Unauthorized views: History, allegory and the subjugated body in contemporary Irish film

In: Dissertation Abstracts International

Abstract

My dissertation examines representations of the subjugated and wounded body in Irish visual and literary culture in order to expand the concept of "Occupied Ireland." Working off the nationalist slogan "Ireland unfree will never be at peace," I explore the theme of an un-free and restless Ireland in its standard meaning as a nation still partially under British rule, but also in the sense of an Ireland occupied by patriarchal traditionalism and conservative clericalism. In films from the last two decades that foreground the subjugated bodies of their male and female protagonists are historiographies of post-partition Ireland that use, subvert and explode traditional visual and cinematic codes. In reading these film, I argue that the coexistence of two states in Ireland, each of which disavows the presence of the other, has shaped cultural conceptions of historical time, religious practice and national identity on both sides of the border. This affects which histories are officially acknowledged in culture and which ones remain illicit glimpses into the mechanics of an oppressive state power. ; Across four chapters I move from a thematic analysis of partition along national, religious, political and gender lines to a study of fragmentation in a given text as an aesthetic strategy for cracking open official history to an onslaught of occluded voices. Each chapter looks at representations of the body at different politically significant moments in Irish history (the abortion referendum, the protests for political status in the H-Blocks and Armagh Gaol, the Hunger Strike and the wave of economic and cultural transformation that supposedly swept 1960s Ireland). I conclude by placing the subjugated Irish body in the context of cultural bodies from other postcolonial nations, arguing that analyses of individual postcolonial cultures are most productive when used comparatively. An understanding of the dynamics of official lies and unacknowledged histories in Irish culture can contribute to a global perspective on how visual and literary culture speaks to colonial and postcolonial power and can help dissolve the historical boundaries between colonial and postcolonial as well as the geographical distinctions between "western" and "non-western" and the "developing" and the "developed" worlds. ; Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 65-09, Section: A, page: 3197. ; Adviser: Robert P. Stam. ; Thesis (Ph.D.)--New York University, 2004.