Delimiting Ireland. (Trans)border Studies and Partition Literature
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31261/SSP.2021.17.01Keywords:
border, Northern Ireland, Brexit, cultural memory, partition literature, nationalismAbstract
The 2016 referendum in the UK and then Brexit itself, formally introduced in 2020 and finalized – upon the conclusion of the transition period – at the beginning of 2021, have significantly affected the status of the border on the island of Ireland. Once the UK left the European Union, the border that separates the Republic of Ireland from Northern Ireland became an EU border as well. Although overnight the lives of the Irish people crossing the border did not change that much, gradual, and far-reaching, transformations have been taking place in the minds of the Irish and the British and in the overall economic, social and political circumstances on both sides of the old/new border. This essay seeks to address the Irish border’s history as well as its cultural and geopolitical contexts, based on the most useful insights of border studies. That perspective is enriched by elements of cultural memory studies to develop a position sensitive to the needs and aspirations of the border communities and individual borderlanders, who look for support and inspiration to their own local cultures and literary discourses. The aim of this essay is to explore various facets of the Irish border in light of the 2016 referendum’s results and ramifications. What is characteristic of the Tory neoimperialist vision and rhetoric in the UK is its disregard for the local, minority and regional issues on the island of Ireland. In consequence, the status of the 56 per cent of the inhabitants of Northern Ireland who voted “Remain” in the 2016 referendum may be described as that of a marginalized minority in their own country.
References
Alexander Neal, 2010: Ciaran Carson: Space, Place, Writing. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
Anderson Darran, 2020: Inventory. A River, A City, A Family. London: Chatto & Windus.
Bernard Anna, 2010: Forms of Memory: Partition as a Literary Paradigm. „Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics”, no. 30, s. 9–33.
Carr Garrett, 2017: The Rule of the Land: Walking Ireland’s Border. London: Faber & Faber.
Carson Ciaran, 1995: Jacta Est Alea. „Poetry”, October–November: Contemporary Irish Poetry, s. 20. [Online:] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=39374 [dostęp: 31.12.2018].
Cleary Joe, 2004: Literature, Partition and the Nation-State: Culture and Conflict in Ireland, Israel and Palestine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Deane Seamus, 1998: Czytając w ciemności. Tłum. Janusz Ruszkowski. Poznań: Zysk i S-ka.
Diener Alexander, Hagen Joshua, 2010: Introduction: Borders, Identity and Geoplitics. In: Borderlines and Borderlands: Political Oddities at the Edge of the Nation State. Eds. Alexander C. Diener, Joshua Hagen. Lanham–Boulder–Toronto–New York–Plymouth, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, s. 1–14.
Drong Leszek, 2019: Tropy konfliktu. Retoryka pamięci kulturowej we współczesnej powieści północnoirlandzkiej. Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego.
Erll Astrid, 2011: Travelling Memory. „Parallax”, vol. 17 (4), s. 4–18.
Erll Astrid, 2018: Homer: A Relational Mnemohistory. „Memory Studies”, vol. 11 (3), https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698018771858, s. 274–286.
EU Referendum, 2016: EU Referendum: Northern Ireland Votes to Remain. 24.07.2016. [Online:] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-36614443 [dostęp: 30.12.2018].
Fenton Siobhán, 2018: The Good Friday Agreement. London: Biteback Publishing.
Greenblatt Stephen, 2009: Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heaney Seamus, 1998: [from: Whatever You Say Say Nothing]. In: Idem: Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966–1996. London: Faber & Faber, s. 131–133.
Heaney Seamus, 2001: The Border Campaign. In: Idem: Electric Light. London: Faber & Faber, s. 18.
Heslinga Marcus Willem, 1971: The Irish Border as a Cultural Divide: A Contribution to the Study of Regionalism in the British Isles. Assen: Van Gorcum.
Hutchinson Wesley, 2018: The Northern Ireland Troubles: What Was There to Photograph? „Przegląd Kulturoznawczy”, nr 3 (37), https://doi.org/10.4467/20843860PK.18.020.10105, s. 365–380.
Keefe Patrick Radden, 2018: Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. London: William Collins.
Kubicka Emilia, 2012: O pojęciu granicy – raz jeszcze. „Linguistica Copernicana”, nr 1(7), s. 209–227.
Mars Sylvia de et al., 2018: Bordering Two Unions: Northern Ireland and Brexit. Bristol: Policy Press.
McCurry Cate, 2018: State Papers. „Belfast Telegraph”, 29.12.2018. [Online:] https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/state-papers-claims-of-shoottokill-policy-by-the-ruc-at-theheight-of-troubles-had-grave-implications-for-garda-cooperationsaid-dublin-justice-minister-37663624.html [dostęp: 30.12.2018].
Nash Catherine, Reid Bryonie, Graham Brian, 2013: Partitioned Lives: The Irish Borderlands. London–New York: Routlege.
The Northern Ireland Peace Agreement, 1998. [The Agreement reached in the multi-party negotiations 10 April 1998]. [Online:] https://peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/IE%20GB_980410_Northern%20Ireland%20Agreement.pdf [dostęp: 30.12.2018].
Northern Ireland Statistic & Research Agency, 2012: Census 2011. Key Statistics for Northern Ireland. December 2012. [Online:] https://www.nisra.gov.uk/sites/nisra.gov.uk/files/publications/2011-census-results-key-statistics-northern-ireland-report-11-december-2012.pdf [dostęp: 31.12.2018].
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
The Copyright Owners of the submitted texts grant the Reader the right to use the pdf documents under the provisions of the Creative Commons 4.0 International License: Attribution-Share-Alike (CC BY-SA). The user can copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose.
1. License
The University of Silesia Press provides immediate open access to journal’s content under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Authors who publish with this journal retain all copyrights and agree to the terms of the above-mentioned CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
2. Author’s Warranties
The author warrants that the article is original, written by stated author/s, has not been published before, contains no unlawful statements, does not infringe the rights of others, is subject to copyright that is vested exclusively in the author and free of any third party rights, and that any necessary written permissions to quote from other sources have been obtained by the author/s.
If the article contains illustrative material (drawings, photos, graphs, maps), the author declares that the said works are of his authorship, they do not infringe the rights of the third party (including personal rights, i.a. the authorization to reproduce physical likeness) and the author holds exclusive proprietary copyrights. The author publishes the above works as part of the article under the licence "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International".
ATTENTION! When the legal situation of the illustrative material has not been determined and the necessary consent has not been granted by the proprietary copyrights holders, the submitted material will not be accepted for editorial process. At the same time the author takes full responsibility for providing false data (this also regards covering the costs incurred by the University of Silesia Press and financial claims of the third party).
3. User Rights
Under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, the users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) the article for any purpose, provided they attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
4. Co-Authorship
If the article was prepared jointly with other authors, the signatory of this form warrants that he/she has been authorized by all co-authors to sign this agreement on their behalf, and agrees to inform his/her co-authors of the terms of this agreement.
I hereby declare that in the event of withdrawal of the text from the publishing process or submitting it to another publisher without agreement from the editorial office, I agree to cover all costs incurred by the University of Silesia in connection with my application.
