The Production of Cultural Space in Irish Writing Author(s): Seamus Deane Source: boundary 2, Vol. 21, No.

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The Production of CulturalSpace in IrishWriting

Seamus Deane
Since the Act of Union (1800), which, in response to the Rebellion of 1798, incorporatedIrelandinto the United Kingdomof Great Britainand Ireland,the problem of representing the country became more imperative and more complicated than it had been before. Itwas not, in itself, a new problem. Since the earlierwatershed in Irishhistory,the settlement of 1690, which established the Anglo-Irishascendancy and culture,the question of the nature of Ireland's relationshipto Britainhad been governed by the wish to assert its difference from, and yet compatibilitywith, the British politicaland culturalsystem. Swift and ArchbishopKing,WilliamMolyneux and Viscount Molesworth,Charles O'Conorand OliverGoldsmith,Edmund Burke and Wolfe Tone were all participantsin the English-language side of this debate.' But once Irelandbecame constitutionallyintegratedwith Great
1. For general accounts, see Louis M. Cullen, The Emergence of Modern Ireland, 16001900 (London: Batsford, 1972; 2d ed., 1988); Thomas Bartlett and Derek Haydon, eds., Penal Era and Golden Age: Essays in Irish History, 1690-1800 (Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation, 1975); David J. Dickson, New Foundations: Ireland, 1660-1800 (Dublin: 1987); Nicholas P. Canny, Kingdom and Colony: Ireland in the Atlantic World, 1560Press. CCC0190-3659/94/$1.50. boundary 2 21:3, 1994. Copyright? 1994 by Duke University

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118 boundary 2 / Fall 1994 the loss of its own parliament in Dublin and the substitute Britain, through of its to elected the Westminster system having representatives parliament, itwas necessaryalso to integrate itculturally. Oneof the firstmanifestations of the projectof cultural was the exponential integration growthin travel a genre in whichIreland had alwaysbeen rich,because it was literature, so consistently as a place considered on, andgenerally surveyed,reported thatwas both"home" and "other," domesticandforeign. After1800, travel had a morespecificpurposethan before-namely, to make Ireliterature it as a partof a partof the United to represent landrecognizably Kingdom, it in such a way that its refusalto be so the largersystem or to represent couldbe explained,if notexcused.2
1800 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1988);NicholasP. Cannyand Anthony University Princeton Pagden, eds., ColonialIdentityin the AtlanticWorld,1500-1800 (Princeton: in Revolution: Partners TheUnitedIrishmen and Elliott, Press, 1987);Marianne University France (New Haven:Yale University WolfeTone:Prophet Press, 1982);Marianne Elliott, of IrishIndependence (New Haven:YaleUniversity Press, 1989);TomDunne, Theobald TowerBooks of Cork,1982);TheodoreW. Moody WolfeTone:ColonialOutsider(Cork: and William E. Vaughan,eds., Eighteenth-Century Ireland,1691-1800, vol. 4 of A New "'APeople Clarendon Press, 1976);ThomasBartlett, Historyof Ireland(Oxford, England: The Anglo-Irish, HisMade for Copies ratherthan Originals': 1760-1800," International TheFalland Rise of the IrishNation: toryReview 12 (Feb. 1990):11-25; ThomasBartlett, A Historyof the CatholicQuestion, 1690-1830 (Dublin: 1992); Seamus Deane, "Swift an da chultur1 (1987):9and the Anglo-Irish Intellect," Eighteenth-Century Ireland/Iris and the IrishNational in ColinH. Williams, Tradition," 22; DavidG. Boyce, "Separatism of Wales Press, ed., NationalSeparatism (Cardiff: 1982), 75-103; David J. University Dickson, Daire Keogh, and KevinWhelan,eds., The UnitedIrishmen: Republicanism, The Lilliput Press, 1993). Radicalism,and Rebellion(Dublin: TravelWritingsas Source Material," Irish Historical 2. See Charles J. Woods, "Irish Studies 28, no. 110 (Nov. 1992): 171-83; GlennHooper,"TheForcing-Ground: Colonial 1596-1860" (Ph.D.diss., University 1993);Barbara College,Dublin, Englandand Ireland, A Critical in Ireland: O'Connorand MichaelCronin,eds., Tourism Analysis (Cork:Cork UniversityPress, 1993). Amongthe most notabletravelers,the followingmay be mentioned:George Holmes,Sketches of some of the southerncounties of Irelandcollected de Bougrenet,chevaduringa tourin the autumn,1797 (London,1801);Jacques-Louis lierde Latocnaye,Rambles throughIrelandby a Frenchemigrant(trans.Dublin,1797); John Carr,The Strangerin Ireland; or, a tourin the southernand westernparts of that in Ireland, C. Hoare,Journal of a Tour countryin the year 1805 (London,1806);Richard of Connacht,1806-7," Friedrich A.D. 1806 (London,1807);"Johann description Hering's Studies 25, no. 99 (May1987):311-21; trans. and ed. CharlesJ. Woods,IrishHistorical John Gamble, Sketches of history,politics and mannerstaken in Dublinand the north of Irelandin the autumnof 1810 (London,1811);A view of society and mannersin the northof Irelandin the summerand autumnof 1812 (London,1813);HoraceTownsend, withremarkson the geoA tourthroughIrelandand the northern parts of GreatBritain;

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Deane/ Production ofCultural Space 119 The relatedquestions of territory, land, and soil constiproperty, andvocabularies, contestedseries of definitions tutedan inescapably given in Ireland, the historyof conquest and confiscation especiallysince the is the senior term, since it inseventeenth century.Of these, territory cludes the others at least in a spatial sense, althoughit is rarelyperfectly congruentwiththem, even when theirsemanticrange is extended is reguto enforcesuch a congruence.The physicallandscapeof Ireland cartothe nineteenth century-administratively, throughout larlyredefined competconstitutionally-by culturally, economically, graphically, politically, in termsof to a paradigm ing groups,all of whichseek to makeit conform as a specificplace,indeed,butalso whichitcan successfully be represented Butthe Actof Union, investment.3 as a locus forvariousformsof ideological cenas is wellknown, the Anglo-Irish ascendancyof the eighteenth brought that to an end inthe limited sense thatittransformed a colonial grouping tury from a political elitewith hadproduced itsownvariant form of independence considerablecultural to a garrisonlandlord class almost enpretensions withGreatBritain, bereftof such pretensions andaddicted to the union tirely rather thanto anyformof independence, foritspreservation. Yet,thistransformation coincidedwiththe emergencein Europe of deeplyconservative and nostalgically inclinednational sentiment.Ina sense, Ireland became one of the beneficiaries andone of the producers of such sentiment. Itsculturalappealwas limited forthose membersof the Protestant who garrison foresawthatsuch sentiment couldleadto political and, thence, separatism the breaking of the Union.Ireland was seen, and increasingly saw itself,as a characteristically its difference with "romantic" culture, therebyindicating
some judgment logical structureof the places visitedmade forthe purpose of forming in Ireland respecting the natureand extentof the coal formation (Cork, 1821).Manyof the tours were undertaken and American Quakersforevangelizingpurposes. by Methodists The Europeantravelers,especiallythe French,were moresympathetic to Ireland, which or as a Cathoappeared to them variouslyas one of Europe'soppressed nationalities lic nation undergoingan experiment-conducted by DanielO'Connell-in democratic nationalism. There is as yet no bibliography of this literature. 3. Amongthese, the following selectionmaybe cited:the National Schools system (1831); the OrdnanceSurvey (1830-1839); the formation of a nationalpolice force, The Irish (1836);the HomeRuleBillsof 1886, 1893, 1912;the ten LandActs of 1860Constabulary of the Irish(Protestant) Church(1869); the variouscultural 1903; the Disestablishment fromthe CelticSociety (1845), the GaelicLeague (1893), the GaelicAthletic formations, Association(1884), to the AbbeyTheatre(1904);YoungIreland (1840), the Fenians,and the IrishRepublican Brotherhood nationalstructure (1858). Allof these had a totalizing, or purpose.

