Authority And Wisdom

Authority and Wisdom
The 8th Biannual Conference of the Nordic Irish Studies Network (NISN)
DUCIS, Dalarna University, Sweden, 12-14 December 2012
Wednesday December 12
12.00-13.00Registration
Main Entrance Hall (Ljushallen)
13.00-13.30Official Opening
Lecture Room 6 (Fö 6)
Prof Irene Gilsenan Nordin, Conference Co-ordinator and Host
Prof Marita Hilliges, Vice Chancellor, Dalarna University
Dr Elin Holmsten, Dean of Languages and Media Studies, Dalarna University
His Excellency Mr James Joseph Carroll, Irish Ambassador to Sweden
13.30-15.00 PLENARY LECTURE 1
Lecture Room 6 (Fö 6)
Chair: Irene Gilsenan Nordin, Dalarna University
Prof. John Wilson Foster (Queen’s University Belfast) “Three Decades: Commemoration and Authority in Times of Transformation”
15.00-15.30Refreshments
Area outside Fö6
15.30-17.00SESSION 1: The Conflictual Authority of History
Lecture Room 6 (Fö6)
Chair: Carmen Zamorano Llena, Dalarna University
1. Stephen Duane Dean (King’s College London, UK )
“An Armed Catholic Ireland? Firearms and Faith in Eighteenth Century Ireland”
2. David Gray (University of Ulster, Coleraine, Northern Ireland)
“‘The Athens of the land’: Autonomous Colonial Authority Amang’ Ulster Folk”
3. Anthony W. Johnson (Åbo Akademi, Finland)
“Ancestral Voices: Significations of the Vatic in Heaney, Longley, Mahon and Muldoon”
17.00READING
Lecture Room 6
Mary O’Donnell
Followed by RECEPTION and buffet
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Thursday December 13 9.00- 10.30 PLENARY LECTURE 2
Lecture Room 2
Chair: Carmen Zamorano Llena, Dalarna University
Prof. Patricia Coughlan (Professor of English, University College Cork)
“Hard Times and Sibling Songs: Sibling Relations and Authority Shifts in Contemporary Irish Literature”
10.30-11.00Refreshments
Main Entrance Hall
11.00-12.30SESSION 2: Updating the Authority of Tradition
Lecture Room 1
Chair: Loretta Qwarnström, Dalarna University
1. Maria Filomena Louro (Universidade do Minho, Portugal)
“Chip of the Old Rotten Block: Working Against the Father”
2. Bent Sørensen (Aalborg University, Denmark)
“Sean-nós, Sean-nua…”
3. Thomas Korthals (Independent Scholar, Soest, Germany)
“Authority from Wisdom: The Irish Journal of Ralph Giordano”
12.30-13.30 Lunch
Scandic Hotel
13.30- 15.00 PLENARY LECTURE 3
Lecture Room 2
Chair: Billy Gray, Dalarna University
Prof. Ciarán Benson (UCD School of Psychology, Dublin)
“Faultlines of Allegiance in Contemporary Ireland: What Should the Irish Love and Fear to Act More Wisely in the Twenty-First Century?”
