“A beacon-light to the oppressed of every land”: James Connolly and the work of the working-class intellectual

Abstract

This article seeks to defend James Connolly from attacks on both the Left and Right, particularly the charge that his legacy is nationalist delusion and fanaticism. The article argues that Connolly’s politics and his engagement with Irish cultural politics demonstrate his commitment to human equality as both a right, but also a principle of human intelligence. The article addresses Connolly’s status as a working-class intellectual with reference to how he challenges conventional hierarchies between the philosophers of Marxism and the proletarians who are the object of those deliberations. The article argues that from Connolly’s thought and activism an anti-colonial Marxism emerges which might help explain the neo-imperialist world we find ourselves in today and provide a critique lacking in the collapsed teleological versions of orthodox Marxism. The relations between his Marxism and nationalism are explored, as are his play Under Which Flag? his poetry and songs.     

On national dress and the problem of authenticity in Ulysses

This article considers James Joyce’s representation of Irish dress, arguing that his ambivalent treatment of it accurately reflects his fractious relationship with the Irish Revival movement. The article begins with a discussion of the metaphor of performance and relates this to issues around “authenticity”. From here, it discusses Douglas Hyde’s thoughts on dress, as presented in “The Necessity for de-Anglicising Ireland”, contextualising these within a brief history of nineteenth and early-twentieth-century Irish dress history, and recognising the important work of women in this. Assessing Joyce’s depictions of Irish dress, especially in “Scylla and Charybdis”, “Cyclops” and “Circe”, this article argues that Joyce sees Irish dress as a contingent and fragile cultural performance.     

THE PAST IS EVIL/EVIL IS PAST: ON RETROSPECTIVE POLITICS,PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY,AND TEMPORAL MANICHAEISM

One of the most remarkable phenomena in current international politics is the increasing attention paid to “historical injustice.” Opinions on this phenomenon strongly differ. For some it stands for a new and noble type of politics based on raised moral standards and helping the cause of peace and democracy. Others are more critical and claim that retrospective politics comes at the cost of present‐ or future‐oriented politics and tends to be anti‐utopian. The warnings about the perils of a retrospective politics outweighing politics directed at contemporary injustices, or strivings for a more just future, should be taken seriously. Yet the alternative of a politics disregarding all historical injustice is not desirable either. We should refuse to choose between restitution for historical injustices and struggle for justice in the present or the future. Rather, we should look for types of retrospective politics that do not oppose but complement or reinforce the emancipatory and utopian elements in present‐ and future‐directed politics. I argue that retrospective politics can indeed have negative effects. Most notably it can lead to a “temporal Manichaeism” that not only posits that the past is evil, but also tends to treat evil as anachronistic or as belonging to the past. Yet I claim that ethical Manichaeism and anti‐utopianism and are not inherent features of all retrospective politics but rather result from an underlying philosophy of history that treats the relation between past, present, and future in antinomic terms and prevents us from understanding “transtemporal” injustices and responsibilities. In order to pinpoint the problem of certain types of retrospective politics and point toward some alternatives, I start out from a criticism formulated by the German philosopher Odo Marquard and originally directed primarily at progressivist philosophies of history.     

Ireland’s eternal Easter: Sorley MacLean and 1916

Abstract

This essay examines the treatment of the 1916 Easter Rising by Scottish Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean. From his early work onwards, the Rising assumes a mythical significance in MacLean’s poetry. Throughout, this aetheistic, socialist poet uses rhetoric borrowed from the Gaelic Christian tradition to present the rebels of 1916 as exemplary secular martyrs. James Connolly plays a crucial role as the Scottish son of Irish immigrants. MacLean’s later praise poem for Connolly, “Àrd-Mhusaeum na h-Èireann”, deploys biblical rhetoric to present the Rising as an act of ritual sacrifice, recalling Patrick Pearse’s “Fornocht do Chonaic Thu”. MacLean’s valorisation of violence takes place against the backdrop of the modern Troubles, and prompts a reassessment of the political legacy of his poetry.     