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120 boundary 2 / Fall1994

an Englandthatwas increasingly saw itself,as an seen, and increasingly or culture. at the cultural urban,"mechanical," utilitarian, Herein, level, lay the representational thatgovernedso manyof the transactions, paradigm betweenthe two countriesfor most of transactions, especiallythe literary Even the the nineteenth of the Famineof 1845-1850 century. catastrophe was renderedamenableto it. Allthe majorEnglishcommentators on Irein to its land this periodsubmit force-Coleridge, Southey,Carlyle,John Stuart Mill,Arnold,and HavelockEllis.4 So, too, do FrenchcommentaButIrish as Montalembert and Renan.5 tors as otherwisedifferent writers, Gerald the Banim William too-Thomas Moore, Carleton, Griffin, brothers, Somerville and ThomasDavis,Charles James ClarenceMangan, Kickham, OscarWilde,Bernard Pearse,George Shaw,Padraic Ross, GeorgeMoore, Russell, and W.B. Yeats-respond eagerlyto this paradigm, althoughit with Yeats his that and be said contemporaries (excluding Joyce), it may intoa formof racialmillenarianism. had become institutionalized My purpose here is to look at selected aspects of this process Ireland-familthe urgeto makewhatwas strange-a recalcitrant whereby of that notonlythe subversion iar,a partof the UnitedKingdom, produced In new the a for discourse. did this new initial also but space byopening urge the shared on to Ireland were various predicated attempts represent space, behadneverbeen adequately beliefthatthe country (orat all)represented or emptiness,andthe evolution fore.The sense of an initiatory blankness, one in Irish of the techniquesbywhichitcouldbe filledis an abiding writing. is so a cultural the to because imperaspace attempt produce Precisely tive and, at the same time,so doomedto failure-since the entity"Ireland" formsof represenwithin "British" the canonical cannotbe accommodated forms initssearchforalternative is highly tation-Irish writing experimental forms since such alternative and highlysubversiveof its own procedures, The difference, canonical. or sufficiently are neverdeemed to be sufficient and the between Ireland of conditions, usuallythe differencein extremity as a part, was ofteninterpreted Ukanian State,of whichitwas nevertheless inthe traditional one. Because itcouldnotbe represented a disabling forms, The andbeyondcivilization. Ireland was takento be beyondrepresentation
NationalCharacter, 4. See Seamus Deane, "Irish 1790-1900," in Tom Dunne,ed., The IrishHistorical Writer as Witness(Dublin: Studies, 1986), 16:90-113. G. 5. Ernest Renan, The Poetry of the Celtic Races and OtherStudies, introd.William lead the Kennikat and London: New York Hutchinson Press, 1970); essay (1896; reprint, in 1896. See also R. le Comtede Montalembert, appearedfirstin 1854 andwas translated Lettresur le catholicismeen Irlande(Lyon,1834).

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Deane/ Production ofCultural Space 121 formsthemselves,and the degreeto whichthey capacityof the traditional were generatedwithin, and by,different social and political circumstances, were notissues seriouslyconsidered ina wholly alertmanner until the close of the nineteenthcentury, except in the fieldof economicthought.There, John StuartMillhad been compelledto revise his Principlesof Political Economy(1864) in orderto take accountof the Famine,its causes and its aftermath.6 There is a sequence, much inflectedaccording to circumstances, thatneverthelessachievesa clearlogicof itsownthroughout thisperiod and thatis in itselfbotha representation of the Irish-English and relationship an of it. It with the characterization of Ire"romantic" attempted analysis begins landinthe lateeighteenth andat first assumes an ecumenical form, century is envisagedas havinga peculiar and exotic wherebythe Irish community thatdistinguishes itfrom the English origin(Carthaginian, Scythian) (Saxon, thatacts as an annealment of the sectarianrupRoman)and, in addition, tures that latercame to obscurethat pre-Christian racialunity.This was the large-scaleprojection of the internal embodied attempt-mostfamously in Charlotte Brooke'sReliquesof IrishPoetry(1789)-to founda national consensus through the melding of the Gaelic-/and English-language traditions inpoetry. The "cordial between these union"7 envisaged poetriescan, of course, be seen as an attempt to reconcilein the fieldof literature what hadbecome irreconcilable inthe fieldof politics. the impulse to identify Still, such a consensus andto makeitavailable translation and,further, through to glamourize as truly authentic those elementsof the national experience that had been stifledwere all constituent elements in early Irishromantic nationalism. Itdepended,indeed,on an "imagined community,"' although
6. See Thomas A. Boylanand TimothyP. Foley, "JohnElliotCairnes,John StuartMill, and Ireland: Some Problemsfor PoliticalEconomy," in AntoinE. Murphy, ed., Economists and the IrishEconomyfromthe EighteenthCenturyto the Present Day (Dublin: IrishAcademicPress, in associationwithHermathena, 1984). See also Seamus Deane, 3 vols. (Derry:Field Day Publications, ed., The Field Day Anthologyof Irish Writing, 1991), 2:116-17, 184-92, 238-39; this workis hereaftercited in my text and notes as FDA.Millrefersto the connectionbetween his PoliticalEconomyand the Faminein his of John Autobiography (1873), chap. 7. See also John M. Robson,ed., CollectedWorks Stuart Mill(Toronto: of TorontoPress; London:Routledgeand Kegan Paul, University see CollectedWorks, 6 1965), vol. 3, appendixH, 1038-95. ForMill's essays on Ireland, (1982):497-532. 7. Charlotte Brooke,Reliquesof IrishPoetry(1789), iv. 8. BenedictAnderson,ImaginedCommunities: Reflectionson the Origin and Spread of and New York: Nationalism, rev.and extendeded. (London Verso,1991), 6-7.

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122 boundary 2 / Fall1994

the cultural thatwas produced tradition was bonding by such an invented boundto be threatenedby the realitiesof political and economic power withtheirrootedsectarianbase. Still,the notionof such a community survivedthe debate betweenseparatism and unionthathad been increasing in intensity fromthe 1740s up to the revolutionary decade of the nineties.9 But afterthe Union,the community of the Irishpeople increasingly came to be identified withthe Catholic Irish. Itwas theirtraditions that had been occludedand it was theirpolitical existencethathad been deniedwiththe refusalof CatholicEmancipation, whichwas supposedto accompanythe Union.Inaddition, the economiccrises thatfollowed the end of the NapoleonicWars,the sectariancrusadesof the 1820s,andthe TitheWarsof the 1840s in Ireland, made it difficult, to say 1830s, all followedby the terrible the least, foranyoneto defendthe benefitsof the Union forthe mass of the Irishpeople.Thus,theirincorporation within the British system was understoodto be a decisiveact of colonial than rather oppression (oras wellas) a decisive act of constitutional clarification. Itwas at thisjuncture thatIreland came intoits own, eitheras a representation as the "romantic" of country a sacral community colonialstate or oppressedby a secular,modernizing as a representation of an irretrievably uncivilized not fittedfor community inthe modern survival world. of these contrary One curiousmesalliance is to be foundin positions withthe YoungIrelander, GavanDuffy. Carlyle's friendship Carlyle agreed withDuffyand his colleaguesthatirresponsible landlords had createdthe thatwas beginning to swampLiverpool, tide of Irishpoverty London,and the Famineyears, he prepared to write other majorEnglishcities. During thatthe condition was a key to of Ireland a book on Ireland, proclaiming Butby 1848, he was announcing the condition of England. understanding mustgovernIreland and that Law" haddecreedthatEngland that "Eternal or "becomeextinct;cut off by the the Irishmust either"becomeBritish" the Irish,or different constituenciesof them, inexorablegods."10 Bleakly, boththese choices. accommodated
9. See Thomas Bartlett,"The Burdenof the Present:TheobaldWolfe Tone, Republiin TheUnitedIrishmen: can and Separatist," Radicalism,and Rebellion, Republicanism, 1-15. of ThomasCarlyle,2 vols. 10. RichardH. Shepherd, Memoirsof the Lifeand Writings and the Search forAuthority (London,1881), 2:383. See ChrisVandenBossche, Carlyle Ohio State University Press, 1991), 125-41; for other referencesto Ireland (Columbus: J. Fielding,lan Campbell, also by Carlylein these years, see Clydede L. Ryals,Kenneth J. Smith,eds., The Collected Lettersof Thomasand Jane Aileen Christianson,Hilary N.C.:DukeUniversity WelshCarlyle,vols. 19, 20, 21 (Durham, Press, 1993);see espe-