15.00-15.30Refreshments
Main Entrance Hall
15.30-16.30SESSION 3: The Authority of Religion and Its Contestations
Lecture Room 2
Chair: Katherina Dodou, Dalarna University
1. Edwige Nault (Lille 3 Charles-de-Gaulle, France)
“Challenging Church Authority on the Abortion Issue from the 1980s”
2. Nathalie Sebbane (University of Paris 3 Sorbonne-Nouvelle, France)
“Magdalene Laundries. A Case of Authorities Contested”
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16.30-16.45Refreshments
Main Entrance Hall
16.45-17.45SESSION 4: Cinematic Authority and Political Wisdom
Lecture Room 2
Chair: Carmen Zamorano Llena, Dalarna University
1. John Lynch (Dalarna University, Sweden)
“Evading the Media: Actualizing Memory in Films of the Northern Ireland Conflict”
2. Werner Huber (Universität Wien, Austria)
“The Authority of Tradition: The Brothers McDonagh and Cinema History”
17.45-19.00Refreshments
Main Entrance Hall
Luciatåg – Lucia choir - Christmas carols
Friday December 14 9.00- 10.30 PLENARY LECTURE 4
Lecture Room 6
Chair: Irene Gilsenan Nordin, Dalarna University
Mary O’Donnell (author)
“The Challenge to Authority and the Authority of Wisdom: Cultural Connections in Poetry, Fiction, and on the Street”
10.30-11.00Refreshments
Area outside Fö6
11.00-12.30SESSION 5: The Question of Spirituality and Traditional Wisdom
Lecture Room 6
Chair: John Lynch, Dalarna University
1. Maciej Ruczaj (Centre for Irish Studies, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic)
“‘Wise foolishness of saints’: Charismatic Authority in Patrick Pearse’s Writings”
2. Kärt Vahtramäe (University of Tartu, Estonia)
“Revealing and Taming the Beast: The Role of Poetry in Defining and Describing Death”
3. Camelia Elias (Roskilde University, Denmark )
“Walking between Worlds: Yeats, Tarot, and the Golden Dawn”
12.30-13.30 Lunch
Scandic Hotel
13.30-15.30SESSION 6: Forms of Subversion in Contemporary Irish Poetry
Lecture Room 6
Chair: Irene Gilsenan Nordin
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1. Charles I. Armstrong (University of Agder, Norway)
“I murder him / With his own gun’: The Violence of Paul Durcan’s Subversive Ekphrasis”
2. Ben Keatinge (South East European University, Tetovo, Macedonia)
“The Charismatic Authority of Paul Durcan”
3. Anne Karhio (National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland)
“Place, Tradition and Media Technology in Recent Irish Poetry”
4. Ruben Moi (University of Tromsø, Norway)
“Verse, Visuality and Vision: The Challenges of Ekphrasis in Ciaran Carson’s Poetry”
15.30-16.00Refreshments
Area outside Fö6
16.00-17.30NISN Meeting
Lecture Room 6
19.00Conference Dinner
Scandic Hotel
Saturday December 15 - Departure
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Conference Speaker Abstracts
Armstrong, Charles I.
University of Agder, Norway
“I murder him / With his own gun’: The Violence of Paul Durcan’s Subversive Ekphrasis”
This paper will interpret Paul Durcan’s two ekphrastic volumes of poetry from the early 1990s – Crazy
About Women (1991, based on paintings from the National Gallery of Ireland) and Give Me Your Hand
(1994, based on paintings from the National Gallery in London) – as subversive critiques of contemporary Ireland. It will be shown how power and privilege is questioned, often with a strong emphasis
on gender relations. The identification of this critique will be coupled with an inspection of the pervasive modus operandi of Durcan’s responses to the visual works of art: the poems are characterised by
an extreme liberty In relation to their pictorial sources, often relating only to rudimentary features of
complex works of art hailing from distant ages in order to create narrative improvisations on contemporary phenomena such as “The family of today” (“An Interior with Members of a Family”) and “the era
of Aids” (“The Separation of the Apostles”). The poems analysed will include “Portrait of Govaert van
Surpele and his Wife”, “Katherina Knoblauch” and “The Separation of the Apostles,” as Durcan’s violent
critique of the abuse of power is interrogated. To facilitate a questioning of the legitimacy and efficacy
of this poetic approach, lines will be drawn to the deconstructive reading practices that were popular in
the 1990s.
