Memory and Periphery in Ireland

2018

The 2019 Irish Historical Research Prize Lecture by Professor Guy Beiner, marking the award for his book Forgetful Remembrance: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography of a Rebellion in Ulster (Oxford University Press, 2018), which re-examined the history of Ulster through the prism of remembering and forgetting and provided a ground-breaking study of the history of forgetting. In his lecture, Prof Beiner reflected on Ireland’s commemorations of historical events and how this has stimulated many studies on history and remembrance, which have in part contributed to a memory studies internationally. By examining the concept that memory is inextricably intertwined with forgetting, the lecture focused on the original concept of ‘social forgetting’, challenging standard notions of ‘collective memory’, drawing attention to limitations in what historians can do in helping us to understand the past and pointing to the contributions of other disciplines such as sociology and anthropology, in all demonstrating the potential for a more complex understanding of the interplay of history and memory.

Carysfort Press eBooks, 2009

On the 16 th of April 2006, the government of the Irish Republic held a military parade in Dublin City in celebration of the 90 th Anniversary of the Easter Rising. In June of 2006 another event occurred that further transformed the context of commemoration, and acted to align the past with the present political moment: the 90 th Anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. Throughout the twentieth century these two events have symbolized opposing ideologies in Irish commemorative practice. Diverse communities in both Northern and Southern Ireland have used key historical events to express current political and cultural ideologies. The 2006 celebrations of both events in the Republic give witness to the radical economic and cultural transformations of contemporary Ireland and can be viewed together as commemorations of that State's future rather than its past. However, as this essay argues, the power of collective nostalgia in the Irish context also offers the community slippage from present concerns to past triumphs. The 2006 Easter parade began at Dublin Castle and concluded at the Garden of Remembrance. This was the first official commemoration since the summer of 1969, when the parade was suspended because of its perceived connections with the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and in response to the outbreak of violence during brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk

2011

Moderna Språk

New Ireland is not an entirely new concept. Paradoxically, the idea of a new Ireland is an historically recurring phenomenon, often propelled by an admixture of politics, economics, ideology, and culture. During the Celtic Revival at the turn of the Twentieth century, a faction of Ireland's cultural movers and shakers famously sought to re-imagine the Irish past. At least since then, re-imagination has long characterised the psychic blueprint for defining a 'new' Ireland against more tangible changes in society. The 1930s saw the valorisation of a pastoral image of Ireland as a reaction to a perceived corruption of nationalistic ideals in the previous decades. In the 1960s 'new Ireland' took shape as a progressive place where industrial developments prompted a turn away from insularism and conservatism. In the 1990s, an influx of foreign investment and political influence heralded a new global identity for Ireland, culminating in 1995-2007 when the Republic of Ireland enjoyed a significant period of economic growth known colloquially as the Celtic Tiger. In Northern Ireland it was arguably the Peace-Process that prompted the urge to realise new political, social and cultural alignments at the turn of the twenty-first century. The peculiar genealogy of the concept 'New Ireland' is, perforce, encrypted in the title Place and Memory in the New Ireland, the second volume in the Irish Studies in Europe series, produced under the aegis of EFACIS: The European Federation of Associations and Centres of Irish Studies. Inspired by an interdisciplinary conference of the same title held in Gothenburg in 2005, Place and Memory in the New Ireland is an engaging collection of twelve essays by scholars of Irish studies, tackling such diverse topics as emigration, urban regeneration, film, animation, poetry, prose fiction, and drama. The volume is loosely divided into two parts, but clearly weighted on Irish literature. As if to unabashedly flaunt this bias, the volume also contains two poems by the contemporary Irish poet, Harry Clifton, as well as an excerpt from a novel by the prominent Irish novelist, Deirdre Madden. Britta Olinder's light and informal introduction gives a helpful and concise précis to each chapter of the volume alongside a very brief background to the 2005 conference. While the introduction seems to deliberately avoid mentioning a shared theoretical drive to the volume (perhaps to reflect the comprehensive and plethoric nature of interdisciplinary conferences), the thematic emphasis clearly falls on place and memory and their offshoot concepts belonging and rootedness. The effect of this is that the compelling New Ireland of the title is deployed as a framework for consideration of place and memory and "what they mean today, in the new prosperous conditions of Ireland" (emphasis added). Here, through no fault of the authors, is the would-be flaw that threatens to stalk the volume. In only a few short years-in the time lag between conference, composition and publication-the condition of Ireland as 'new and prosperous' has been thrown

The Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland, 2017

The long nineteenth century saw the formation of modern Irish memory, although the nature of its novelty is open to debate, as it maintained a continuous dialogue with its traditional roots. A preliminary period from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century has been identified by Joep Leerssen – following the German school of history of concepts (Begriffsgeschichte) pioneered by Reinhart Koselleck – as a Sattelzeit, which accommodated the Anglicisation and modernisation of what had formerly been a predominantly Gaelic society. In particular, antiquarian fascination with the distant past played a key role in re-adapting native bodies of knowledge for Anglo-Irish readerships, whether in the music collecting of Edward Bunting, the song translations of Charlotte Brooke or the writings of Samuel Ferguson, to name but a few. This concept of cultural transition is useful for understanding the changes in memorial practices, which came about through reinvention, rather than simple invention and imposition from above, of Irish traditions. A record of remembrance in the countryside at the time of the transformation was captured between 1824 and 1842 by the Ordnance Survey, which, under the supervision of the noted antiquarian George Petrie, sent out fieldworkers, among them the illustrious Gaelic scholars John O'Donovan and Eugene O'Curry, to compile detailed memoirs of local customs, originally designed as supplements for the topographical maps. Characteristically, the agents of change also engaged in documentation and preservation of traditional memory. Whereas the loss of Irish language has been poignantly decried by Alan Titley as ‘the Great Forgetting’, the modernisation of Ireland was not a straightforward linear progression from a largely Irish-speaking traditional culture, steeped in memory, to an English-speaking capitalist society, supposedly clouded by amnesia. It should be acknowledged that the Irish language maintained a substantial presence well into the nineteenth century. Moreover, during the cultural revival of the fin de siècle, language enthusiasts such as Douglas Hyde collected folk traditions in Irish in order to make them available as a resource for a modern national society. Overall, the increase in literacy in English did not necessarily eradicate oral traditions. Examination of popular print reveals that it functioned as a vehicle for reworking memories, which then fed back into oral culture.

are compound. If questions still abound about our separate cognitive capacity for memory, how can we de ne memory in social contexts, or talk about the way that such a memory might be located in texts, in history, in the physical productions of culture? Does cultural memory depend on memories

Peace Review, 2001

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In his 2007 article studying memory in Modern Ireland, Guy Beiner wrote “throughout modern Irish history, both unionist and nationalists ideologies were periodically reconstructed…yet, reconfiguration and innovation should not be confused with invention, as already established traditions of memory offered a familiar lexicon and mental framework within which contingencies could be patterned”. Beiner argues that not only was memory used to shape the mindset of groups in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, but that these memories were constantly reconfigured, permitting each group a mindset which allowed them to function in the every evolving conflict. Building upon this idea of reconstructing memory, this paper will analyze how collective memory can shift or reform to focus on a specific event, making certain events of the past more prevalent or more relatable in the present. This process of reconstructing and reshaping collective memory finds a visual depiction in the murals of Belfast. Painted during The Troubles, these image themes provide evidence of the reshaping of a group’s collective memory as certain themes come to prominence while others fade into the background. This is best demonstrated by analyzing the adaptation from previously popular themes to the use of historical events which occurred in 1916: the Battle of the Somme and the Easter Rising. While the feuding groups selected different events, remembered in separate manners, and portrayed these 1916 events in different ways, both Loyalist and Republican murals depict the reshaping of each groups’ collective memory.

The political functions of conflict-related commemoration have been examined in Northern Ireland, as in other deeply divided societies. However, a gap in research has persisted. In order to properly examine and evaluate local commemoration as a political activity, we should find out the size and spread of this activity, and ascertain who is responsible for its production. Accordingly, this paper presents the findings of a scoping survey of ‘Troubles’- related commemoration in Northern Ireland. We supply survey data in relation to types of commemoration; categories of actor; frequency; and location. Combining this with field observation of the forms and themes of commemoration, we examine how these data can frame our understandings of the environment of ‘Troubles’ memory.

2014

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