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of Cultural Deane/ Production Space 123 intervention here is thathe makes the assoThe value of Carlyle's to and England's ciationbetweenEngland's responsibility (andfor)Ireland destiny-in a muchmoredeclamadestiny-which also includesIreland's even Arnold or Gladstone.He exposes a linkage than Mill or fashion tory Forthe Arnoldian conceals. that the romantic/utilitarian arguopposition to a Celtic Ireland and political recultural mentthat attributes autonomy to finda benignrather than coerciveway to a Saxon England sponsibility constructed "Other" is also predicated on the this carefully of incorporating that a law of both of a Nature, by destiny governs, assumption particular his assertion that Ireland of Mill's countries.Similarly, policy amelioration, was taken as longas England as abnormal wouldalwaysbe misrepresented of property wouldhaveto be notion thatthe traditional as the norm, English are positionsthatassume the modified to take accountof Irish conditions, Irish and Ireland. alliancebetweenEngland necessity of the constitutional as or as inCarlyle's can be obliterated, difference writings, accommodated, in itself."1 in those of Mill itcan neverbe autonomous and Arnold; These Englishcommentators consistentlysee the so-called Irish question as one that raises the questionof leadershipand its responsiTo questionthat itselfis beyondthe bilities.The leadershipis England's. even thoughthey are awarethatthat is inhorizonof theirconsiderations, the horizon of the Irish view of the situation. Leadership, creasinglywithin of political and its preservation a matter control however,is not exclusively Itis an exercise, as they saw or economicreform. throughconstitutional in the of One of the featuresof travelwriting and it, production modernity. of those cultural in every decade thatare so prolific surveysaboutIreland of the nineteenth thatthe writer is dealingwith centuryis the assumption an anachronistic culture thatmustbe coaxed or coerced out of its willfully even antimodern, condition so that it can be clearedfor the nonmodern, initiation of modernity. Eventhose Irish or Anglo-Irish writers who recorded the country's folklore and antiquities did so in the spiritof preserversand of destroyers whose benigntechniqueand aim was destroyers,or, rather,
inthe springof 1847(21:168-69): "toat least renderIreland ciallyhis letterto GavanDuffy habitablefor Capitalists, if not forHeroes;to inviteCapital, and Industrial Governorsand Guidance... whatothersalvationcan one see for Ireland?" tourin Ireland was Carlyle's publishedas Reminiscences of my Irish journeyin 1849 (London,1882). See also Fred A Biography(Cambridge: Press, 1983), Kaplan,ThomasCarlyle: Cambridge University 334-47. 11. Ironically, it was the strugglefor a measure of Irishautonomy,in the formof Home Rule, that broke the Liberalparty in Britain.See PerryAnderson,English Questions Verso, 1992), 147. (Londonand New York:

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2 / Fall1994 124 boundary that of preservation. In his Fairy Legends and Traditionsof the South of

Ireland(1825),ThomasCrofton Croker ramshackle and providesa rather secondhandaccountof his subjectinthe hope that"whenrational educationshall be diffusedamongthe misguided of Ireland, the belief peasantry in such supernatural beings [the Shefro,the banshee] mustdisappearin and these "shadowy that country,as it has done in England, tribes"will live only in books."12This is an impulsecommonto manysuch recorders of the nativebeliefs, customs, and habits,althoughit was also the case accountsof the picturthat such reportsshaded very often intotouristic was of Irish life and to Ireland esque quality landscape.Opened inspection, or for conalso opened to tourism.Subjectto schemes for improvement and poverty to Protestant versionfromCatholic superstition enlightenment it also became attractive as a leisureresort,embalmedin and prosperity, of endearing backwardness. the premodern formaldehyde were the the touristic termsof endearment and after Famine, During form that modeconomic of the the and banished,and question political Butby then, proportions.13 mighttake assumed critical ernizingleadership of the and withthe arrival afterthe failureof the pathetic1848 rebellion, miliand the rise of a more force Fenian movement, organized physical Parnell and the Land under tant constitutional League agitationof party and economicmodithe political the 1870s, organizedby Michael Davitt, had and sporadically, ficationsoffered,albeit reluctantly by Westminster as measuresthat had as theiraim the themselves become anachronistic linkandthe reconciliation of the differences of the constitutional affirmation emathe the it. in the aftermath of that threatened For Famine, culturally of YoungIreto the fast-food,instant-lrishry turned ciated Irish community of heroicCelticism, land'sdoggerelanddogmaandto the variants recycled or redactions translations from, of, originals.Even Irish-language through the Orient to specify via version of a were and occultism reimported magic that anachronism difference-but nowitwas a difference paraded Ireland's the form thatwas opposedto modernization as a uniqueformof modernity, richer. and was, in consequence,culturally
of the South of Ireland(Phila12. Thomas Crofton Croker, FairyLegends and Traditions delphia,1827), 257. 13. This sense informsthe writingsof Carlyle,Mill,and Arnoldin the period between Burkeas an exemplary Edmund for instance,to resurrect 1850 and 1890. It led Arnold, to Burke'sIrishwritingsa relations,thus restoring figurefor the conductof Irish-English conservativegloss that had previouslybeen denied them by Anglo-Irish politiciansand Affairs EdmundBurkeon Irish landlords. See Arnold's (London,1881).

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Deane / Productionof Cultural Space

125

George Sigerson,in the prefaceto the second editionof his important anthology Bards of the Gael and the Gall (1907; first edition 1897),

claimedthat "thereasonwhythe Celts did not compose rimedepics was ... Theactivity because of theirextrememental andrestlessness modernity of ourowndays wereintheirbloodinallknown time.... Theywere,intruth, the Moderns of the Past-perhaps theyare also fatedto be the Moderns of the Future."'14 Ireland backwardness as a Celticformof moderreproduced of the "national now character," nitythat was traditional-a manifestation sponsoredas the most secure elementof historical continuity throughout the vicissitudesof the past. Once the IrishRevivalhad, through Standish this and established that Celtic was ProtYeats, O'Grady, Sigerson, spirit estant as wellas Catholic, a formof Protestant dissentthatrepudiated the modern world to ancientformshadresisted justas muchas Catholic loyalty versionof the solidarity of the Irish national was it, the cultural community complete. Thusthe Celticstereotype, createdas an explanation forthe initially of the Irish to the civilizing was refashintractability processes of modernity, ioned by the Irishthemselvesto claimmodernity for itselfand to relocate the Englishor Anglo-Saxon as the bereftbuttechnostereotype culturally communal form that was devoted to mere modernization. logically equipped Eventhe touristIreland of travel was redesigned to createthe image writing of the country as one partitioned betweena modernized andtherefore culweakened East and a traditional and immemorially richWest. The turally as the last bastionof the ancientculture apotheosisof the Westof Ireland of Europehad very littleto sanctionit historically. The so-called clachan villages of the West had appearedin the late eighteenthcenturyas the untilled lands of the West were population explodedand the previously taken over to accommodate the expansion.Withthe series of economic disasters that followeduponthe end of the Napoleonic Warsand culminated in the potatoblight, the West became depopulated again. Butin its as the remnant of an ancientcivilization that desolation,itwas reconstrued had survivedin this vestigialformfromancienttimes. Thus, it remained butits history was rewritten anditsgeography reconstructed.15 picturesque, Tourism so to as a spiritual was, say, internalized quest for the country's
14. See the preface to George Sigerson, Bards of the Gael and the Gall,2d ed. (London, 1907). 15. KevinWhelan,"Settlement Patternsin the West of Ireland in the Pre-Famine Period," in TimCollins,ed., Decoding the Landscape(Galway: SocialSciences ResearchCenter, University College, 1994), 60-78.

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2 / Fall1994 126 boundary

A colonialsystem had been inverted essential spirit. intoa nationalist sysinplace,buttheynowoperatedina newly tem.The basicfeaturesremained producedcultural space. of such a decolonizedspace was that it One of the requirements or reintroduce a dimension should introduce of experiencethat had been canceled or otherwiseconquered. met this requirement Nationalism by its reinsertion of the conceptof the sacred.To effectthis, it conceivedof the sacred as a condition that inheredin the site of the nationitselfand that, in virtueof such inherence,possessed, and was possessed by,those who belongedto the nationand to whomthe nationbelonged. simultaneously In creatingsuch a paradigm of sacrality, nationalism had to reorderthe vocabulariesof that kindof instrumental reasoningthat made a virtueof thatgave primacy to the atomized experience, disengagementfrom"lived" adindividual and made law-the creationof a contingent, self-justifying In central acts ministrative to one of the Ireland, system-superior justice. of such reordering was devotedto the vexed questionof land, its ownerSuch a properties. ship, its status, its physical,and even its metaphysical, of the land the production of a new history necessarilyinvolved reordering inretrospect thathadthe dualfunction of legitimizing of Ireland, a narrative whathad alwaysbeen true. Landand Soil battleforthe landinthe ninebetweenthe Irish Thereis a difference is whatlandbecomes when the battle for the soil. Soil and teenth century as a natalsource,thatelementout of which it is ideologically constructed Itis a have returned. andto whichtheirpast generations the Irish originate and of all economic a of notion sacralization, denuded, by strategy political for The Nationnewspaper,"racyof commercialreference.The epigraph drivetowardsa "rediscovdetermined the soil,"indicatesthatpublication's forthe landand, Thestruggle authenticity. ery"-really a reconstruction-of marked indeed,the strugglewiththe land,is contrastingly by an inexhaustto its economicstatus-property,rent,productivity, ibleseries of references tenant right,landlord ownership, impoverishment, upkeep, improvement, and so forth.The state purchase,redistribution, right,buyingand selling, nor is it confinedto versions,sacred to Ireland, is not peculiar distinction Itperhapshas its originsinthe counterrevolutionary or secular,of territory. whenthe the Revolution, of French to the redivision reaction territory during werereplaced betweenthe oldprovinces boundaries traditional bydivisions