Dean, Stephen Duane
King’s College London, UK
“An Armed Catholic Ireland? Firearms and Faith in Eighteenth Century Ireland”
The Penal Laws are a favoured topic for Irish historians. The continuing discussion on what life was like for Irish
Catholics living under confessional based penal legislation has likewise produced a large extent historiography,
the most recent volume being a special issue of Eighteenth Century Ireland Society. It is surprising then that
the topic of firearms, especially given the implications for Protestant Ireland’s security, is absent. There is a
substantial amount of scholarship on criminal acts and banditry that has been covered by a number of
historians. However, when Irish historians talk about firearms, they usually mean one of two extremes. In one
case, those wielding firearms while breaking additional laws, such as Tories, Rapparrees and smugglers, or those
wielding firearms for the state in the form of military service or armed volunteer associations. The purpose
of this work is to examine the much larger segment of the population who were proscribed the possession of
firearms as citizens on a confessional basis. The purpose of this paper is to uncovering how firearms fit into
the broader narrative of Catholics lives during the period of the Penal laws. The paper will make the case
that enough evidence exist to make some preliminary comments on the effectiveness of enforcement, on a
persistent Protestant fear of a resurgent and armed Catholic Ireland, and also on the implications of a largely
disarmed society on crime, security and social order.
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Elias, Camelia
Roskilde University, Denmark
“Walking between Worlds: Yeats, Tarot, and the Golden Dawn”
W.B. Yeats’s essay, “Magic” (1901) begins with the following statement, “I believe in the practice and
philosophy of what we have agreed to call magic, and what I must call the evocation of spirits, though I do
not know what they are, in the power of creating magic illusions, in the visions of truth in the depths of the
minds when the eyes are closed.” In this paper I investigate claims to authority that allow one to step into
‘other’ worlds. Authority informs all oracular sayings and forms of divination. Authority is in fact their very
premise and condition for existence. But claiming authority for one’s prophecies, if one is a priest or a poet, is
not the same as having power over the way in which they come to pass. This has to be negotiated and mediated
by discernment or another form of wisdom. If discernment fails, then authority fails. Here I want to look
at the relation between a well-formulated intent to tap into the universal wisdom of other worlds and the
implementation into our physical reality of what is given in the ‘other’ reality, or the world of higher authority
that exceeds our cognitive grasp and cultural achievements. In the case of the hermetic order of the Golden
Dawn, of which Yeats was a member, one can identify a paradox that contributed to its dismantling, namely a
forgetfulness about the fact that all magical acts must be anchored in a constraint before they set the magician
free.
Gray, David
University of Ulster, Coleraine, Northern Ireland
“‘The Athens of the land’: Autonomous Colonial Authority Amang’ Ulster Folk”
One of the most accomplished literary, scientific and cultural treatises on the Giant’s Causeway and the north
coast of Ireland is William Hamilton Drummond’s 1811 epic work, The Giant’s Causeway. A work in which
Drummond repeatedly promotes Belfast as a ‘northern Athens’; a civic authority to rival Edinburgh and
Dublin. This paper will explore how Drummond uses the classical characteristics of the epic genre and British
georgic-based verse to enhance the poem’s declamatory and authoritative voice, as a means to construct and
perform a new vision of Ulster’s ascendance within post-rebellion / post-Union Ireland. In a letter to the
Bishop of Dromore, Thomas Percy, in 1784, William Jessop appears to articulate Irish Ascendancy fears when
he states,
The Ultonians are Scots […] we are genuine Irish […] we look upon Ulster as one grand volcano, ready
every moment to shake the earth around it, and pour forth its burning lava. In the south the climate and
the people are milder. Potatoes are a cooling diet; oaten bread and whisky are combustibles.
Drummond’s poem may be read as a riposte of sorts to this indictment, appropriating the languages of
ethnicity, agriculture, environment and geology to promote an enlightened Ulster. Drummond champions
a Presbyterian-led and mercantile-sponsored coterie of scholars in Belfast, as the erudite guardians of this
now quiescent region within Ireland and within the new Union. Yet under this new guise, the activities of
the North’s rural cotter-class as they appear in The Giant’s Causeway – mediated by georgic-verse conventions
to extol the north of Ireland’s productive energies – seem to become synonymous with a passive and fecund
landscape, meaning that at times the poetic persona drifts alarmingly close to a language of autonomous colonial
authority. Ultimately this analysis of The Giant’s Causeway using Ulster-Scots Criticism and Ecocriticism will
attempt to offer further means of negotiating Irish history and culture during an intense period of change in
Ireland.
