and gender in Ireland. Drawing on theoretical discussions in both the nationalism and Linguistic Landscape (LL) literature and adopting a qualitative, multimodal approach to analyse the referendum campaign’s LL, I argue that there was a dominant understanding of the relationship between women and Irish national identity, predicated on a positive stance towards Irish identity, while any dissenting voices which questioned whether advancing gender equality was compatible with nationalist ideology were confined to the margins of the debate.

“An Ireland over There”?

This chapter explores the role of dance halls in British and American cities among the Irish communities after World War II. It incorporates historical and cultural analysis of Irish traditional music in dance halls, stressing the symbiotic relationship between place and diasporic identities. It offers a window on the way Irish negotiated, contested, interpreted, and performed their Irish identity while living abroad.