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Deane/ Production ofCultural Space 127 and symmetrical model.Burkefulmithat were based on a mathematical such as Remusat French but did natedagainstthis, so, too, commentators, Itwas construed notonlyas an assaulton historically sancandde Maistre.16 modern or secularreinterpretation tionedpietiesbutas a characteristically of land as merelyor exclusivelyan administrative or economiccategory. of ancient it entered into the worldof the politiits associations, Stripped cal economistsand theirpeculiar of measureand price,forgoing idiom the was the two-facedideologythat idiomof presence and value.Nationalism in doingso, it rarely couldexploitbothidioms,although interfused them. It in termsof the soil and makethat in could makethe claimto authenticity turnpartof the concurrent claimto ownership where of the landin Ireland, the relationship betweenlandlords and where and tenantswas so fraught, the relationship betweenthe landand its inhabitants was so dangerously poised, especiallyafterthe agricultural collapseof 1815andthe continuing rise in a population on one crop-the potato-and dependent increasingly even moreon one variety of thatcrop-the lumper. Itwas the Faminethatoverdetermined the once-traditional distinctionbetweenlandandsoil andgave to ita newpolitical Two writers charge. in particular, James FintanLalor and Michael made the distinction Davitt, betweenthese termsa centralfeatureof theirpolitical Ineffect, programs. ownerownershipof the soil was interpreted by them as a nationalright; claim.Inhis pamphlet Some Suggestions shipof the landwas an individual for a FinalSettlementof the LandQuestion(1902), Davittadmitted that his "plan of LandNationalization" hadfailed:"Theplanwas eitherdisliked, or misunderstood, or the principle on whichit rested-national, as against of the soil-did notappealto the stronghuman desireor individual, lordship inCelticnature.""17 whichis so inherent passionto holdthe landas "owner" In addition,Parnelland the IrishParliamentary Partyhad listenedto the wishes of the tenantfarmers, "thepreponderant force in Ireland": political "Thecountryhas remained. . . overwhelmingly for an 'occupier owner16. EdmundBurke,Reflections on the Revolutionin France, ed. John GrevilleAgard Pocock (Indianapolis and Cambridge: HackettPublishing Company,1987), 160 ff. Similar views were expressed, fromdifferent politicalpositions,by Joseph de Maistre,Les soir6es de Saint-P6tersburg, ou Entretiens sur le gouvernementtemporelde la providence (Paris,1821)and by CharlesFrancois Marie comtede R6musat,Politique lib6rale, ou fragmentspour servira la d6fense de la R6volution Francaise(Paris,1860). 17. MichaelDavitt, Some Suggestions fora FinalSettlement of the LandQuestion(1902), 12. See Seamus Deane, ed., "Political and Speeches, 1850-1918," in FDA, Writings 2:280.

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2 / Fall 128 boundary 1994 which FintanLalor ship' of the land as against the 'national ownership' for the after I have urged and which passionatelypleaded great Famine, almostinvainuponthe acceptanceof the Nationalists of mytime."18 Davitt is referring here to FintanLalor's famousletterof 19 April1847 to Gavan it on the 24 Aprilunderthe Duffy,editorof The Nation,(whichpublished title "ANew Nation"), and his articlein the firstnumber of TheIrishFelon in both of which he warned the Irishlandlords newspaper(24 June, 1848), to committhemselves to Ireland, to theirtenantry, and to the new Social thathe proposed forthe country, Constitution orto perish.Whathe calledin the 1848 essay "thefirstgreatArticle of Association in the National Covenantor organizeddefense and armedresistance" is describedina famous passage: On a widerfightingfield, with strongerpositionsand greater resources thanare afforded by the paltry questionof Repeal,mustwe close forourfinalstrugglewithEngland, or sinkand surrender. Irelandher own-Ireland her own,and all therein, fromthe sod to the forthe peopleof Ireland, to have and to hold sky. The soil of Ireland fromGod alone whogave it-to have and to holdto them and their suit or service,faithor fealty,rentor render, heirs for ever, without to any powerunderHeaven.Froma worsebondagethanthe bondfroma dominion moregrievousand government, age of any foreign in dominion of its worst than the England days-from the grinding that laid its vulture clutch on the soul and cruellesttyranny ever yet fromthe robberrightsand robberrulethat have bodyof a country, turnedus intoslaves and beggarsin the landthatGod gave us for Deliverance or Death-Deliverance,or ours-Deliverance, oh Lord; and terrible this islanda desert!This is the one prayer, need, and realpassionof Ireland today,as it has been forages.19 aimwas, in one version,grandiose: Lalor's Not to repealthe Union,then, but to repealthe Conquest-not to the empire,butto abolishitforever-not to fall disturb or dismantle backon '82 butact up to '48-not to resumeor restorean old conbutto founda new nation,and raiseup a free people, and stitution, strong as well as free, and secure as well as strong,based on a
18. Davitt,Some Suggestions, 13: FDA,2:280. in FDA,2:172. 19. Citedin Seamus Deane, ed., "TheFamineand YoungIreland,"

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Deane/ Production ofCultural Space 129 peasantryrootedlikerocksinthe soil of the land-this is myobject.
(FDA, 173)

In anotherversion,it was morespecific.Lalor pleadedforwhat he called combination of classes." The movement for "a repealof the Unionwas, he claimed,"a questionof the population"; but "thelandtenurequestion is that of the countrypeasantry." them togetherin one enterIn merging betweensoil as a materialprise,he appealsto the powerof the distinction land and as a The nationis metaphysical possession political-legal entity. of the soil;the state is of the land: I holdand maintain thatthe entiresoil of a country belongsof right to the people of thatcountry, and is the rightful not of any property one class, butof the nationat large,in fulleffectivepossession, to let to whomthey willon whatevertenures,terms, rents, services, and conditions one condition, however, theywill; beingunavoidable, and essential,the condition thatthe tenantshall bearfull,true,and
undividedfealty, and allegiance to the nation.

that the enjoyment of by the people of this right,of firstownership the soil, is essential to the vigorand vitality of all other rights ... Forlet no peopledeceivethemselves,or be deceivedby the words, and colors, and phrases,and forms,of a mockfreedom,by constitutionsand chartersand articles,and franchises.These thingsare waste andworthless. Letlawsand institutions paperand parchment, what this will fact be than all laws,and prevail will, say they stronger them. against (FDA,174) Fromthere, Lalor theirregoes on to attackthe landlords, recommending movaland assertingtherebythe rightsof eight million people againstthe selfish interestsof a class of eightthousand. The laws of the landare, in this vision,dependentuponthe rightful ownershipof the soil. Soil is priorto land. It is actual and symbolic, the moresymbolicbecause of its claimto sheer materiality. The romanticnationalist of the withthe nation, itsownership soil,itsidentity conception by the people, its priority overall the administrative and commercial systems that transform it into land, is the morepowerful because it is formulated as a reality thatis beyondthe embraceof any concept.Itdoes not belong to the worldof ideas; it gives birth to the idea of the worldas a politically and economically ordered hadgreatappealforleftsystem.Thisconstruct activists such as Lalor, and Davitt. wing,socialistor proto-socialist, Mitchel,

....

I hold further...

