Speaking of silence,speaking of art,abortion and Ireland

Sounding the Depths a collaborative installation by Pauline Cummins and Louise Walsh, 1992 reclaimed the female body appropriated by the Eight Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland and symbolically opened it up to speak and even laugh in defiance of patriarchal and heteronormative definitions of “woman”. First exhibited in 1992, the artwork was addressed to the silencing of women about abortion and other denigrated bodily experiences in a deeply repressive social and political climate. More recent artworks which challenge how women’s reproductive bodies are controlled by the state evidence the continued relevance of these themes as related to the Irish contexts, North and South. This essay considers how art and contemporary pro-choice arts activism explores ways of “saying the unsayable” when abortion is criminalised, stigmatised and largely experienced secretly and silently, to transform its symbols and discourse.     

The age of the Cambro-Britons: hyphenated British identities in the seventeenth century

ABSTRACT

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Welsh writers including the antiquary Humphrey Llwyd, the bard Gruffudd Hiraethog, and the epigrammatist John Owen began referring to themselves as Cambro-Britons. The term was quickly adopted and popularised by English writers, often in ways that show an imperfect grasp of the intentions behind the hyphenated phrase. Whereas the Welsh had hoped that the English and Scots would adopt similar hyphenated identities, English writers tended to interpret “Cambro-Briton” as an intensified and potentially comical expression of Welshness. Though Welsh writers largely ceased to employ the term after the 1620s, the use and misuse of “Cambro-Briton” in English texts continued unabated throughout the century.     

Looking beyond home shores: Dutch tolerance at the end of the seventeenth century

The Dutch history of the golden century, a formula which had effectively imposed this interpretative paradigm well beyond the seventeenth century, has been analysed in a more conscientious manner by more recent historiography. This has tempered the hagiographic reading and confirmed the fact that, in the second half of the century, the question of tolerance had become primarily a political conquest and a value shared by other nations. A supernational, European value, but which had also begun to cross the Atlantic several decades earlier. It is interesting to explore how writers facing each other across the two shores of the Channel, on one side observed and interpreted and on the other side presented themselves, offering to foreign eyes the concept of tolerance that had been consolidated in the Netherlands. In the appendix to the essay, besides sinignifcative images, is transcribed the rare and meaningful pamphlet titled ‘A LETTER from HOLLAND, touching Liberty of Conscience, &c.’     

A few words for Axel Vander: John Banville and the pursuit of deconstruction

The revelations about Paul de Man’s activities in Belgium during the Second World War placed him, and by extension deconstruction, on public trial. The affair gave rise to a series of novels, such as Gilbert Adair’s The Death of the Author (1992) or Bernhard Schlink’s Homecoming (2008), that dismiss critical theory as ethically bankrupt charlatanism. John Banville’s Shroud (2002) and Ancient Light (2012) place the enigmatic theorist Axel Vander, a figure resembling de Man, in the dock, but these novels form no decisive judgement about his guilt. The texts reflect on memory, mourning, forgetting and responsibility, and about what writing might consign to the future, questions persistently raised by de Man and Jacques Derrida. As such, they might be said to speak to, or “inhabit”, deconstruction, rather than condemning it. This essay traces how Banville reckons with Axel Vander, and pursues the thought of de Man and Derrida, by means of three words: shroud, ash and cleave. These words at once connote concealment, destruction and separation and also preservation, survival and connection. As the discussion suggests, such words testify to the memory work performed by deconstruction.     

An Iroquois frontier: the north shore of Lake Ontario during the late seventeenth century

Historical accounts and assessments of Lake Ontario's north shore during the late seventeenth century generally describe the area as an abandoned battleground and devasted “no-man's land”. The impression is built of English and particularly French views that this was an area no longer useful as a major source of furs. To the Iroquois the land was anything but devastated. Whereas they bypassed the territory in their constant search for furs to the north and west, the north shore, strategic and fertile, became a trading, agricultural, and even settlement frontier. A reassessment of the written documents and largely neglected maps of the period suggest that the Iroquois occupation of the north shore was highly ordered and based on traditional trade routes and tribal territorial claims. It was an extension of the homeland. But innovations in subsistence, settlement, and lifestyle did occur. The study of expansion to the north shore provides valuable insights into the delicate balance between the forces of change and continuity in post-contact Iroquois society.     

Intersections between philosophy and art: expressions of immanence in the seventeenth century — Spinoza and Vermeer*

ABSTRACT

Spinoza's philosophy of immanence represents a turning point that radically changed our conception of human agency and its relation to infinity. Hans Blumenberg rightly called the principle of immanence “a general hypothesis of the epoch”, a principle that applies to philosophy no less than to the sciences and arts in the seventeenth century. This article looks at Dutch paintings by drawing parallels between Spinoza's philosophy and Vermeer's work. Spinoza and Vermeer both deny a dualistic conception of the world and a hierarchical structure between inner and outer spheres. With the example of Vermeer's painting the Milkmaid, this article shows how an analysis of light and colour, time and space, reveal a vision of immanent infinity, with the human agent at its centre.     

Accidentally killed by a cart: Workplace,hazard, and risk in late seventeenth century London

This article considers some of the interrelated characteristics of work, working environment and hazard, within the setting of the early modern city. Taking London as its example, some of the problems associated with the definition of work, and importantly work‐place, in the pre‐industrial economy are reviewed. Through an analysis of the frequency and patterns of sudden death in accidental and work‐related contexts, the range of hazards to which the inhabitants of London were exposed are described, and an assessment is made of the level of risk attached to certain occupational activities.