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Postcolonial
theory has recently emerged as one of the most influential
modes of socio-cultural analysis currently shaping
Irish studies. It is a school of thought inspired
largely by the work of Edward Said, Frantz Fanon,
and Indian Subaltern Studies. The “post”
means “since colonialism began” rather than
“after colonialism ended”. Postcolonial
theory in the Irish context is not strictly speaking
the study of the economic, political and cultural
effects of British colonial rule in Ireland. More
specifically, it is about how Ireland has not only
been a geographical entity dominated by the British
state, but also a history, geography, culture and
population written and represented by what the British
said about them. The main object of postcolonial theory
is that colonial system of representations. This collection
of twelve essays edited by Clare Carroll and Patricia
King with an after word by Edward Said, is a representative
sample of this kind of analysis influenced by the
postcolonial paradigm. One of the strengths of postcolonial
theory is that it widens the interpretive perspective,
because it argues that the proper contextual frame
for Irish studies is the wider historical and geographical
span of colonial capitalism. As Joe Cleary puts it
in his essay included in this collection, postcolonial
theory effectively “dislocates” Irish studies.
In
their introduction, the editors note that Ireland
has been "both a transgressive and a founding
site for postcolonial theory". Transgressive,
because it is geographically and culturally in Europe,
and a founding site, because the country was England's
first (and last?) colony. The fact that Ireland transgresses
in many ways the different colonial models drawn up
by scholars had led some to think that the idea of
Ireland as a British colony has little conceptual
merit. Objectively, Ireland is an intrinsic part of
Western Europe, in geographic, economic, racial and
cultural terms, and has more in common with Denmark,
Belgium or Poland than India, Algeria or the Congo.
Subjectively, the Irish did not see themselves as
a colonised people like the Indians or the Africans,
but as a separate European nation. And finally, those
critics point that the Irish, as soldiers and missionaries,
were complicit in the process of imperial conquest,
and participated in the genocide of natives in Australia
and North America. Joe Cleary and David Lloyd subject
those arguments to criticism in their contributions
to the book. The first argument "assumes an essentially
homologous relationship between the country's spatial
location, its socio-economic composition and culture".
Ireland may belong to the same geographical area as
other European countries, but it was integrated in
a very different manner than its main European neighbours.
Postcolonial theory contends that "wider European
currents were mediated through a society which was
in its structural composition -class and ethnic relations,
land tenure systems, relationship with England and
so on- objectively colonial in character." It
uncovers how "the discrepant ways in which Irish
political and cultural life, which were obviously
shaped and textured by wider European development,
were at the same time overdetermined by the country's
dependent position." If postcolonial theory insists
on the discrepancy between Ireland and other European
countries, at the same time it refuses false "homologies"
between Ireland and India or the Congo for example.
Postcolonial theory rests upon a "differential
approach", marking the ways in which specific
forms emerge in relation to the colonial process.
Without such a differential approach, the analysis
of colonialism "tends toward either bad abstraction
or a positivistic catalogue of singularities, and
leads to a conceptual inanity which the import of
the singularity is permanently evanescent." Edward
Said describes as a form of "creative borrowing"
the way in which this differential approach uses examples
from other colonial contexts, such as that of Palestine.
To the argument, that the Irish did not see themselves
as a colonised people, Edward Said responds "but
neither did the Congolese before Lumumba". Finally,
Amitav Ghosh in her chapter on the experience of Indian
soldiers in the British Army, shows that the British
Empire employed many soldiers of Irish and Indian
origin who played a part in the expansion and consolidation
of the Empire while at the same time being colonised
people themselves.
Postcolonial
theory sounds very ambitious, but in practice it deals
more with things that are historically marginal, details
and footnotes of history. Most of the essays are of
narrow historical interest, more likely to interest
the academics and the specialists rather than the
general reader. Clare Carroll compares Spanish representation
of Amerindians in the second half of the 16th century
as not barbarous with English accounts of the Irish
from Gerald of Wales to Edmund Spencer, as "natural
slaves". Luke Gibbons describes how the United
Irishmen's belief in universal emancipation expressed
itself in support for other colonised people. He mentions
the interesting fact that in 1789, the Iroquois Amerindian
nation nominated as honorary chief Lord Edward Fitzgerald,
future leader of the 1798 rebellion. Another essay
by Joseph Lennon discusses Irish Orientalism from
the 18th century to the early 20th century Celtic
revival, showing how Irish representations of Asia
are both similar and different from other European
representations of the Orient. Gauri Viswanathan writes
about James Cousins, an Irish poet who supported Indian
nationalism, and explains how his interest in theosophy
and Indian nativism provided the basis for his internationalism.
Seamus Deane has a fascinating essay on English as
it is written by Irish authors, exploring the relations
between the loss of the Irish language after the Famine
and technical accomplishments of writers like Joyce
or Beckett. The Irish language in their work is audible
as silence, “the silence of the other language
that haunts the English language, sometimes in the
shape of its syntax and grammar, or of its idiom and
vocabulary, sometimes merely as reference or implication.”
Unfortunately, postcolonial theorists have the nasty
habit of writing in a fairly obscure prose. This book
is no exception, and it is not the easiest of readings.
Finally, their lack of discussion of more contemporary
problems is regrettable. For example can Northern
Ireland be considered a colony if it is part of the
British state? Is the Republic of Ireland a "Neo
Colony"? Has it overcome the legacy of colonialism?
Can the Republican and Republican Socialist movements
be considered anti-colonial national liberation fronts?
Those are crucial issues to which postcolonial theory
should pay more attention.
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