Feminist Articulations of the Nation: The "Dirty" Women of Armagh and the Discourse of Mother Ireland

Abstract

Examines the 1981 no-wash protest of women in Ireland's Armagh prison in the context of discourses of Mother Ireland, & contrasts how those who participated in the protest inside the prison discussed it with representations of the protest from feminists who often had conflicting agendas. Data from a publication of the Sinn Fein, documentary video, & books on the protest show that, in its insistence on women as political beings capable of taking political action, the no-wash protest brought the image of Mother Ireland into a state of crisis. However, a generational gap is discerned between older prisoners, who still clung to the traditional image of Mother Ireland, & younger ones, who found it not only an inadeqaute representation of women, but also a potentially damaging one. It is suggested that this generation gap represents a new possibility for articulation as the social formation & historical forces change. Recent feminist readings of the no-wash protest, particularly those of Margaretta D'Arcy (1991) & Elizabeth Shannon (1989), are interpreted as examples of such articulations that, while often working at cross-purposes, nonetheless demonstrate the power of the protest to incite new imaginative understandings of feminist subjectivity. D. M. Smith