Rethinking historiography and ethnography: Surrealism’s intellectual legacy

ABSTRACT

Taking up Maurice Blanchot’s perceptive claim that “Surrealism remains always of our time”, the essay traces the importance of Surrealism for rethinking the methods of historiography (for Walter Benjamin) and ethnography (for James Clifford) in ways that allow us to appreciate the significance of Surrealism’s intellectual legacy. In his early essays on Surrealism and the monumental, unfinished work, The Arcades Project, Benjamin developed a new historical methodology, what I term surrealist historiography, that sought to uncover the latent dimensions of culture, obscured by the dazzling sheen of progress embedded within conventional historical narrative. If Benjamin found in Surrealism a way to overcome the limitations of a Rankean historicism, the point of departure for Clifford’s essay, “On Ethnographic Surrealism” is the crisis of ethnographic authority precipitated by a postcolonial critique of the discipline of anthropology. Clifford’s aim in this essay is thus to provide a provocative reassessment of Surrealism’s self-reflexive ethnographic spirit and what it might contribute to a refashioning of ethnographic practice as a polyvocal assemblage that holds in tension disparate material realities and aesthetic principles. Surrealism’s intellectual legacy thus lies, as Michel Foucault has claimed, in its path-breaking interdisciplinarity, which is why it continues to be, for Blancot and others, “a brilliant obsession”.     

Norwegian and Soviet/Russian World War II Memory Policy During the Cold War and the Post-Soviet Years

Abstract

World War II has played a significant role in using “memory” in all kind of “memory politics” in Europe as well as in the USA. Using examples from Norway and the Soviet Union, later the Russian Republic, this article shows how successfully, but also how contradictorily, historical events can be used as memory politics. We will also see what “memory culture” and “memory policy” is predominant in circumpolar Norway and the Soviet Union/Russia after World War II. We are introduced to the concept of “memory agents”, the producers and directors of “memory politics”. The case is first and foremost the battle of Narvik in Norway in the spring of 1940. We also take a look at the circumpolar borderland between Norway and the Soviet Union during World War II, where the German “Gebirgsjäger” from the Narvik front regrouped and continued their assault on Soviet Union in Murmansk County from the summer of 1941. In what way were the war events useful in the post war era, and how could they directly affect Soviet–Norwegian relations during the Cold War? In addition we ask how memories contributed to the justification of different approaches to the foreign policy in both countries. Besides, the article demonstrates how the memory policy of World War II was affected after the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union in Norway and Russia, respectively.     

Connolly,Gandhi and anticolonial (non)violence

Abstract

This article examines the contrasting role of violence in the anticolonial struggles of India and Ireland. It turns to the early writing of Mohandas K. Gandhi to explicate how violence for Indian nationalists shaped by the writings of Gandhi, was configured as a European methodology and antithetical to Indian culture. In contrast, James Connolly anticipates the work of Frantz Fanon in advocating violence as a necessary means to purge the ideological influence of British Colonial Rule from the minds of colonised subjects. It concludes by looking at the legacy of the two approaches to suggest that, rather paradoxically, Gandhi’s utilisation of nonviolence as a strategy of resistance proved to be more disruptive to the workings of the British State.     

James Cone’s Legacy for White Christians

ABSTRACT

This article explores James Cone’s lesson and legacy for white Christians. Specifically, it analyzes Cone’s claim that whites can “become black.” Cone insists that a process of conversion to blackness “means that white people are prepared to deny themselves (whiteness), take up the cross (blackness), and follow Christ (black ghetto).” In this essay, I will draw upon Cone’s writings and original interview material to construct an outline of these three steps of becoming black. Making sense of what it means to convert to blackness begins with first analyzing his specific challenge to white theology, then his concepts of blackness and the Black Christ, and finally, the praxis of these three steps – that is, what does it look like, practically, to follow the black Christ as a white person.     

