During a period of bitter struggle between Republican prisoners and the British state, the Irish language was taught and spoken as a form of resistance during incarceration. The book unearths this story for the first time and analyses the rejuvenating impact it had on the cultural revival in the nationalist community beyond the prison walls.
Based on unprecedented interviews, Feargal Mac Ionnrachtaigh explores a key period in Irish history through the original and 'insider' accounts of key protagonists in the contemporary Irish language revival.
During a period of bitter struggle between Republican prisoners and the British state, the Irish language was taught and spoken as a form of resistance during incarceration. The book unearths this story for the first time and analyses the rejuvenating impact it had on the cultural revival in the nationalist community beyond the prison walls.
Based on unprecedented interviews, Feargal Mac Ionnrachtaigh explores a key period in Irish history through the original and 'insider' accounts of key protagonists in the contemporary Irish language revival.
Language, Resistance and Revival: Republican Prisoners and the Irish Language in the North of Ireland
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Language, Resistance and Revival: Republican Prisoners and the Irish Language in the North of Ireland
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Overview
During a period of bitter struggle between Republican prisoners and the British state, the Irish language was taught and spoken as a form of resistance during incarceration. The book unearths this story for the first time and analyses the rejuvenating impact it had on the cultural revival in the nationalist community beyond the prison walls.
Based on unprecedented interviews, Feargal Mac Ionnrachtaigh explores a key period in Irish history through the original and 'insider' accounts of key protagonists in the contemporary Irish language revival.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780745332260 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Pluto Press |
| Publication date: | 04/11/2013 |
| Pages: | 280 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.20(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Colonialism, Culture and Ideology
A little boy about eight years of age, addressed a short sentence in Irish to his sister, but meeting his father's eye, he immediately cowered back, having to all appearance, committed some heinous fault. The man called the child to him, said nothing, but drawing forth from its dress a little stick ... which was suspended by a string around the neck, put an additional notch in it with his penknife. We were told that it was done to prevent the child from speaking Irish; for every time he attempted to do so a new nick was put in his tally, and when these amounted to a certain amount, summary punishment was inflicted on him by the schoolmaster.
Sir William Wilde, on a visit to Ireland in the 1830s (Ó Giolláin 2000: 66)
This section provides an overview of the research story's political rationale, namely, the overriding structural context of colonialism, neocolonialism and decolonisation. It also assesses the pivotal position of language, culture, identity and nationalism within the context of Irish and international minoritised language activism. This understanding of cultural decolonisation emerged during my reflective journey, researching resistance-based activism. As such, the discourse of ideology, power and resistance lies at the very heart of the analysis.
COLONIALISM, NEOCOLONIALISM AND DECOLONISATION
Colonialism
The basic legitimation of conquest over native peoples is the conviction of our superiority, not merely our mechanical, economic and military superiority, but our moral superiority. Our dignity rests on that quality, and it underlies our right to direct the rest of humanity.
French Commissar-General Jules Harmond (O'Dowd 1992: 27)
Ambitions of empire not only directed the English colonial project in Ireland, and indeed globally, but also shaped an ideology of expansionism among other 'technologically superior' western powers. Said (1993: 8) lucidly points out that 'colonialism' is 'almost always a consequence of "imperialism"', forging processes 'in which one state controls the effective political sovereignty of another political society. It can be achieved by force, by political collaboration, by economic, social, or cultural dependence.'
Imperialism represents 'the most powerful force in world history over the last four or five centuries, carving up whole continents while oppressing indigenous peoples and obliterating entire civilizations' (Parenti 1995: 1). More specifically, it fosters a 'process whereby the dominant politico-economic interests of one nation expropriate for their own enrichment the land, labour, raw materials, and markets of another people' (ibid.). Alternatively, in the words of Lenin, imperialism constitutes the 'highest stage of capitalism', where cartels and monopolies, including banks, emerge as the foundations of economic life (Larrain 1989: 63).
