Diasporic identifications: exile,nostalgia and the Famine past in Irish and Irish North-American popular fiction, 1871–1891

During the nineteenth century, “exile” became a key term to describe the Irish-diasporic community in North America. More recently, scholars in the fields of diaspora studies and Irish studies have described this community as a “victim diaspora” with connotations of forced expulsion, exile, and nostalgia for the homeland. Moreover, among scholars and within the Irish-American community, the notion exists that the Great Irish Famine (1845–1851) constitutes the Irish-American “charter myth”, that it was the starting point of an Irish-American identity. This article sheds a different light on these (self-)identifications by discussing the concepts of origin myth, exile and nostalgia and also considers the concept of diasporic belonging in the context of Irish and Irish North-American works of popular “Famine fiction” written between 1871 and 1891. Consequently, the impact of these late nineteenth-century literary considerations on present-day conceptualisations of the Irish-American community as a victim diaspora are discussed.     

‘… that great swollen belly’: the abject maternal in some recent Northern Irish fiction

This essay will consider the representation of the maternal in some contemporary Northern Irish fiction written by men. It will examine, using feminist theories of embodiment and subjectivity, the power of the maternal image in Irish literary and critical discourse. The work of Julia Kristeva, Elizabeth Grosz and Mikhail Bakhtin will be employed in this argument. The pregnant body has the power to radically unsettle order, and this essay will explore the way in which men write their fears of this all-consuming imago. Northern Irish men write out their fears of all-consuming national ideology through infanticide and grotesque mother figures and this essay will trace how this figure is complicated through political ideology in Northern Ireland. The texts under consideration will be Ripley Bogle and Eureka Street by Robert McLiam Wilson and Resurrection Man and The Last of Deeds by Eoin McNamee, as well as a glance towards the work of Glenn Patterson as a possible alternative to the hegemonic view of the grotesque or abjected maternal.     

BIFFOs,jackeens and Dagenham Yanks: county identity, “authenticity” and the Irish diaspora

Despite being an everyday point of reference in Irish discourse, the extent to which the county serves as a locus of identification has been oddly overlooked in the Irish studies literature. In particular, the persistence of identification with the county of origin post-migration offers new insights on the construction and maintenance of identity within the Irish diaspora. Drawing on my PhD research on discourses of authenticity and identity among the Irish in England, this article investigates the ways in which county identity is invoked both by Irish migrants and those of Irish descent. It illustrates how the county is used as a rhetorical tool to situate the speaker within discourses of belonging and authenticity, but how this may also act as a constraint on the articulation of a collective, diasporic identity. It argues for a greater research focus on translocalism within the context of changing Ireland–diaspora relations.     

The people and the professors: socialism and the educated middle classes in Italy, 1870–1915

This article examines the role of the educated middle classes in the Italian socialist and syndicalist movements from 1870 to 1915. After discussing the problems of defining the educated middle classes and the intellectuals, this article looks at the role of the creative free-floating intellectuals within the socialist movement of the 1890s. The importance of positivist and 'evangelical' socialism is highlighted and illustrated through the influence of Cesare Lombroso and Edmondo De Amicis. The article then focuses on the role of Filippo Turati and the Italian Socialist Party's Socialist Parliamentary Group, which was largely composed of individuals from the educated middle classes. In this part of the article, the author evaluates the influence of the educated middle classes in the Italian Socialist Party before 1915. This article concludes with a discussion on the nature of Italian intelligentsia socialism and its influence on Gramsci. Questo articolo esamina il ruolo delle borghesie intellettuali nel movimento socialista e sindacalista in Italia tra il 1870 ed il 1915. Dopo aver preso in considerazione le problematiche inerenti alla definizione sia delle borghesie intellettuali che degli intellettuali, l'articolo dedica spazio al ruolo creativo di intellettuali indipendenti all'interno del movimento socialista negli anni intorno al 1890. Si dÀ particolare rilievo all'importanza del socialismo positivista ed 'evangelico' attraverso l'analisi del pensiero di Cesare Lombroso e di Edmondo De Amicis. Si passa, infine, a considerare il ruolo di Filippo Turati e del gruppo parlamentare del Partito socialista, il quale era principalmente composto da personalitÀ di estrazione borghese intellettuale; l'autore valuta l'importanza e l'influenza delle borghesie intellettuali nel Partito socialista, nel periodo che precede il 1915. L'articolo si conclude con un'analisi della natura dell'intellighenzia socialista italiana e della sua influenza su Gramsci.     

Jiangnan gentry’s responses to “The great famine in 1877–1878”: The famine relief in north Jiangsu

Although “The great famine in 1877–1878” breaking out in the early years of Emperor Guangxu’s reign has mainly struck North China areas, it has also great social impact on another important area—Jiangnan. The past surveys in academic circle basically ignore the meaning of this drought from the aspect of localism in Jiangnan. When an important movement of drought relief in modern China is mentioned, that is, the rise of charity relief in the late Qing Dynasty, the judgment is not totally accurate. In fact, when they were purely facing the drought, Jiangnan produced various responses carrying a firm stand of localism to protect their county and land. Among these responses, drought relief in the north of Jiangsu launched by gentries from Jiangnan is essentially a continuity of traditional drought relief in Jiangnan since the Ming and Qing dynasties. Translated by Luo Hui from Shehui Kexue Yanjiu 社会科学研究 (Social Science Research), 2008, (1): 129–139     

From golden hills to sycamore trees: pastoral homelands and ethnic identity in Irish immigrant fiction, 1860–75

The prose fiction that remembers the trials of starvation and eviction of the Great Famine (1845–50) often juxtaposes representations of blasted, infertile land with images of a green, idyllic Erin. Through a discussion of Mary Anne Sadlier's Bessy Conway (1861), Elizabeth Hely Walshe's Golden Hills: A Tale of the Irish Famine (1865) and John McElgun's Annie Reilly (1873), this article reveals that immigrant writers of the Famine generation often negotiate depictions of Famine-stricken wasteland with evocations of a pastoral homeland. In the case of the two Catholic novels, Bessy Conway and Annie Reilly, the pastoral becomes a point of ethnic identification through which the immigrants can recollect and reconstruct a sense of Irishness in exile. By contrast, Golden Hills, which focuses on the Anglo-Irish ascendancy, does not lament the mass exodus of afflicted Irish: the novel rather envisions emigration as a way to regenerate Ireland as locus amoenus.     

Reframing the “Irish Question”: the role of the Irish co-operative movement in the formation of Irish nationalism, 1900–22

This article examines the role of the Irish co-operative movement in the early twentieth century and argues that it played a crucial role in shaping a popular understanding of the “Irish Question”. This mass-membership movement impacted upon the development of the Irish state and population. By taking this rural, social movement as a lens to analyse Irish society in the early twentieth century, social and economic issues re-emerge as central components to a contemporary understanding of Ireland's increasingly contested position within the Union. As the expectation of some kind of political resolution to demands for political independence grew during the First World War, radical nationalism absorbed a social and economic discourse that originated within the co-operative movement in its critique of the British state as it operated in Ireland. Irish co-operation represented a sophisticated form of political economy that provided an influential ideological platform for Irish nationalists as they anticipated some form of political independence.