Identity predicaments and the music metaphor in contemporary Irish fiction

Abstract

Ever since Jimmy Rabbitte proffered his oft-quoted “niggers of Europe” line in Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments (1987), contemporary Irish culture, especially during the boom years, was characterised by an insistent revisiting of popular music as a metaphor for interracial and/or intercultural connection or understanding. Cross-cultural identification through music may be seen, in Werner Sollors’s memorable terms, as an eschewing of “descent” relations in favour of “consensual” relations. This essay revisits the music metaphor as it has manifested itself in Irish fiction since it was announced officially that Ireland had entered recession in 2008. Specifically, it explores Kevin Curran’s Beatsploitation (2012) and Joseph O’Connor’s The Thrill of It All (2014) arguing that, through their deployment of the music metaphor, the novels stage the murky politics of contemporary Irish iterations of consent and descent. By exposing the extent to which the rhetoric of Irish economic recovery is yoked to paradoxical invocations of volitional and ancestral Irishness, the novels urge their readers to consider the ways in which discourses of economic recovery work to reinforce and perpetuate patterns of exclusion and marginalisation established during the Celtic Tiger years.     

REALITIES OF DOING RESPONSIBILITIES: PERFORMANCES AND PRACTICES IN TOURISM

With the ever increasing popularity of tours, flights and hotels that put ethics and responsibility at the forefront of their operations, what exactly does it mean to be responsible in tourism? Is it really so easy to be responsible? What actually happens on the ground in places where one tries to be responsible? Using fieldwork primarily conducted in/on Thailand, this research aims to unpack notions of responsibility in tourism, and argues that there is a need to go beyond simplistic idea(l)s and discourses about responsibilities, and instead interrogate actual and practical aspects of doing responsibilities. Fieldwork for this article is based on interviews with key decision makers in travel‐related companies, and interviews and participant observation at two case studies, namely Exotissimo Travel based in Bangkok, and the Elephant Camp (pseudonym). It highlights several aspects of the “realities” of doing responsibilities which complicates our ideas of what responsibility is about – that doing responsibilities is not at all easy; involves a continual questioning and negotiation of who is responsible for what; and how responsibilities in tourism can in fact be done to please tourists. This article therefore argues that there is no, and possibly cannot be, a conclusive statement on what responsibility is in practice, or what should or should not be considered as responsibilities. Instead, it brings to light the importance of contextualizing responsibilities and stresses the complex and plural nature in which responsibilities play out on the ground.     

Stand(ing) up for the immigrants: the work of comedian Des Bishop

This article examines the work of white Irish American stand-up comedian Des Bishop in the context of Ireland's changing demographics. In particular, it situates Bishop within current and controversial debates on ‘undocumented Irish’ in the USA versus ‘illegal immigrants’ to Ireland, debates in which Bishop himself has explicitly intervened. A New York native who has been living in Ireland since the age of fourteen, Bishop's comedy draws upon the convention of the US stand-up as ‘ethnic’ outsider who exposes the foibles of the dominant mainstream, while he also self-consciously asserts his comic persona within the ‘returned Yank’ tradition in Irish American culture. In an increasingly multicultural Ireland, I contend that Bishop has established himself as a mediating figure between white (read: desirable) and non-white (read: undesirable) immigrants to Ireland, a strategy which, I argue, must be approached with caution.     

槟城领事谢湘与该地华人社会及其免职风波

藉1931年至1933年《光华日报》及《槟城新报》的报道,讨论了粤籍人士谢湘任中华民国驻槟榔屿领事期内,在履行保护和管理华侨、组织劝导华侨捐款救灾、促进商务交流提倡国货、发展海外华文教育及履行国府任务等职责中的表现,探讨了其上任一年半被免职的原因及该事件所折射出的槟城华人社会的种种侧面。从槟城华文报纸对谢湘免职的不同立场,可以看出这是一个有争议的历史问题,谢湘之被免职不仅与其任内的表现有关,还与槟城华侨社会不同方言群间的复杂权力关系有关,在深层次上凸显了福建方言群与广东方言群在主导当时槟城华人社会中的重要作用。被免职的谢湘极有可能是槟城华人社会帮权争斗下的一个牺牲品。