Nevertheless, successive empires masked this economic venture in racist terms; this reached its apex with 'the fashionable philosophy of social Darwinism', which misapplied the 'theory of evolution to the development of societies', thereby providing 'a scientific gloss to the scramble for colonies' and bigotry (Curtis 1984: 65). Numerous anti-colonial activists, notably Aimé Césaire, have analysed the human impact of colonialism and the excesses of its implementation, wherein 'millions' were 'skilfully injected with fear, inferiority complexes, trepidation, servility, despair, abasement'. Indeed, as Fanon (1961: 171) illustrates, 'deep in the minds of the natives' colonialism inculcated the belief that their pre-colonial history represented one 'dominated by barbarism'. Similarly, the Kenyan anti-colonial writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o encapsulated this psychological process:
The real aim of colonialism was to control the people's wealth; what they produced, how they produced it, and how it was distributed; to control, in other words, the entire realm of the language of real life. Colonialism imposed its control of the social production of wealth through military conquest and subsequent political dictatorship. But its most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonised, the control, through culture, of how people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world. Economic or political control can never be complete without mental control. (Ngugi wa Thiong'o 1997: 16)
This mental subordination is 'unleashed by imperialism' through a 'cultural bomb', which delegitimises native culture, language and identity amongst the colonised, or in the words of 1970s South African black consciousness activist Steve Biko, 'the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor was the minds of the oppressed'.
Equally, Freire (1972a: 151) suggests this process only succeeds when 'those invaded become convinced of their intrinsic inferiority ... [and] alienated from the spirit of their own culture and from themselves', to the extent that they 'want to be like the invaders: to walk like them, dress like them, talk like them'. Moreover, in his seminal work on colonial oppression, Alberto Memmi stresses how the assimilative experience of cultural colonisation involved a wholesale transformation on the part of its victims:
The crushing of the colonized is included among the colonizer's values. As soon as the colonized adopts these values, he similarly adopts his own condemnation. In order to free himself, at least so he believes, he agrees to destroy himself ... just as many people avoid showing off their poor relations, the colonized in the throes of assimilation hides his past, his traditions, in fact all his origins which have become ignominious (Memmi 1965: 165).
The centrality of this assimilative aspect was never more relevant than in those colonies where 'colonised people' found themselves 'face to face with the language of the civilising nation; that is, with the culture of the mother tongue' (Fanon 1970: 14). This manifested itself in imperial education systems, where control of language epitomised the hierarchical power structures of colonialism.
This manifested itself in imperial education systems, where control of language epitomised the power structures of colonialism. Indeed, through its colonial education systems, Britain outstripped 'the other empires in the reach of its ambition, the imperial language was represented as carrying its liberal and decent qualities on to the world stage in order to take its rightful place' (Crowley 1996: 48). To quote Ngugi Wa Thiong'o (1997: 9), 'the physical violence of the battlefield was followed by the psychological violence of the classroom' where language became 'the means of ... spiritual subjugation.' In the 1950s,
[i]n Kenya, English became more than a language: it became the language and all others had to bow before it in deference. Thus one of the most humiliating experiences was to be caught speaking Gikúyú in the vicinity of the school. The culprit was given corporal punishment – three to five strokes of the cane on bare buttocks – or was made to carry a metal plate around the neck with inscriptions such as I AM STUPID or I AM A DONKEY ... And how did the teachers catch the pupils? A button was initially given to one pupil who was supposed to hand it over to whoever was caught speaking his mother tongue. Whoever had the button at the end of the day would sing who had given it to him and the ensuing process would bring out all the culprits of the day. Thus children were turned into witch-hunters and in the process were being taught the lucrative value of being a traitor to one's immediate community. (Ibid.: 11)
Unsurprisingly, proficiency in English represented the key to personal advancement and 'the measure of intelligence and ability in the arts, the sciences, and all the other branches of learning' (ibid.: 12).