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2 / Fall1994 130 boundary It had equal appeal for those who identified the emergenceof a bureauwith administered and espoused instead cratic,heavily society modernity visionof the nation,particularly of Ireland, as a a conservative, reactionary not conduciveto such rationalized As in the instanceof ordering. territory who regarded administrative rationalization as an unnatural Burke, imposiof reason on natural conditions the traditional tionof inhuman, the geometric of the post-Famine writers soil of Francein the revolutionary period,Irish to landlordism and beyondrewrote the opposition andto British generation of modernity. national ruleas a characteristically repudiation charItis curiousthat Davitt shouldhave believedthatthe "Celtic" acter'shungerforlandshouldhave madehis dreamof national ownership of national character thatare produced Forthe various impossible. figurings concerned centuries aregenerally inthe late nineteenth andearlytwentieth to the world. indifferent material to portray the Celtas dreamy, imaginative, shouldspeak in termsof classes and commuthat Lalor It is appropriate because he wrotebeforethe image of nities-peasant and town-dweller, thisverydivision betweenpeasantand the Celtwas fullyformed.However, in the soil and one who is tied betweenone who is anchored town-dweller, intothe recruited was readily andcommerce, to the pettydisputesof politics but we that of character national find,contested,indeed, condescriptions in the writings of Yeatsand Pearse, finedwithinrecognizable boundaries, The apoP. Ryan,andThomasMacDonagh.20 Joyce and Sigerson,William that allieditselfwiththe notion theosis of the peasantandof the Celtreadily owned by the dispossessed the soil was a sacred possession, mystically the "original" owners, or dis(the peasantry),who were, and remained, whowere,andremained, bythe owners(thelandlords), betrayed gracefully the original dispossessors. landsystem of ancientEurope,and parVersionsof the communal for historical narrative the legitimizing of "Celtic" Ireland, provided ticularly of the Young thisvisionof soil and land.ThomasDavis,one of the founders andcharan influential of TheNation, andeditor movement Ireland provided and Feudalism," acteristicaccountin his essay "Udalism shortly published was a system of combeforehis death in 1845. Inhis rendering, "udalism" munalownershipthat survivedthe passage froma nomadicto a settled of the tribe,thoughthe the property society;"thesoil remained agricultural nextstage "The After feudalism: of the tiller." udalism, cropwas the property
in FDA, the Canon:Versionsof NationalIdentity," 20. See LukeGibbons,"Constructing 2:950-1020.

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Deane / Production of Cultural Space 131 of landed propertyis to become divisibleamong the familyof the possessor at his death. It still remained, and ever does remain subject to the will and wants of the tribe or nation;but few nations... exercise theirstill undoubted right to resume possession."21 The "rankfeudality of the dark ages" gave of Englandand Germany;subsequently, "the feudality" way to the "modified fourthstate" arrived-"landlordism."No recourse to sacred rightsof the soil is possible in Englandwhere "thepeople ... have lost all hold of the soil. The bulk of them are artisans in the towns."22 But in Ireland,where, since the seventeenth century, England had waged "a constant war" against "property, religion and nationality," prosecuting its purposes through a series of land confiscations, a mixed system of feudalism and landlordismhad been sustained leading directlyto the phenomenon of famine and mass emigration. No matterwhat may be said about the unproductivity of Irishland, the truth is that it can support a population of eight million.Emigrationis no answer. Instinctively,"the people will still cling to the soil, like the infantto the mother's breast, with the same instinctand the same feeling."23 Davis wrote this before the Famine took its toll. Emigrationand starvation did indeed become the "solution" to the Irishland problem.Eight millionbecame four millionwithin a decade. Davis's historicalnarrativewas rounded bout by a holocaust that emptied the land and made the claim to immemorial possession of it the more fiercely assertive. The landlords also had their role to play in this dispute about terand the nature of the various claims to it. As they lost their grip on ritory the land, they were attacked even by those who believed that they had, or had once had, a rightto it that went beyond legal entitlement. The brunt of Standish James O'Grady'sattack on the Irish landlords was that they had managed to become "as earthy and dull as the earth itself."24 They had, in his account, lost their ardorand refinementand become brutishfox ... till the very hunters, people who had come "to despise your birthright clay of the earth is more intelligentthan yours."25 The term earth, in such a context, denotes something much more vegetative and materialthan soil. It is pure, untransformedmateriality. Yet, O'Gradydoes have a version of the
21. Thomas Davis, Essays, Literary and Historical, with preface and notes by Denis J. O'Donoghueand an essay by John Mitchel (Dundalk: DundealganPress, 1914), 54-55. 22. Davis, Essays, Literary and Historical, 62. 23. Davis, Essays, Literary and Historical, 72. 24. Standish J. O'Grady,Toryism and the ToryDemocracy (London,1886), 38. See Terence Brown,ed., "Cultural Nationalism, 1880-1930,"in FDA,2:516-61, 526. 25. O'Grady, and the Tory Toryism Democracy,38.

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132 boundary 2 / Fall 1994 alliancebetween peasantryand landlords-lateradaptedby Yeats-who a Celticworlduntainted live in anotherterritory, narrativized by actuality, into legend but not intohistory, whereit is alwaysdawnor twilight, never monotonous daylight. A nation's is madeforitbycircumstances, andthe irresistible history progressof events;buttheirlegends,they makeforthemselves. In thatdimtwilight the intellect of man, region,whereday meets night, tiredby contactwiththe vulgarity of actualthings,goes backforrest andtheresleeping,projects itsdreamsagainstthe andrecuperation, waningnightand beforethe risingsun.26 even to the uncertain of the firstsenThis is obviouslyYeatsian, grammar of the political and cultural uses to indication tence and the premonitory whichthe poet was laterto put occulttheoryand its fetish of dawn, twimomentin the long discourse light,sleep, dream.Itis also a recognizable like which Catholic of Protestant Gothic, was, nationalism, alwaysseeking an analysisof the political thatwouldbothprovide fora rhetoric questionof an accountthatwould and wouldalso provide the landand its ownership featuresintoanotherlanguage.Afterall, Gothic transpose its intractable fictionis devotedto the questionof ownership, wills,testaments,hauntings in its successfulmanifesmost ownedand, of places formerly commercially tation,BramStoker'sDracula(1897),to the storyof an absentee landlord of a supply residenceon the maintenance who is dependentin his London of soil in whichhe mightcoffinhimselfbeforethe dawncomes. He moves, versionof the Celtichero, betweendusk and dawn;but, like an O'Grady is enthat he is, withall his enslavedvictims,his Celtictwilight landlord of a nationalist dawn,a HomeRulesun rising dangeredby the approach soil and his vampiric Dracula's behindthe old IrishParliament. dwindling in landlord current of the Irish with the well consort image enough appetites abof the version of this out the nineteenth soil, peculiar century.Running willflee the lightof day and be consignedto the in London sentee landlord and Yeats'sAngloleftto him,thatof legend. LikeO'Grady's onlyterritory landof myth, to enterthe never-never he willbe expelledfromhistory Irish, than by a Lalor, butalso moreclandestinely, demonizedmoreeffectively, or Davitt. Mitchel, to the soil lost its the questionof the landand its relation Ultimately,
and Philosophical(London,1881), 26. Standish J. O'Grady, Historyof Ireland:Critical cited in FDA,2:525.

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Deane/ Production ofCultural Space 133 fadedandtenant-proprietorship becamecommon,but forceas landlordism of Ireland, withall its Gothic it lefta deficitthathad to be met.Theterritory Acts and andallits nationalist graves,withallitsestates andfarms,its Land was in need of redefinition its history of confiscations, by the earlyyearsof became one of the formof emigration, the century.Exile,the highcultural inthe earlytwentiof Ireland mostfavoredstrategiesforthe representation eth century.Itwas a formof dispossessionthatretained-imaginativelyfromwhicha crithe claimto possession. Itwas also, of course,a position Itwas, in effect,a couldbe mounted. viewof Ireland tiqueof the "peasant" of the "town such as positionoccupiedby writers population"-Dubliners of and the most famous Irish exiles Shaw,Wilde,O'Casey,Beckett, Joyce, in this regard.Forthe Dublin, the Ireland, he wroteof was, in an important notyet represented, a place caughtbetween sense, a nowhere,a territory in and The geography history. sacralizing agency Joyce,as inthese others, is displacedfromthe territory, or the nation,to the actionof representing it. Representation becomes the auratic process by whicha place that had or not represented been misrepresented at all finallyachieves presence. This is not simplya means by whichpoliticsbecomes aestheticized.Itinof the political volves, first,a replacement by the aesthetic, a maneuver which is to the realmfromwhichthe aesthetic through sacrality "restored" repoliticalhad filchedit. Second, the aesthetic, now complete-in-itself, absorbs the political. The onus of distribution has been altered.Not only is the aesthetic hierarchically it also conferson the political the superior; it would crave for own as its The itself, sacrality illegitimately possession. in the nineteenth reterritorialization of Ireland leads to a centuryultimately reterritorialization of the aestheticcategoryas well.The linkagebetween the territory andthe aestheticcategoryis a reverseactof "colonial" possesthe discursive is that enclosed between notions sion, achievedwithin space of priority and the disenchantment of (of possession) dispossession. IfJoyce claimsan epistemological forwriting, Yeatsclaims privilege it for Irishwriting. This is not to say that Yeats is more"nationalist" than it is to pointouttwodifferent, butconnected,momentsinthe Joyce. Rather, inwhichIreland nationalist as a territory, enterprise specificto itselfand not to wouldbe reconstituted parasitically adjunct England, (Yeats)or constitutedforthe first time(Joyce)inwriting. Yeatsis, aesthetically andpolitically, an exponentof home rule; of a radical an Joyce is an exponent separatism, othernessthatowes no debtto tradition otherthanthe enforcednecessity of abandoning it. ForYeats,the Ireland of anachronistically definedmodernity is retainingwhat England had lost in the process of modernization.For

