Contemporary Irish theatre,the new Playboy controversy,and the economic crisis

Abstract

This article examines the impact of the economic crisis on contemporary Irish theatre. More specifically, I contend that the legal controversy surrounding Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle’s second production of Playboy of the Western World: A New Version in 2008 provides a case study of how professional theatre productions that dramatised stories of immigrant empowerment during the Irish economic boom were profoundly inhibited by the bust that followed. Their collaborative version of the new Playboy was widely regarded as Ireland’s most successful intercultural play and a commercial success when it was first staged at the Abbey Theatre in 2007. The subsequent breakdown in their relationship and ensuing legal dispute is more symptomatic of Celtic Tiger Ireland in economic collapse, I suggest, than the content of the play itself, or most other productions mounted in the period. I argue that this dispute did not simply reflect but also reinforced the social effects of the economic crisis, through its prolonged litigation, enormous expense, and especially the missed opportunity that it represented to position the multicultural and migrant themed Playboy within the Irish theatrical mainstream. More broadly, I suggest that the economic crisis has been marked by the disappearance of immigrants from the professional Irish stage, a void which was only partially filled by community theatre productions. A case in point is Adigun and Arambe’s most recent adaptation of Jimmy Murphy’s The Kings of the Kilburn High Road in The Paddies of Parnell Street (2013), a play which I positively appraise as an example of successful “intercultural re-appropriation”.     

Asylum seekers,Ireland, and the return of the repressed

Abstract

In 2014 residents in Direct Provision Centres for asylum seekers staged a series of protests. The protests, which coincided with the appointment of a new Minister for Justice who announced the Irish government’s plans to reform the asylum system, voiced three clear demands. Firstly, the protestors demanded that all asylum centres be closed; secondly, they demanded that all residents be given the right to remain and work in Ireland; and thirdly, they demanded an end to all deportations. The government’s response to these protests was to appoint a working group in October 2014, made up of representatives of migrant-support NGOs (but without any significant representation of asylum seekers themselves) while also announcing that it intends to reform rather than abolish the system.

Against this background, this paper makes three interlinked theoretical propositions. Firstly, I propose that just as the Irish state and society managed to ignore workhouses, mental health asylums, “mother and baby homes”, Magdalene laundries and industrial schools, they also “manage not to know” of the plight of asylum seekers, precisely because the Direct Provision system isolates asylum applicants, makes them dependent on bed and board and a small “residual income maintenance payment to cover personal requisites”, and makes it difficult for them to organise on a national level. “Managing not to know”, or disavowing, entails the erasure of the Direct Provision system from Ireland’s collective consciousness at a time when increasing emigration is returning to haunt Irish society after years of refusing to confront the pain of emigration. I argue that asylum seekers represent the return of Ireland’s repressed that confronts Irish people, themselves e/migrants par excellence. Secondly, I propose that by taking action and representing themselves, the residents of Direct Provision Centres can no longer be theorised as Agamben’s “bare life”, at the mercy of sovereign power, to whom everything is done and who are therefore not considered active agents in their own right. The third proposition responds to the theme of this special issue, that multiculturalism is “in crisis”, arguing in the conclusion that this “crisis” hardly applies to Ireland, where the brief flirtations with “interculturalism” by state, society but also Irish studies disavow race and racism in favour of a returning obsession with emigration, which enables the continued disavowal of the experiences of asylum seekers in Direct Provision.     

维新之艰难兮，公缔其始--纪念李端棻上《请推广学校折》一百二十周年

1896年,李端棻上《推广学校折》,面对当时我国“时事多艰,需才孔亟”的现状,通观全局,统筹兼顾,进行了切中时弊的分析,主张“自京师以及各省府州县皆设学堂”;提出了一整套富有革新意义而又切实可行的发展新教育的方案,而且为光绪帝采纳,成为戊戌维新的主要内容之一,并较快地付诸实行,推动了我国教育走向近代化。     

魏晋南北朝经学的演变与更新

皮锡瑞在《经学历史》中认为：魏晋为经学中衰时代,南北朝是经学分立时代,并不能代表这个时期经学的全貌。东汉末年郑学的出现,标志着经学兼容古今而演变的方向。三国时期经学在南方传播,出现了南北互动的新气象。魏晋经学在北方继续传承,并在演变中得到发展。十六国北朝各少数民族统治者“变夷从夏”,缩小了胡汉民族文化的差异,中原儒学虽历经丧乱而得以存续,更值得注意的是妇女也参加了经学教学与学术传承。北朝经学继承两汉以来的传统,比较重视考证,而不善于创新。东晋南朝儒学受玄学的影响,清谈之风推动了儒释道的交流,教育格局多样化促进了儒学的玄化。所谓“南人约简,得其英华;北学深芜,穷其枝叶”,出现了南北学风的不同趋势。陆德明撰《经典释文》,由陈入隋入唐,将南学传入北方。颜师古、孔颖达定《五经正义》,亦多从南学。南学终于成为唐朝经学的主流,并成为中国传统文化的主流。     