Interestingly, the British had perfected compulsory Anglicisation over 100 years earlier, in their 'first colony', Ireland, drafting 'a blueprint for the consequent models of language and colonialism practised throughout the world' (Crowley 1996: 4). After 1831, the Irish national school system instituted a regime of corporal punishment in school and at home designed to prevent the speaking of Irish. The active involvement of the Irish people not only constituted psychological transformation but also facilitated the wider imperial aim of creating culturally English, indigenous, colonial elites (Anderson 1991: 93).
Conversely, proponents of modernisation emphasise the role played by the Irish themselves as evidence of individual choice over and above the sociocultural and economic context. May (2002: 3–4) criticises such simplistic readings as 'linguistic/cultural social Darwinism', which portrays language loss as an inevitable part of sociolinguistic evolution. Within this analysis, language decline represents the failure of inherently backward and archaic languages, or their speakers, to adapt to the modern world. These views clearly underestimate colonialism. Language loss does not occur in communities of power, wealth and privilege. Moreover, linguistic decline occurs within wider processes of social, cultural and political displacement often involving overt discrimination and suppression (ibid.: 4). Similarly, accounts that emphasise the 'decisions' of the 'individual' take little cognisance of the socio-psychological effects reinforcing cultural shift.
In effect, colonialism instils the belief in its 'victims' that this process is somehow 'natural' or 'legitimate', rather than engineered by the coloniser and unequal power relations. As a result, 'symbolic violence' cultivates complicity and implicit consent, encouraging 'the holders of dominated linguistic competencies to collaborate in the destruction of their [own] instruments of expression' (Bourdieu 1991:45). Predictably then, the colonised attribute greater worth to the 'dominant language', thus internalising the irrelevance of their own language, leading the victims of colonisation, by practical necessity, to become active participants in jettisoning their traditional cultures (May 2002: 310). Antonio Gramsci (1971) defined the manner in which dominant powers oscillate between coercion and consent as 'hegemony'. In analysing 'the spontaneous consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group' (ibid.: 12), he challenged the simplistic dichotomy between domination and subordination, positing an alternative 'process of transaction, negotiation and compromise that takes place between ruling and subaltern groups' (ibid.: 10).
Although authoritarian in nature, colonial regimes were also 'interested in co-opting local elites but not in consulting them about policy', thereby excluding 'the bulk of the population from direct participation in the political system' (Gledhill 2000: 76). Interestingly, some commentators view this consensual factor and the positive interpretation of infrastructural modernisation in imperial projects as the 'exculpation of imperialism' (Ó Ceallaigh 1994b: 11). Thus, native elites operated 'oppression from within', while wider imperial processes represented a necessary global expansion that modernised human civilisation (ibid.). Andrew Roberts argues that for 'the vast majority of its half-millennium-long history, the British empire was an exemplary force for good', while John Keegan describes the empire as 'highly benevolent and moralistic' (ibid.: 20). Truly, 'revisionism is all the rage' (Pilger 2006: 18).
Similarly, in a scathing attack on Ken Loach and his Palme d'Or-winning film The Wind that Shakes the Barley, the Irish revisionist historian Ruth Dudley Edwards (2006) claimed: '[T] he truth is that, as empires go, the British version was the most responsible and humane of all. With all its deficiencies, it brought much of value to most of the countries it occupied', a sentiment echoed by former British prime minister Gordon Brown, who asserted that 'the days of Britain having to apologise for the British Empire are over. We should celebrate' (Pilger 2006: 20). Clearly, these views ignore the primary economic objective: 'to provide the mother country with cheap food and industrial raw materials rather than to develop an integrated modern economy on metropolitan lines' (Gledhill 2000: 77). Moreover, they represent a 'denial of the historical record' (Pilger 2006: 21), which 'would see Britain's role in the world to a large extent as a story of crimes against humanity' (Curtis 2003: 432).