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2 / Fall 1994 134 boundary or anachronicity are irrelevant. The issue for himis spaJoyce, chronicity tialization of thatwhichhadbeen displaced inthe dimension of time.History in or is not ordered eitherlinear cyclicfashion.Instead,it is thrownintoa and present. space, plural synchronous UntimelyMeditations withstereotypesorwithrevisions Irish crowded is, inevitably, writing of them. Muchenergyis devotedto discussionsof the Irish and rebuttals on Ireland, nationalcharacter. Writings especiallyby Englishauthors,are The freezes historical to this devoted topic. similarly stereotype change into a a patternof destiny.It producessameness within difference, governing that, in effect, reduces stories to one story.The stereotype is paradigm of history, a productand a producer but,once given the bogus ontologiand teleological cal status that racialtheory,neo-Darwinian applications, in it late conferred the nineteenth historical upon century,it readily writing It was a for historical as an key to all the explanation diversity. operated While of Europe and allthe histories and,indeed,of the world. mythologies it didso in a curiousway,for it was so it belongedto the realmof culture, to culture that it seemed, and was oftentakento be, partof fundamental in the an element nature, givenorderof things.The stereotypecouldalso to whichindiconventions as a set of outworn be read muchless benignly themselves.The conventional vidualsor groupssurrendered person and the conventional societywere hostileto those who exposed the contingent and postromantic natureof theirbeliefs. Inthe romantic cultures,the artthemthe ist, the genius, avant-garde stereotyped intellectual-sufficiently freedomthatwas too fluid of a radical selves-became the representative account.Inflected to be hemmedwithin thus, the philisany stereotypical and racial becameoppositional tine and the manof culture types. National within this were embroiled which, nevertheless, always dispute, stereotypes that of rationality betweena form to some degreethe distinction maintained or as againsta formof irrationality or impoverishing could be admirable In or unfavorably. that could equallybe regarded favorably nonrationality the conflictsdictatedby these termswere the more intense, beIreland, for was in itselftakento be a condition character cause the idea of national were The two of culture. or man of the the emergence symbiotically genius Celticmyth.Yet,they were also necessarily the anticolonial relatedwithin andthe manof culthe corresponding mythof the philistine opposedwithin
ture, especially as the philistine had been so resoundingly associated by

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Deane/ Production ofCultural Space 135 withthe bad civilization of the English middle Matthew Arnold classes.27In in more than or the middle even classes Ireland, France, Germany, England, had to be demonizedso thatthe imperial civilization they were assumed to represent couldbe humiliated Yeatsconsistently culturally. speaks of the weak culture of the Irish Catholic middle class thatwas irresistibly moving toward and control. And the economic author political Joyce, representative of thatclass, emancipated himself andhis ideaof Ireland from the thralldom of philistinism the intimate betweennational and by exploiting relationships class stereotypes,on the one hand,andthe aristocratic versionof the artist, on the other.He and Yeatsbothconstructed mythsof the artistas simultaintimate and a as a country exilic,creating neously thereby visionof Ireland thatwas at once sunk in bathosand backwardness and also estrangedin an alooftimelessness. Ina crucial was to be freedfrom sense, the country its oppressionsthrough art.Nationality wouldsuperveneover rationality. The self-creation of the artistas a person removedin an ultimate in Ireland. sense fromthe conventional has particular Yeats significance and Joyce, Wildeand Shaw, George Moore,Synge, and Beckettare the best-known instances.Eventhe shorthand formsof the names of some of them-WBY, GBS, Oscar-indicate the degree to whichthey intensified this cultof the artistic self. WhatIam arguing hereis thatthis phenomenon is itselfdependentuponthe widespread acceptanceof notionsof communal identity-particularly national character andclass character-of which the stereotypeis the masterformulation. This is, of course, a European, and nota specifically butitis in Europe, in NietzIrish, position, particularly sche's writings, that the connectionbetween nationality and the man of cultureis revised in anotherdirection-one that was followedin Ireland. Ratherthan confining the opposition to thatof philistinism againstculture, Nietzscheextendsitto embracean opposition betweentime-boundedness and untimeliness. Indoingso, inmaking the "national" geniusan inhabitant of the zone of untimeliness, he reaffirms, in but a new way,the traditional betweenthe autonomy of the extraordinary individual and the relationship art he produces.The aristocratic artistis the producer of an aristocratic art-aristocraticin the sense that it has achievedthrough the "pathosof the autonomy of timelessness. The genius belongs distance"autonomy, to a particular the age; buthe also transcendshis time.The stereotypical, remained lockedwithin the confinesof the age. conventional,
27. MatthewArnold,"TheFutureof Liberalism," (1880): "Themaster-thought by which this-the thoughtof the bad civilization of the English my politicsare governedis rather middleclass."

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136 boundary2 / Fall 1994

Inracial,national, and class discourses,everything and everybody is stereotyped,the rulersand the ruled,the mastersand the slaves, the To internalize the stereotypeis boththe ruse of superiorand the inferior. submissionto the powerof the order-in-nature and also the ruse argument fromit,forsuch internalization of liberation allowsthe experienceof otherness to be possessed as somethinginthe self thatis neverthelessrepudiinthe name of and is repudiated ated by the self. Itbelongsto one's nature in the name it to culture and is one's culture; or, belongs one's repudiated betweennature andculture of one's nature.Eventhe opposition is, in such an instrumental one designedto ratify, a process, recognizably division, by whichneverthelessis susceptibleto inversions of a hierarchic valorization, it which but from the divisions which derive from ostensibly many kinds, in a stereotypeis it itselfis actuallyderived.The positionof the dominant orof the cultural neversecure, preciselybecause the prestigeof the natural of specific to the requirements is a mobileenergy that moves according conditions. historical inthe are adumbrated circumstances Sometimesthese determining fervent-manner.Nietzsche's mostcursory-and sometimesparadoxically war is a case in point.There,the Franco-Prussian Meditations Untimely as the hisof the ThirdReich are identified of 1870 and the foundation the worshipof the state in Germanyto toricalevents that have brought The fouressays-on DavidStrauss,on history, a dangerousculmination. and on Wagner-that composethisvolumewere sepaon Schopenhauer, between1873and 1876andcollectedinbookformin 1893. published rately on the existence of an oppositionthat is All four essays are predicated to a armshas brought eternal-in nature-which the success of German bad eminence in culture.It is the oppositionbetweenthe cultural philisand the manof genius. The sometimesintricate, tines (Bildungsphilister) culture aboutnational sometimes incoherent, proceedsthrough argument a numberof variations,all of whichare subservedby that fundamental we read: as Educator," opposition.Inthe essay "Schopenhauer the consequences of the docwe are experiencing Here,however, thatthe state is the highthe from all trine,latelypreached rooftops, andthata manhas no higher est goal of mankind dutythanto serve the state: in whichdoctrineI recognizea relapsenot intopaganism Itmay be thata manwho sees his highestdutyin butintostupidity. the state reallyknowsno higherduties;butthere are men serving and duties beyondthis-and one of the dutiesthatseems, at least
to me, to be higherthan serving the state demands that one destroys