Against (White) Redemption: James Cone and the Christological Disruption of Racial Discourse and White Solidarity

In the early 1970s, James Cone delivered a profound Christological critique of whiteness as a project of redemption. This critique has often been missed because of the confusion regarding Cone's theological account of race. Drawing especially on the recent work of Nahum Chandler, this article develops the way African diasporic identity becomes “a problem for theological thought.” By way of conversation with Chandler, the article shows how Cone's deliberately ambiguous use of racial language effectively disrupts standard discourses on race and theology, which come to be seen as projects to regulate and control human life. White efforts at solidarity – asking how to help, seeking to a good ally or destroying their own whiteness – often become subtle quests to regain control over white identity and thereby contain or incorporate this disruption, this freedom as “revolt” (Cone). Against these projects of white redemption, James Cone offers a deeply Christological critique, pointing to the way they refuse to linger within movements they cannot control, particularly the movement “between,” the appositional or side-by-side joining of the particular God, Jesus of Nazareth, and particular contemporary struggles for black survival and freedom.     

“Twitter Bodhisattva”: Ai Weiwei’s Media Politics

Abstract

This article investigates artist and activist Ai Weiwei’s media politics. In 1997 Ai Weiwei imagined a modernist movement that would practise a “non-compromising vigilance on society and power” and since 2005 he has embraced blogging and micro-blogging to enact such intent. We argue that his “communication activism” is part of a broader artistic and political program that long predates his online presence. The study examines how the artist has experimented with blogging and micro-blogging to spread his message of “awakening” in defiance of censorship and surveillance. It shows how Ai Weiwei’s communication strategy combines an international celebrity status, criticism, irony and a round-the-clock interaction with his netizen audience and the media. It also critiques the effectiveness and coherence of this mode of activism from two perspectives – namely, Jean Baudrillard’s analysis of “private telematics” and Jodi Dean’s “blog theory” – and finally assesses its impact. The study aims to enhance our understanding of the web-based communication strategies of Chinese activists, shedding light on cultural production and consumption in Chinese cyberspace as a socio-political barometer.     

From Secular Criticism to Critical Fidelity

Stathis Gourgouris has responded to the question “Is critique secular” with a decisive “yes” and has offered a passionate and sophisticated defense of this position in Lessons in Secular Criticism. Yet, his argument suffers from a simplistic opposition between the religious and the secular. If we are to think critically about criticism and about religion, we need to think beyond such oppositions and be open to learning from religious forms of criticism. The article works through Gourgouris to move from his emphasis on critical autonomy to what I will call critical fidelity. Working with theologians Chrisitine Helmer, Ted Smith, and Rowan Williams, I argue that certain forms of religious criticism help us think a social and political criticism beyond endless demystification and “interrogation” by identifying and cultivating critical practices of attachment that make possible liberating social bonds.     

Moderation and religious criticism in William Cartwright’s The Ordinary (1635)

Building on the recent revival of critical interest in the drama of William Cartwright, this article explores the politics of religious moderation in his 1635 play The Ordinary. I situate the concept of moderation in Caroline England in relation to recent historical work on the subject, examining how Cartwright treats the subject in his poetry, where he argues that religious extremism inhibits the proper articulation of moderate politics. I then consider religious criticism in The Ordinary, suggesting that it attacks aspects of Puritan and Arminian theology alike. Although he ranges over a number of topics, Cartwright is particularly concerned with the way in which religious innovation is undermined by economic unfairness, incompetence, and greed. The play shows how Caroline comedy engages with polemical culture in subtle and sophisticated ways.     

