“St Patrick’s Day is a universal celebration of Irishness and shallowness. With a national identity translated universally, we are left with little meaning except marketing. Irishness is now a connotation abroad, hollowed of content at home.” Gerard Howlin (The Irish Examiner)
I read this article recently. It’s a strange one as I am left wondering if I agree with the overall thesis or profoundly disagree with it. In my first read all I could discern was that old and debased saw, ‘in the good old days.’ Yes, they were the ‘good old days’ but only for a very small cohort of the population and even then they still had terrible teeth. In the ‘good old days’ Irish national identity, which was code for cowed catholic, was the stick used to beat all those who erred from the proscribed path. The mentally ill, the women who dared get pregnant in non church approved ways, actually any woman with a brain was scary, gays, lesbians, the poor, children and those perverse enough to play garrison games were all victims of this ‘good old days‘ identity.
I hold these ‘good old days’ in as much contempt as I do those who dare express any misty eyed sentiment for those foul, violent and oppressive days. On the other hand, the days when Irish identity was that bastard amalgam of 19th century nationalism and revanchist catholicism were easy on those who did not wish to question who and what they were. One could go through an entire lifetime, sated with the certainty that Irishness was this thing and not any other thing. That is easy, that is safe. That created the monoculture, the economic stagnation and political waywardness that led to a country with two dominant parties who don’t have as much as the width of a cigarette paper between them on any issue. Other than mutual acrimony of course. (And I say that as a member of one of those parties.)
“This is a country with an identity crisis so acute we are largely unaware of it. Life goes on, but out national conversation has essentially stopped and stultified.” Gerard Howlin (The Irish Examiner)
Today we don’t have an Irish culture, an Irish identity. We have a plurality of Irish cultures and Irish identities. We have about 4.5 million identities in this jurisdiction. About another 1.8 very different different identities in Northern Ireland and Gandalf knows how many other different identities across the Globe. I can’t think of anything healthier.
There are those of course who are uncomfortable with this democracy and plurality of identities and cultures. How can there be millions of Irish cultures and also just one? How can there be mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins and in-laws, but only one family?
I am atheist, thus barred from certain Public Offices, I can’t speak Irish and have no interest in doing so, I hold our Constitution in contempt, I support marriage equality, full reproductive rights for women, the decriminalisation of drugs, I wish people would be a little bit more German when it comes to parking their cars, I hold a British Passport, have a proud English woman as a mother and I think the ’16 Rising was a mistake. I am a Kerry man first, a European second and yet I remain an Irish man. There are those who think my identity disqualifies me from any claim to Irishness. To them I say, go fuck yourselves. Croziers, guns, nor even the universities get to tell me who or what I am.
If a person cannot comfortably hold many identities at once nor comfortably accommodate the plurality of identities in others, then I fear they have that limited intellect most beloved of the fascists. One can simultaneously cringe at the shamrock nonsense going on over at The White House on Paddy’s Day and still accept the economic benefit of such fawning. And one must make room for those who are genuinely touched by our Taoiseach being given access to the most powerful man on earth, so he can celebrate Irishness (or a version there of at least). There are those who still find a part of their identity in St Patrick’s Day celebrations. Who am I to criticise where they find their Irishness?
“The independent Irish state was itself the rump expression of the rump population, remaining un-emigrated in the southern part of the island” Gerard Howlin (The Irish Examiner)
This however, is a wonderful sentence. All else can be dismissed as the unfortunate sentimentality of atavist nationalism, but this is purest accuracy in a single sentence. This should be the point entire of the column.
Has there been an impact on our collective identity by being the ‘left-behind?’ Was that the basis of our earlier cruelty to the most vulnerable among us? Did we lose imagination, radicalism, vision, confidence, empathy and sympathy because the best of us left?
I’m in a bind here, because I am the product of emigration. My dad left Kerry back in the 60s. I wouldn’t exist if he hadn’t been forced to leave. I have had no negative experiences of emigration. I am comfortable with my many and varied identities. But this little country is smaller than it should be or could be. The collective identity that is 4.5 million identities, the ‘soul’ of our nation, to use the sentimental term, cannot but be marred by such stunting. That stifling, if it exists, is worth exploring.