Therefore, 'the question of interpretation ... as well as historical writing ... is tied to the question of interests' (Said 1993: 114). To analyse relevant literature without examining 'views expressing exculpation of empire' is akin to 'describing a road without its setting in the landscape' (ibid.: 127). Unsurprisingly, Irish revisionism largely questions the validity of the colonial model, labelling it as an 'unwelcome politicisation' (Cleary 2003: 17–18). In other words, 'to assert Ireland is and has been a colony is certainly to deny the legitimacy of British government in Northern Ireland', while simultaneously questioning 'the state and governmental structures that have been institutionalised in the post-colonial Free State and Republic of Ireland' (Lloyd 2003: 48). The colonial model's counterpoint lies in the modernity thesis, which virtually ignores economic and political imperialism and locates Ireland in a 'self-contained western European context' where its own 'traditions' acted 'as a barrier to progress' (Cleary 2003: 20).
The nature of the Tudor, Cromwellian and Williamite conquests, with their associated land confiscations, dispossessions, resettlements and wholesale destruction of the native Gaelic society, means that few historians dispute the terminology of colonialism for this period. However, many analysts mistakenly replace the colonial model with a modernisation thesis after the Act of Union (1801), considering Ireland a politico-economic subunit of the United Kingdom. This analysis underplays a nineteenth-century history of forced mass emigration in the wake of a demographic disaster unparalleled in contemporary western Europe – the Great Hunger (Cleary 2003: 40).
Similarly, Whyte takes issue with Aughey's (1989) argument that the historical remoteness of Plantation and Ireland's non-colonial position under the Union, stating that
settlers from England and Scotland did come over in the seventeenth century and settle in much the same manner as their compatriots were settling in America. No one has thought to call the American settlements anything other than colonies ... The fact that Northern Ireland is legally not a colony, but part of the United Kingdom, does not destroy the analogy; Algeria was legally part of France, and Angola and Mozambique were legally part of Portugal, but that did not stop the French and Portuguese from eventually treating them as expendable. (Whyte 1990: 178)
Northern Ireland, created by partition in 1920, spawned a settler–colonial entity in which 'boundaries were chosen to ensure a permanent Protestant majority', meaning that 'minority rights were not guaranteed and there was no possibility of alternation in office' (Clayton 1998: 50–1). In addition, the settler–colonial ideology 'arises from the need to defend interests; the fear of change; and the intransigence of fixed positions' necessitating the exclusion of the 'natives' from potential power or influence' (ibid.).
Therefore, many scholarly objections to Ireland's colonial status are analytically restrictive, ignoring wider structural realities, as they 'assume that there is such a thing as a typical colony and a standard or one-size-fits-all colonial experience against which Ireland's claims might be measured' (Cleary 2003: 31). Instead, it is necessary to interpret specific national contexts as 'the product of dislocating intersections between local and global processes that are not simply random but part of the internally contradictory structure of the modern capitalist world system' (ibid.: 45). Moreover, the heated nature of the controversy demonstrates that Ireland's colonial status 'is no antiquarian or academic squabble' (Said 2003: 177). Rather, it underpins the 'whole question of Irish identity, the present course of Irish culture and politics, and above all, the interpretation of Ireland, its people, and the course of its history' (ibid.).
Neocolonialism
The neo-colonialism of today represents imperialism in its final and perhaps most dangerous phase and is also the worst form of imperialism. For those who practise it, it means power without responsibility and for those who suffer from it, it means exploitation without redress.
Kwame Nkrumah (1965: ix)
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
AcknowledgmentsAbbreviations
Foreword by Phil Scraton
Introduction
1- Colonialism, Culture and Ideology
2- Irish historical context: The Irish language— Conquest, Suppression and Revival: 1500—1971
3- Imprisonment, the Irish context and the language
4- ‘Na Cásanna’- The Cages of Long Kesh 1973-1984
5- ‘Ar an Phluid’- The H-Blocks, the ‘Blanket Protest’ and the Aftermath 1976-1985
6- ‘Bringing the language to the people’- Revival
Conclusion
Epilogue
Appendix- Narrator Biographies
Notes
Bibliography
Index