“It was like lightning”: the theatrical resonances of Sarah Kane in Eimear McBride’s A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing

ABSTRACT

In 2013, Eimear McBride’s debut novel A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing was published to much critical acclaim. Commentators were quick to highlight McBride’s Joycean influences – but just as McBride is indebted to her Irish literary predecessor, so too is British playwright Sarah Kane a major influence. The strong resonances between the plays of Sarah Kane and A Girl serve to highlight the theatrical nuance of McBride’s original work. This article will investigate the thematic links of sibling love, grief and guilt in McBride’s novel and Kane’s Cleansed (1996), and the linguistic parallels with 4.48 Psychosis (1998). McBride’s experience as a trained actor encouraged a form of “method-writing” which I contend contributes to the inherent theatricality of her writing. This article ventures to uncover a small part of the huge scholarly potential which lies in the works of Eimear McBride, whose writing brings a uniquely theatrical style to Irish modernism.     

Imagining Britain: reconstructing history and writing national identity in Englands Heroicall Epistles

ABSTRACT

The idea that in the Tudor era the English people became proudly conscious of their national language and history, has been challenged by critical interventions that suggest how England as a nation had to be “written”: the act of writing can construct imagined boundaries, both to appropriate and exclude. In Englands Heroicall Epistles, Drayton replaces Ovid’s mythological figures in the Heroides with specific well-known English historical personas who provide, through their letters, different perspectives on English history. I will contend that Drayton’s assertion of national identity and patriotism is done verbally and semantically, while his allegiance to oppositionist politics is rendered generically and subversively by a remarkable manipulation of the genre of historical poetry in the Heroicall Epistles: this in turn reflects his deep engagement with ideas of history and the construction of national consciousness in early modern England.     

The political commentary on May Fourth in 1950s Hong Kong and Taiwan

Abstract

“May Fourth” has long been considered a turning point for modern China, resulting in continuous heated discussion on the topic since the 1920s. These discussions not only reexamine culture but also have political intent. Many recent scholars have discussed the “ideologization” of May Fourth from the perspective of “memory politics.” They argue that “May Fourth discourse” was not only used to understand and recapture the past, but also to help one’s own cherished values occupy a core position in modern Chinese history, thus using historical interpretation to create a compass for China’s future that conforms to historical tides. From the four great philosophies of modern China, the Nationalists and Communists have incorporated May Fourth into the “Three People’s Principles” and “New Democracy,” respectively. Liberals held up democracy and science as a need for China’s future, and made efforts to propagate and practice democracy in Hong Kong and Taiwan after 1949. As for New Confucians who had continuously criticized May Fourth for being anti-tradition, they supported traditional values but also believed that democracy and science were a “priority and necessity for China's cultural development,” and hoped to use the spirit behind this ideal. They along with liberals criticized the Nationalist and Communist autocracy for departing from May Fourth ideals, and especially noted how May Fourth created fertile ground for the rise and expansion of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), “resulting in the growth of the Communist Party,” and the Nationalist government’s move to Taiwan. After 1949, Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and the Guomindang (GMD) Nationalist Party he led primarily assessed the May Fourth Movement by synthesizing the views of the liberals and New Confucians. They highlighted the slogans of saving the nation, ethics, democracy, and science to promote ethical education and “national spirit education” as top-priority cultural policies. The focus of this article is to examine how liberals and New Confucians used the topic of May Fourth to criticize the CCP and GMD in Hong Kong and Taiwanese political commentary magazines during the 1950s (approximately 1949–1960). It also explores how the GMD synthesized liberal and New Confucian views to lay out their own position. This discourse shows how May Fourth had diverse interpretations under the context of conflict between the liberals and the New Confucians as well as Nationalists and Communists. The criticism of the ideologization of May Fourth in recent years is actually an important turning point in the scholarly study of May Fourth.     