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Huber, Werner
Universität Wien, Austria
“The Authority of Tradition: The Brothers McDonagh and Cinema History”
Martin McDonagh and his brother John Michael McDonagh have recently made their mark in the history
of Irish filmmaking with their first feature-length films. Both films, In Bruges (2008; dir. Martin McDonagh)
and The Guard (2011; dir. John Michael McDonagh), end in mise-en-abyme-like moments of the highest
metafictional order. The final shoot-out in In Bruges takes place on the set where a film involving a vertically
challenged American actor is being shot, as is explained in an earlier exchange: “What are you filming midgets
for?” / “It’s a Dutch movie. It’s a dream sequence. It’s a pastiche of Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. Not a
pastiche, but a … ‘homage’ is too strong … A ‘nod of the head’.” In The Guard, the black FBI agent, who has
survived the final shootout with the drug-traffickers, is handed a summary, by the local Co. Galway paparazzo,
of the film as it is reaching its end and of the story that he has been part of: “Probably sell it to the movies, then.
A fish-out-of-water story, huh?” The Brothers McDonagh have generally presented themselves as “hard men,”
“young Turks” of modern global popular culture who have absolutely no truck with authority, tradition, or
canonicity. However, the web of intertextual references (especially those pertaining to the history of cinema)
that informs both films seems to contradict this impression. What I would like to bring to the analysis of these
two films is an understanding of intertextuality as relationships between texts/films and as a dialogue of films
across boundaries (across genres, across periods, across national traditions). In this dialogue some references
are made explicit/foregrounded (the obvious “nod”) (e.g., Nicholas Roeg, Don’t Look Now, Orson Welles,
Touch of Evil, Paul Schrader, Alan Bates, The Shout, Wim Wenders, Paris, Texas), while others remain hidden
and teasingly unacknow¬ledged (e.g., The Boondock Saints, Bob Quinn and Poitín).
Johnson, Anthony W.
Åbo Akademi, Finland
“Ancestral Voices: Significations of the Vatic in Heaney, Longley, Mahon and Muldoon”
Arising from one of the earliest roles of the poet – the vatic – as, simultaneously, a seer and dispenser of
ancient wisdom and authority, it is no surprise that this tone of voice found a particular resonance for what
has subsequently been dubbed the ‘Archaeological School’ of Northern Irish Poetry in the 1970s and 1980s.
Here, Longley’s “Skara Brae” and a number of poems from Heaney’s North are, perhaps, the first to come to
mind (along with Mahon’s refreshing skit on the genre in “Lives”). In part, no doubt, much of the attraction
of this tone in work of the period is that by creating a distance from the immediacies of the present it allows
the opportunity of re-evaluating (or even re-configuring) the wisdom and authority on which so much of
the present depends. But beyond this, and despite the fact that the vatic is often specifically collocated with
Celtic poetic voices, there is a surprisingly Anglo-Saxon inflection or subject-matter to a number of voices
ventriloquised by these poets. Most markedly in the celebrated rendition of Old English epic that has become
known as ‘Heaney-Wulf ’, but also in a number of other works, such as Muldoon’s “Englyshing” of Caedmon’s
“Hymn”. Drawing its materials from this constellation of sources and concentrating particularly on their
gnomic and ludic elements, the present paper accordingly sounds out a number of ways in which these vatic
voices are used to critique, dissolve, amend, layer or reconstruct the wisdom and authority which constitute
our historical heritage.