民国《贵州通志·艺文志》“《尔雅集韵》”条辩证

民国《贵州通志·艺文志》著录黄彭年撰《尔雅集韵》一书。而追索《艺文志》著录的史源,并取其他史料相印证,推寻其致误的原因,证明黄彭年曾批校《尔雅》《集韵》二书,但并未撰《尔雅集韵》一书。此外,又据各家书目题跋,梳理了黄彭年批校《集韵》的经过及其批校本流传情况。     

浙江临安余村五代墓发掘报告

2001年9月浙江省临安市文物馆组织清理了一座唐五代时期墓葬。墓葬平面略呈船形,为多耳室、多壁龛的券顶砖室石门单室墓。随葬器物以越窑青瓷器为主,有少量的银器和铜钱。墓葬年代早于临安青柯五代墓、晚于临安晚唐钱宽水丘氏夫妇墓。墓主人应为五代钱氏王室成员或功臣,很有可能为钱镠第二子钱元玑墓。该墓的发现为研究五代十国时期墓葬形制、越窑瓷等提供了珍贵的实物资料。     

江苏淮安王庄村汉墓群发掘简报

2013年淮安市博物馆发掘淮安王庄村汉墓群,共清理汉墓97座。墓葬形制多样,排列有序,共同位于一大型土墩之下,与淮安地区传统族葬墓有明显的区别。墓葬随葬器物丰富多样,器物组合时代特征明确。从出土器物和墓葬形制及排列情况分析,墓葬时代在西汉早期至东汉时期,墓葬之间在年代上有明显的承继关系,是一处大型汉代土墩墓。该墓地的发掘为研究淮安乃至苏北地区汉代墓葬特别是汉代土墩墓类型提供了极其重要的新材料。     

Pivoting toward Asia: Comparing the Canadian and American Policy Shifts

Both Canada and the United States have “pivoted” toward Asia in their foreign policy over the past decade, although emphases in those pivots differed between the two countries. The former focuses on an economic pivot initially, the latter on a security one. What factors explain these shifts? What was the magnitude of policy change by both? Utilizing some important theoretical works by Charles Hermann, we discuss the factors that appear to have brought about this policy change toward Asia, outline the actions and activities that both countries have initiated toward Asia in the past decade to illustrate the type and magnitude of policy change that has occurred, and compare some areas of political, economic, and military similarities between Canada and the United States toward this region. Finally, we assess the likely future of these pivots to Asia in light of the change in political leadership within both nations.     

Alberta’s Great Experiment in Senatorial Democracy

In 2014, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the unelected nature of the Senate is an inherent feature of Canadian parliamentary democracy and is a central pillar of the constitution. Members of the Upper House are appointed by the Governor General, acting on the advice of the Prime Minister. The decision taken by the Prime Minister is not subject to review by Parliament or the provincial legislative assemblies. Patronage appointments have given the Senate a reputation as a dumping ground for political friends and party insiders. In 1989, the province of Alberta enacted the Senatorial Selection Act, arguing that it would serve as a stepping stone for substantive reform to the Senate. The province has held four elections in which the people of the province have chosen senators-in-waiting. This article argues that the Court’s opinion in Reference re Senate Reform undermines the foundation upon which the provincial statute rests.     

A geopolitics of migrant women,mobility and abortion access in the Republic of Ireland

Drawing on three select case studies and feminist engagements with mobility studies, I illustrate the Irish state’s use of a dialectic of gendered and racialized citizenship, and mobility and fixity, in the creation of ‘new geographies of belonging and exclusion’. Using detailed analyses from select cases, I argue for more nuanced feminist engagements with mobility that acknowledge and analyse ‘processes and trajectories’ in relation to a geopolitics of abortion – one that eschews undifferentiated uses of the category migrant and discourses of tourism, in analysing abortion in the Republic of Ireland. I expose how their use constructs limited ideas about gender, nation and Irishness to assure exclusions from Ireland, and from its diaspora.