6. ACTES DE PRÉSENCE: PRESENCE IN FASCIST POLITICAL CULTURE1

In order to discuss the notion of presence, I explore Fascist Italy as an example of a presence‐based culture. In the first part of this paper, I focus on the doctrines of “the philosopher of fascism,” Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944), in order to show that his programme of cultural awakening revolves around the notion of the “presentification of the past.” This notion formed the basis of Gentile's dialectic of the act of thought, which is the kernel of his actual idealism, or actualism. I argue that actualism should primarily be interpreted as an ontology of a historical reality; it expresses the view that reality is history. In his 1914 inaugural “L'esperienza pura e la realtà storica” (Pure Experience and Historical Reality), Gentile drew this view to its ultimate consequence by developing a view of experience that has some striking parallels with the contemporary views of presence as expounded by Gumbrecht, Runia, and Ankermit. In the second part of my paper, I discuss how Gentile and his collaborators put presence into practice in school reforms, the Enciclopedia Italiana, and in hundreds of monuments, memorials, and exhibitions. Finally, I discuss the 1932 Mostra della rivoluzione fascista, which was not only the apex of fascist culture politics, but also of the practice of presence. In this context, I argue that this practice should not be seen as a politics of historical interpretation, as Hayden White once held, but as a politics of sublime historical experience, or presence. The presence of presence in fascist political culture raises some difficult questions for all who embrace the new paradigm, questions that can only be answered if the notion of presence is somehow balanced by the critical historical method, which is the basis for a true dialogue with the past.     

“Did that play of mine …?”: James Connolly,Cathleen Ni Houlihan and staging revolution

Abstract

Despite the crucial position he occupies in Irish history as one of the leaders of the Easter Rising, and the political – and emotional – impact of his subsequent execution, while wounded, by the British Army on 12 May 1916, the writings of Edinburgh-born James Connolly have often been overlooked in both Irish and Scottish studies, and not just in accounts of the Rising but also in the wider context of cultural connections, including cultures of commemoration. In particular, Connolly’s surviving literary work, including Under Which Flag?, the drama staged on the eve of Easter 1916, as well as poems and songs, has had limited attention. This article reconsiders Under Which Flag? in comparison with Yeats and Gregory’s Cathleen ni Houlihan in order to demonstrate the central place the drama holds as a continuation – and complication – of Connolly’s political and journalistic writings. If Connolly is a neglected figure as a writer – as opposed to a political leader and martyr – then the play he left behind (once thought to have been lost, like another of his dramas, The Agitator’s Wife) affords us an opportunity to reassess his contribution to the struggle for independence as part of its literary wing.     

The “Realism” of Augustine's “Political Realism”: Augustine and Machiavelli

Abstract

Arendt and Tocqueville both celebrate a participatory notion of political freedom, but they have a fundamental disagreement about the role that political education should play in fostering an active citizenry. I contrast Tocqueville's “educative” conception of politics with Arendt's “performative” conception, and I explore an important but little-noted difference between the two theorists: whereas Tocqueville argues that it is the task of statesmen “to educate democracy,” Arendt warns that those who seek to “educate” adults are inappropriately aspiring to be their “guardians.” I argue that although Arendt's warnings about the dangers of intertwining politics and education are at times salutary, Tocqueville is ultimately correct that education must be a key task of democratic leadership, and he is right to suggest that politics can itself be educative in crucial ways.     

Samuel Taylor Coleridge on ideas actualized in history

ABSTRACT

Situating Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s thought on historically actualized ideas with reference to a range of classical thinkers, this article examines his intriguing philosophical theory about how ideas become progressively actualized in history. This cultural growth can be understood as contemplation-in-action, although it occurs through mainly fumbling – or else overenthusiastic – human agents. I distinguish Coleridgean first-order, transcendent ideas (such as God, infinity, the good, the soul) from second-order, historical ones (such as church, state, the constitution). It has been argued that Coleridge’s theory of ideas develops from Bacon’s inductive method for discovering laws of nature through experiment and natural law through common law. I further claim that Coleridge upholds the reality of “Forms” in science, and of rights in ethics and politics; that his later political thought is inherently more progressive than is generally admitted; and that his account differs from Schelling’s and Hegel’s respective theories by maintaining the transcendence of ideas above the immanence of their evolving historical actualizations. Coleridge’s philosophy is therefore, whether political or metaphysical, ultimately an ontological defence of the transcendence of ideas above the immanence of their progressive but imperfect actualization.