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Deane/ Production of Cultural Space 137 in everyform,and therefore in this formtoo. Thatis why I stupidity am concernedherewitha species of manwhose teleologyextends somewhatbeyondthe welfareof a state,thatof culture.28 the "constitutional In Schopenhauer's case, however, dangers"to whichhe wouldhavebeen at anytimeexposed-isolation, despairof truth, whicharose fromhis age." by those "dangers longing-are compounded butone whichseeks to on the basic opposition, This is anothervariation The althoughnot its structure. escape fromit by alteringits vocabulary, Butthe newvothatof state andculture. of chronicity supplants vocabulary once morethe divisionbetween cabularyof chronicity actuallyintroduces those energiesthatare eterthe eternalandthe time-bound, characterizing nal as those thatare "untimely." Ifit is commonly acceptedthatthe greatmanis the genuinechildof if in his age, he any event suffersfromthe deficienciesof his age moreacutelythando smallermen, then a struggleby such a great man against his age seems to be onlya senseless and destructive attackon himself.Butonlyseems so; for he is contending against those aspects of his age that preventhimfrombeing great, which himself. From whichitfolmeans, in his case, beingfreeandentirely lowsthathis hostility is at bottom directed againstthatwhich,though he findsit in himself,is nottrulyhimself: againstthe indecentcomand of incompatible, pounding confusing thingseternally againstthe of time-bound on to his own andinthe untimeliness; soldering things end the supposedchildof his timeprovesto be onlyits stepchild.29 findsthe othernessof his age in himselfand repudiThus, Schopenhauer ates that in the name of liberation. Infected he cures by contemporaneity, himselfof the effects of miscegenating in orderto time withuntimeliness become his true self. The essay is entirely dependentupon a series of contrasts that derive from the versionof the genius oppositional stereotyped andthe philistine andyet thataredeployedas thoughtheirpurposewas to discoverthatstereotype. Thehistorical of the accountis imporconditioning tant,because thatis whatsets andenergizesthe theme,butthe same kind of argument is available for manyversionsof such historical conditioning, in the late nineteenth whendebates aboutnational culespecially century,
28. Friedrich trans. R.J. Hollingdale, J. P. Stern introd. Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, Press, 1983), 148. (New York: Cambridge University 29. Nietzsche, Untimely 145-46. Meditations,

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2 / Fall 138 boundary 1994 turewere moldedby the stereotyped conviction thatthe strugglebetween the philistines and theircreation, the state, and the creativegeniuses and theiraspiration, of his adaptaculture,was a sociologicalfact. In pursuit tion of the Schopenhauerian hero, Nietzschegoes on to specify, in The of the "noble,powerful, Genealogyof Morals(1887), howthe supremacy over all "the common and low-minded, low, high-stationed high-minded" was transformed froma political intoan ethicalsystem by and plebeian" of distance": virtueof the famous"pathos Itwas out of thispathos of distancethattheyfirstseized the right to createvaluesandto coinnamesforvalues:... Thepathosof nobility sense of the fundaanddistance... the protracted anddomineering orderin relation to a lower mentalunity on the partof a higherruling 30 of the antithesis"good" and "bad." order... thatis the origin This transposedethicalsystem is itselftransposedintoan aesthetic syswriters who promoted variations on the traditional tem by those modernist and mass values, on the aloofnessfromconvention themes of aristocratic to mass timelessness of art,on the specialroleof genius,and,as a counter values, who gave a countering prestigeto the notionof an "organic"-and at the of Irish Thegreatflowering writing frequently "national"-community. of indigenous nationalism drawson the doubleheritage turnof the century to the bureaualternative searchforan authoritarian and of the European of nationality, TheYeatsian combination craticstate and its spiritual stupor. of degenand proto-fascist denunciations occultism,aristocratic posturing width of its for the of the mob is remarkable and eration, only philistine of itselements.He is Nietzschean embraceandnotat allforthe promiscuity derived whose conceptionof radicalindividuality a writer and nationalist, fromhis conceptionof racial community. TravelWritingRevisited to from the Actof Union Irish So, it is possibleto characterize writing or of a of a minority characteristics as havingthe standard Revival the Irish formsof the colonizer's colonialliterature-disempowered bythe canonical to it, search for alternatives discourse, reempowered by the experimental of decencommon or as the new as a rewritten plight centrality marginality
30. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birthof Tragedyand The Genealogy of Morals,trans. F. Doubledayand Company,1956), 160. (New York: Golffing

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Deane/ Production ofCultural Space 139 and even reterritorialization of the majorlanterdness, deterritorialization of the the to the claim of colonizer, guage modernity experienceas against the experience of modernization, the epistemological privilegesthat acafterthe But,since I beganwithan accountof Ireland companyallthese.31 Unionas a place subjectto the variousformsof inspection and report we findin travelwriting witha briefglance at the relationship beand, further, tween thatkindof writing andthe literature of tourism-fromwhichit is not versionof those descripreadily separable-I shouldfinishwitha modified tions inconnection withone of the mostself-consciously artifacts of literary the Revival, of the Artist as a Young Man. Joyce's Portrait thatemigration inthe halffromIreland First,itneeds to be repeated after the Famine is a central featureof the country's century (andbeyond) exile was one of its most publicized experience.Second, political experito Australia, enforced ences; transportation longjailsentences in England, exile in Europebeing the standardBritish methodof exporting sedition, to and members of the Irish Fenians, appliedparticularly YoungIrelanders, Brotherhood. oftenrootedin ecoThird, Republican exile, although literary nomicneed or ambition, is distinguished fromthese inthatitgenerally was construedas an act of liberation froma country thatwas too poor,too beto supportthe cultural of those who nighted,too backward requirements left.Exileas a condition couldbe transmuted whenabroadintoa versionof debonair detachment from the adopted Wilde andShawin England country. andGeorgeMoore inFrance andinEngland areobviousexamples.Further, Ireland itselfwas oftenrepresented as a placethatwas inexilefromitselffromits language,its heroicpast, its Celticspirit, its once centralEuropean as the Island of Saints and Scholars.Finally, exilewas a condition position that could be experiencedeven by those who stayed in the country. The internal with Dedalus emigreis a recurrent figurein Irish writing, Stephen as its mostprominent embodiment. Other conditions of separation fromthe homeland before and after the Famine-the absentee landlord, proliferate, the vagrant, the revenant of Gothic fiction. Yet,exile is notat all an outright
31. See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Kafka: mineure (Paris: pour une litt6rature Minuit,1975), "WhatIs a MinorLiterature?" MississippiReview 11 (1983): 13-33, A ThousandPlateaus, trans. BrianMassumi(London: The AthlonePress, 1988), 100-10; AbdulJanMohamed, "Humanism and Minority Literature: Toward a Definition of Counterhegemonic Discourse," boundary2 12/13 (1984):295-98; HomiK. Bhabha,ed., Nation and Narration and New York: (London Randall, Routledge,1990);Marilyn "Appropriate(d) Discourse: Plagiarismand Decolonization," New Literary History22, no. 3 (Summer 1991):525-39.

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2 / Fall 140 boundary 1994 formof deracination. Itis also a position from whichthe country can be surin and which its can veyed (inmemory, through revisiting) familiarity be both affirmed and estranged.Itis possibleto see in IrishRevivalliterature-in fromParisto Wicklow andthe West,inYeats'sshuttling back Synge's return and forthbetween London, and Sligo, in George Moore's Oxford, Dublin, of Ireland to savorthe possibilities of its revivalist experimental revisiting in with fascination the and the that spirit, Joyce's city country he refusedto revisitafter1912-a new formof cultural a rediscovery tourism, by natives of the country they had abandonedor that had abandonedthem. Ireland became a new cultural as the place that had space when it was refigured to be retrieved withworldculture and reintegrated the mediation through In of art. analogousfashion,it had previously been inspectedin orderto it fullywithinthe UnitedKingdom. Irishmodernity adapts the reintegrate andtourism of an art discourseof inspection, to the requirements retrieval, in its form. that is at once nativein its substanceand cosmopolitan so fertilein its variousinvocations In the fifthchapterof Portrait, the EnglishlanfromIreland, of Stephen'ssense of estrangement Dublin, guage, his fellowstudents,thereis a passage inwhichthe youngprotagoDavin.This is one of with"thepeasantstudent," nist recallshis friendship his progressfromhis home in North thatpunctuates a series of flashbacks Dublin to University College on Stephen'sGreen,where he willhave the withMcCann, withthe Deanof Studiesand,later, the proponent encounter of universal Collegeand the peace. Inthe walk,he has just passed Trinity the very nearbystatue of ThomasMoore,"thenationalpoet of Ireland," a Milesian"in cloak of the borrowed Irish of "a Firbolg servility, image inthe dress of a later,morecultivated inhabitant thatis, an uncouth original of Mooreand of Davinare of a piece, and typiinvader.His descriptions betweenpersonalassociationsand cal, of Stephen'sconstanttransactions roomswhere"therudeFirbolg historical icons. He recallssittingin Davin's of "theverses in to of his listener" mind had, listening Stephen'srepetition and dejecand cadences of otherswhichwerethe veils of his own longing or repelledit: to "it" drawn tion," (hisdejection?) Stephen'smind alternately of feelingor by a dullstareof or a bluntness "bya grossness of intelligence Irish of soulof a starving inthe eyes, the terror terror villageinwhichthe curDavin had been few was stilla nightly Cusack, fear."32 taughtby Michael of founder the modelforthe Citizenin the "Cyclops" episode of Ulysses,
of the Artistas a YoungMan,ed. Seamus Deane (London: 32. James Joyce, A Portrait cited in mytext as Portrait. Penguin,1992), 195. Thisworkis hereafter

