Writing in trouble: Protest, literature and the cultural politics of Irish nationalism

This project investigates the contested intersection between literature and nationalism by examining moments of cultural and political protest in twentieth-century Irish history. Despite Ireland's long colonial history, literary and cultural critics have only recently begun to situate Irish literature within the context of Third World Studies. Instead of solving the political problems between Ireland and England, the partition of the island in 1921 increased the tensions between competing national identities. By analyzing the basis on which different groups have attempted to posit an "Irish nation," I focus on the problematics of the various forms of nationalism and the lack of resolution to the national question during this century. Accordingly, my dissertation addresses the roles that literary and cultural productions have played in debates around Irish nationalism in both the colonial and post-colonial contexts.; Although protest is not a literary genre, we can trace, through written and visual representations, not only the protestors' objections to particular state formations but also their visions for a new nation. Part of the methodology of this study entails examining both self-representations by those involved in the protests--such as Kathleen Clarke's autobiography and Bobby Sands's diary--and depictions of these protests by others who believe their interests to be different from those of the protestors--for example, Yeats's and O'Casey's responses to the rioters at the Abbey Theatre and newspaper editorials during the 1981 hunger strikes.; The dissertation is organized into three sections, each examining an important public sphere in which nationalist protests have erupted: the theatre, the street and the prison. By employing a spatial as well as an historical organizing principle to discuss protest movements and the writing generated out of them, I address the particular kinds of nationalism forwarded in specific historical moments and social spaces. Insofar as protests are indicative of social crises, they throw into relief the different material conditions that shape what Benedict Anderson has called the "imagined community" of the nation. These protests and the literary production associated with them represent critical moments in which competing social interests articulate that imaginary category.