study of Irish history has become
ensnared with potent mythologies from which it needs to be cut loose
liberal humanism, postmodern pluralism, Eurocentrism, Anglophilia, multinational
cosmopolitanism, ideolgoies of progressivism, modernisation, and the like
Deconstructing Irish nationalism is
fairly fashionable in some circles these days and with any luck will get
oyu a job; deconstructing liberal humanism
will probably not
[5]
some of my best fiends are middle-class
liberals [5] more hopelessly mystified than unionism or nationalism ever
were [6]
committed to the values of justice,
freedom, tolerance, and the like
[but] actually seem to believe
that all of thise could be achieved without the most shattering transformation
of the existing world system. [6]
The provincialism of supposed cosmopolitanism
is truly staggering. [6]
Ireland on the whole lacks a liberal
humanist heritage, with the result that what liberalism it now breeds
tends to overreact against an illiberal society and betray its own liberal
tenents int the act of doing so
very unBloomsburyish [6]
difference between revisionists and
their critics
about class [6]
it has all been unspeakably dreadful
so far and most people in history, lets face it, would probably
have been far better off not being born
this glaringly obvious
truth [7]
on the whole the working class movements
view of things is truer than that of its antagonists, Schopenhauer more
realistic than Hegel [7]
ideology of modernism
Blairism,
Ballsbridge or the smarter parts of Belfast [7]
grossly reductive binary opposition
betweetn atavistic traditionalism and a liberal, pluralist,
enlightened world order on the other.
[7]
Atavistic traditionalism is usually
a hideous enough affair [7] Oxford [7]
Local atavisms and predatory transnationalism
are sides of the same coin; the answer to whether the world is getting
more regional or more global is surely a resounding yes. [8]
Modernisation in Ireland today means
a host of precious things like pluralism, feminism, tolerance, civic rights,
secularisation, flexible notions of sovereignty; it can also mean being
shamefaced and sarcastic about your historical culture - that cultural
specificity which all good postmodernists are supposed to celebrate, except
perhaps in the case of Irish postmodernists - so as to leap, suitably
streamlined and amnesiac, into the heart of a European order characterised
by racism, structural unemployment, urban barbarism, military campaigns
against the third world and the abandonment of the Irish small farmers
and working-class to a brutally neoliberal polity. As far as celebrating
specific cultures goes, this is acceptable when whats at stake is
gay, rather that G.A.A. Tradition in the Irish Republic means an oppressive
church, a stifling patriarchy, Gaelic chauvinism, dancing statues of the
Virgin and the commission for building new roads going to whatever crony
of the Minister happens to be most strapped for cash. It also means a
respect for ones cultural particularity, a refusal to surrender
without a struggle to late-capitalist homogenising, a suspicion of the
success ethic, and a respect for a church without which millions of Irishmen
and women would never have been nursed, educated and cared for. How utterly
non-pluralist to imagine that one could simply choose here! Why
are the liberal pluralists so zealously one-sided about these matters?
[8]
Liberal middle-class Irish historians
tend not to know much about postmodernism, being devotees of Lyons rather
than Lyotard; but it would help if they did, since they might then realise
that they are to some extent part of it. [9]
Postmodern anti-essentialism (a mistaken
philosophical fashion, in my view, but thats also another story),
also fits reather well with revisionism, if somewhat inconsistently so.
[9]
Culturalism is another place where
a specific postmodernism schema, and a certain revisionist or liberal
middle-class reading of Ireland, conveniently intersect.
Indeed
if part of the theoretical struggle of our time has been to shift the
very notion of culture from its narrow (aesthetic0 to its wider (anthropological)
meaning, two meanings of the word dislocated by modernity, then Ireland
seems a splendidly appropriate mediation here. [11]
To put it another way: Ireland can
be made to signify both cultural affirmation and political failure, spiritual
centrality and political marginality, and this particular blend consorts
excellently with the preoccupations of a postmodernist era, in which culture
has been foregrounded partly as a displacement of political deadlocks
we just cant resolve. This displacement has been an age-old stratefy
in Ireland itself
[12]
One of the universal political problems
which ireland incarnates is simply this. There is almost nothing more
politically valuable than tolerance, pluralism, mutual understanding.
For there is indeed something even more important than tolerance,
and this is justice
Justice is essentail so that tolerance and
plurality can thrive, but the struggle for it often undermines them. There
seems to me absolutely no intellectual resolution to this dilemma. You
just have to try it with the ball. [13]
Some time ago, I published a somewhat
abrasive critique of the historian R. F. Foster, which contained, alongside
a good many barbs, a fair amount of whaf seemed to me rather lavish praise
for his work, entirely sincerely intended. Those who leapt to Foster’s
defence in print dealt with the somewhat inconvenient fact that I had
praised as well as criticised his work by the ingenious device of suppressing
this fact altogether. So much for pluralism. There was, I allow, one lonely
exception to this censorship. One commentator, seizing on my admiring
comments on Foster ’s elegant prose style, remarked that since elegance
was not a quality associated with the Irish, I was really insinuating
that Foster wasn’t truly Irish. When paranoia goes that far down, it is
unlikely that it will be laid to rest by the liberal-rationalist view
that if they don’t agree with you, you just have to say it again rather
more persuasively. |