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ofCultural Deane/ Production Space 141 the Gaelic Athletic devoted Association,a nationalist sportsorganization Irish of and to the renewalof the "ancient" Gaelic football. games hurling He was also entranced stories of his Mat a cofounder with uncle, Davin, by Cusackof the GAA,and a renowned athlete.Further, he "worshipped the sorrowful He had the reputation in college of being a legend of Ireland." Fenian.(Davinwas modeledon Joyce's contemporary at University Collater Lord of who lege, George Clancy[1879-1921], Mayor Limerick, was murdered the notorious British the Blackand Tans.)He by Army regiment, hadbeen taughtIrish his imagination byhis nurse,whohadalso "shaped by the broken Toward thismyth"upon whichno individual lightsof Irish myth." mindhad ever drawnout a line of beauty," he had the same attitudeas toward the RomanCatholic "the attitude of a dullwitted religion: loyalserf." Davinwas, by rote,hostileto allthatcame to himfromEngland or English of the worldbeyond,"he knewonly the foreignlegion of France culture; in whichhe spoke of serving." Thusfar,Davinhas been characterized as "thepeasantstudent" who possesses a "rude mind." Now he earns Fibolg anothernickname fromStephen,on accountof his ambition to serve inthe FrenchForeign of the Legion-somethingthatJohnDevoy,chieforganizer IrishRepublican Brotherhood and the best-known Irish-American Fenian had actually done: this ambition withthe young man's humorStephen had Coupling oftencalledhimone ofthetamegeese: andtherewas even a point of inthe name pointed irritation that reluctance of against very speech and deed in his friendwhichseemed so often to stand between andthe hiddenways of Irish Stephen'smind,eager of speculation, life.(Portrait, 196) TheWildGeese was the nameapplied to the Irish Catholic officers whofled to Europeafterthe Treaty in 1691.Theyserved in the French, of Limerick IrishBriArmies,usuallyas separatelyconstituted Spanish,and Austrian and their battle deeds the in wars gades, against English variousEuropean were muchcelebratedin Irish nationalist Tocall Davinone of propaganda. the tame geese is, thus, a sharpjibe;butit is Davin's inertia thatseems to blockStephen'saccess to the hiddenIreland. Such an Ireland does swim intoview almostat once when Davintells the storyof the peasantwoman who had invited himto herbed inthe mountain-road cottage.The reflected in otherfigures figureof the womaninthe storystoodforth, of the peasantwomenwhomhe hadseen standinginthe doorways

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142 boundary 2 / Fall 1994 at Clane,as the college cars droveby,as a type of herrace and his soul waking to the consciousnessof itselfindarkness own,a batlike and secrecy and lonelinessand, throughthe eyes and voice and gesture of a womanwithout guile, callingthe strangerto her bed. (Portrait, 198) "Thestranger" is a loadedphrasein Ireland, or to the foreigner referring inthis political-sexual the invader; context,itis particularly overdetermined, claimedthatthe Norman-English since nationalist were firstinvited history because of the treachery of Dervorgilla, wifeof an Irish to Ireland chieftain, invitedHenryIIto invadethe islandon whose paramour, MacMurrough, in Englishas Eva) his behalfand who gave his daughter Aoife(rendered in who 1170 the Norman arrived to Strongbow, (FinnegansWake general, versionsof the primordial makes muchof this as one of the Irish storyof the Fall). historical Thewholesequence is heavily codedwithIrish references, and the peasant butthe mainpointis that boththe peasant man (Davin) to Stephen.They belongto a different woman are mysterious countryto which he has no access. Boththeirsilence and theirspeech-including theiraccents-are barriers. Stephenis a spectatornow,as he was when fromClongowes,watching he was a schoolboyon his way backto Dublin to Milesians the train.From world of peasantwomenfrom the Irish Firbolgs to WildGeese to ThomasMooreto the Fenians,to the IrishRevival(its to revivethe language,ancientGaelicmyths,and Gaelicgames), attempts the historical landscape unrolls,plottedagainstthe geographyof Dublin and cosmoand the personalexperienceof Stephen.ButStephen,formal it. If return to the of the to we is episode, we see opening politan, foreign of anddisorienting that Davinalso has a particular power naming.He calls nameon the lipsof "Thehomelyversionof his Christian Stephen "Stevie": when firstheardfor he was as his friendhad touchedStephenpleasantly inspeech withothersas theywerewithhim" formal 195).Perhaps (Portrait, of versionof his namethat,in the uncertain it is to that "homely" grammar mind and draws Davin's the following "flung response Stephen's passage, formof Stephen. It and the familial is the familiar it back again.""Stevie" withhis name and identityis anotherexampleof Stephen'sfascination withthe strangesurname,butStevie the not Stephenthe Greekforeigner Itis Davin's Irishman. "homely" languagethatstirsStephen,and Stephen's Davin: that stirs "Onenightthe youngpeasant,his spirit strangelanguage or luxurious violent the languageinwhichStephenescaped from stung by

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ofCultural Deane/ Production Space 143 the cold silence of his intellectual revolt,had called up before Stephen's minda strangevision" (Portrait, 196).As Davinbeginsto tellthe storyof the as Davinhas just againcalled him) peasant woman,Stephen(or "Stevie" turns"smiling toward "flattered him, eyes" by his confidenceand wonover to sympathyby the speaker'ssimpleaccent"(Portrait, 196).Thus,speech and silence, languageand accent,formality and informality of naming,are allagencies through whichStephenis brought to a recognition of his status as an exile fromDavin'sIreland, just as surelyas Davinis an exile from self-isolation from the Irish culStephen's.Stephen'sdeliberate community minatesin his laterannouncement to Cranly of his readiness"tobe alone." But as the Davinepisode ends, and as StephenturnstowardStephen's on the figure of the youngpeasantwoman,a Green,his mindstillbrooding youngflowergirllays herhandon his arm.Herblueflowersand blueeyes seem to himfora moment"images of guilelessness," to that corresponding of the peasantwoman.Butthen he sees her poverty and coarseness and turnsaway, claiminghe has no money.As he leaves her, he once more feels his sense of estrangement returning: He leftherquickly, thatherintimacy turnto gibingand fearing might wishingto be out of the way beforeshe offeredherwareto another, a touristfromEngland or a studentof Trinity. Grafton Street,along whichhe walked,prolonged thatmoment In of discouraged poverty. the roadway atthe headof the streeta slabwas set to the memory of WolfeToneand he remembered havingbeen presentwithhis father at its laying.He remembered withbitterness that scene of tawdry tribute.Therewere fourFrenchdelegates in a brakeand one ... the words: held, wedged on a stick,a cardon whichwere printed
Vive I'lrlande!(Portrait,199)

The Irishrevolutionary leaderWolfeTone,fora timean exile in Franceand whose cause was defeatedin 1798,was an officerinthe French America, armies(shadesofthe Wild revolutionary Geese) whenhe was executed.He and his lost Ireland commemorated by the Frenchin the Frenchlanguage on a tawdry occasion;Stephen'sfearthathis poverty mightbe revealedto an English tourist or a Trinity student-these are preparatory momentsfor his encounterwiththe Dean of Studies.Butthey are also culminating moments in the Davinepisode thathas so profoundly deepened his sense of fromhis ownnational Evenso, his sense of exile estrangement community. is enhancedby his recognition of the existenceof thatcommunity. But,as

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144 boundary2 / Fall 1994

he walksthroughDublin on this particular in his he is a traveler morning, own country, a place that has become by turnsexoticand disenchanting to him.Inthe "coldsilence"of his Nietzschean"intellectual he has revolt," become aware of the pricehe has to pay, in termsof communal feeling and spiritual of "thepathosof distance."Such exile, for the achievement distanceis thatbothof an aristocratic artist andof a writer who has become in his own country. a traveler

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