Irish Nationalism and Gender 大綱* Liang-yu Chen （陳亮宇） Ⅰ. Different kinds of nationalism in Ireland (page 1-2)
Nationalism is a core issue in Ireland. Irish people who espouse anti-colonizing nationalism and desire the unification of Ireland are usually said to be Irish nationalists, Catholic nationalists, or Catholic Republicans, while Irish people, especially people living in Northern Ireland, who do not want to be politically separated from Britain, are usually referred to as Irish unionists or Protestant unionists. The Troubles, which took place in 1969 and brought about many deaths in Northern Ireland in the following ten years or so, can be viewed as one of the results of the sustained conflicts between two modern forms of nationalism in Ireland – Catholicism (or Catholic/Republican nationalism) and Protestantism (or Protestant unionism).
Ⅱ. Nationalism and gender
A. definition of nation and nationalism (page 3-5)
1. Ernest Gellner – nation vs. nation-state
Not all nations are independent or enjoy independent sovereignty; besides, a state can emerge “without the help of a nation” and a nation can emerge “without the blessings of their own state” (Gellner 6).
2. Benedict Anderson – imagined communities
Nation, according to Anderson, could be defined as an “imagined community” invented through “cultural artefacts of a particular kind” (4). Examples for Anderson’s “cultural artefacts” may include religion, language, myth, literature, printing press, mass media, map, museum, etc.
3. Anthony D. Smith – ethnic communities
Smith defines nation as “a named human community occupying a homeland and having common myths and a shared history, a common public culture, a single economy and common rights and duties for all members” (13). Smith emphasizes the ethnic origin of culture by proposing ethnies, or ethnic communities, as the cultural core of a nation.
B. criticism from feminists (page 6-7)
1. Ann McClintock, “Family Feuds: Gender, Nationalism and the Family.”
“All nationalisms are gendered …. All nations depend on powerful constructions of gender,” Anne McClintock argues in her essay entitled “Family Feuds: Gender, Nationalism and the Family” (61). Borrowing Anderson’s definition of nation as “imagined community,” McClintock explores how national political institutions and national systems of cultural representation help sanction the “institutionalization of gender difference” (61).
2. Nira Yuval-Davies, Gender and Nation
According to Yuval-Davies, in addition to being “symbolic border guards,” women are supposed to be the “cultural reproducers” in a nation as well (23). That is to say, women are responsible for the reproduction of young men and for the domestic education of a decent national culture.
C: nationalism and sexuality (page 8)
1. George L. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality
Mosse proposes that nationalism establishes “respectability,” or a set of sexual norms and “correct” sexual behaviors referred to as something respectable by the national ideology, to regulate sexuality. In Mosse’s view, the rise of “respectability” in nationalism is closely related with the fact that the national ideology is based on “the ideals of manliness” (1-4).
Ⅲ. Gender, sexuality, and the Irish nation
A. stereotypes inherited from British colonization (page 9-10)
1. Edmund Spencer
In his A View of the Present State of Ireland, Edmund Spencer locates the origin of the Irish people in the Scythians, a race that denotes cannibalism under Spencer’s description and comes to be associated with the image of madwomen in the 19th century (Jones and Stallybrass 158-162).
2. Mathew Arnold
Mathew Arnold, who sees the moral deficiency of “the Philistines” in the British nation and suggests the Teutonic bourgeois in England to borrow positive aspects from cultures in Wales or Ireland, describes Ireland with “the feminine idiosyncrasy” in his On the Study of Celtic Literature.
B. feminization of Ireland (page 11-12)
1. W. B. Yeats
Yeats’s Cathleen ni Houlihan provides Ireland a nationalistic myth, in which the Irish nation is symbolized by an old woman, played by Maud Gonne when premiered in Abbey Theatre in 1902, whose “four beautiful green fields” are taken away by “strangers” (Yeats 107).
2. James Joyce and Seamus Heaney
According to Innes, the protagonist in Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young man, Stephen Dedalus, views a female character named Emma Cleary as an “embodiment of the Irish soul” (Innes 2). Patrick J. Keane further notices that a chapter entitled “A Mother” in Joyce’s Dubliners parodies the myth of Cathleen ni Houlihan. The ‘Kathleen’ in Joyce’s “A Mother” is “an allegorical depiction of Ireland” (Keane 2). Seamus Heaney, in an article entitled “Belfast” collected in his Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-78, continues “the tradition gender distinction between England as male and Ireland as female” when talking about how his poems are composed (Innes 10).
3. the Gaelic League
According to Antoinette Quinn, in the pamphlet published by the Gaelic League, mother and home are viewed as “the repository of spiritual, moral, and affective values” and “bearers and cultural reproducers of the future nation” (40-41).
4. 1937 Irish Constitution
Article 41 in 1937 Irish Constitution, to which Eamon de Valera made a significant contribution, maintains that “mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home” (Mahon 187).
C. homophobic nationalism in Ireland (page 13-15)
1. Edward Carson and Oscar Wilde
Carson is the leader of Protestant unionism, who campaigned against the third Home Rule and established the Ulster Volunteer Force in 1913. In 1895, Wilde was accused of his association of male prostitute, cross-dressing and homosexuality, and Carson was the leading lawyer in the first trial, whose job is to enact the persecution of Wilde.
2. Roger Casement’s homosexuality
When Casement was charged with treason in an English court, Casement’s diaries, where many details of his homosexual life were documented, were made public. Admitting his homosexuality in the court, Casement soon lost the support even from Catholic nationalists, and finally he was sentenced to death.
Ⅳ. Queer and nation
A. definitions of queer (page 16)
B. ambivalent relationship between queer and nation (page 17-19)
1. Michael Warner – camp and queer politics
2. Eve K. Sedgwick – homosocial desire
3. Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory
4. Adrian Frazier, “Queering the Irish Renaissance.”
Ⅴ. Frank McGuinness and his Northern Ireland Political Drama (page 20-28)
Ⅵ. Conclusion – chapter summary (page 29-30) |