Karhio, Anne
National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland
“Place, Tradition and Media Technology in Recent Irish Poetry”
Place and landscape have arguably constituted the most prevalent motifs in Irish poetry, not only historically
but also in the contemporary context. As Oona Frawley, among others, has noted, place and landscape in Irish
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writing have frequently been viewed through nostalgia, reflecting a desire to forge continuity, to “bridge the past
and the present” in the midst of societal change. At the same time, modernity and technology have frequently
been seen to compromise such continuity; Fintan O’Toole, for example, has observed that urban culture,
industrialisation and modernity were in the 20th century, in both literary and criticism, often seen to threaten
the “‘natural’ link between the peasantry and the land”, traditional signifiers of authenticity in Irish culture
and literature. In other words, there has been a perceived opposition between place as authentic and rural, and
the invading nature of the modern experience, including developments in transport and media technology. In
this paper, I will look at the work of contemporary Irish poets specifically from the perspective of place and
media technology. Through examples from the writings of Paula Meehan, Vona Groarke, Paul Muldoon, John
Redmond and Irish performance poets, I will examine how place can be envisioned as first-hand, phenomenal
experience is increasingly making way to place as mediated through electronic media, including the Internet.
How do poets negotiate authority, continuity and change, home and away, place and placelessness, not only
in terms of representation, but also through poetic form? And how does media technology impact poetics of
place in cases where poetry no longer relies on print media alone as a means of dissemination?
Keatinge, Ben
South East European University, Tetovo, Macedonia
“The Charismatic Authority of Paul Durcan”
The German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) proposed three types of authority: legal-rational, traditional
and charismatic. He further proposed that the charismatic authority of an outstanding leader or revolutionary
can be incorporated into the existing social framework in a process he called routinization. This paper will
propose that the impact of Paul Durcan’s poetry and his presence as a cultural figure in Irish society is based
on his charismatic authority. His authority is both formal and societal based on the intrinsic charisma with
which he invests his poetry, but also on his charismatic performance of his poetry in readings and his poetry’s
intervention in social fields such as: women’s rights, the dominance of the Church, social exclusion, racism,
divorce and other liberal causes. In numerous poems like “Wife Who Smashed Television Gets Jail” or “Making
Love Outside Áras an Uachtaráin” we see Durcan making definite social statements based on his poetic
authority. These statements are invested with his charismatic style: outlandish titles, surreal scenarios, comic
refrains and freestyle rhetoric all of which lend Durcan’s poetry an authority based on poetic form. However,
many of the causes he has championed have now been incorporated into the legal-rational framework of a
changed Ireland. Indeed, Durcan himself has become a kind of wisdom figure and with the publication of
his collected poems Life is a Dream (2009) and his appointment as Ireland Professor of Poetry (2004-2007)
one might suggest he has moved towards the very establishment which his early poetry does much to critique.
Nonetheless, this routinization of certain themes in Durcan’s early poetry does not diminish his important
contribution to the advancement of liberal causes in Irish society or his status as an important contemporary
poet.
Korthals, Thomas
Independent Scholar, Soest, Germany
“Authority from Wisdom: The Irish Journal of Ralph Giordano”
Heinrich Böll’s “Irish Journal” is probably one of the most widely read German books about Ireland ever
written. Still, Böll was not the only German travelling there and turning his journey into a book. Ralph
Giordano, a German writer of Jewish decent and a survivor of the holocaust, visits Ireland in the 1990s, and
observes the emerging Celtic Tiger, thus taking his reader today back to the golden era of the Irish economic
boom. On Giordano’s island the blessings of modern life slowly reach even the most remote parts of the
country, a country which is still inhabited by very much the same people who Böll wrote about thirty years
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before. However, the brave new Ireland also has a darker, more political side up North. Here Giordano’s
perspective has an authority that derives from the wisdom he has gained during his life. In the paper I will
present Giordano’s odyssey around Ireland that is more than a mere travel book. Next to being a very distinct
view of Ireland, it shows how diaries depend much more on their authors and their biographies than most
other literary forms. This travelogue helps Giordano to try and come to terms with his own life, past, and fears
through the medium of Ireland. To put this book into perspective, glances at Böll’s “Irish Journal” will be taken
to show the influence the earlier book has had on the later one.
Louro, Maria Filomena
Universidade do Minho, Portugal
“Chip of the Old Rotten Block: Working against the Father”
Following mob hysteria and submitting to the blind mindless authority is often exposed in the plays of Sean
O’Casey. Individuals who struggle to create a pattern of wisdom rejecting models of authority are seen in the
plays of both O’Casey and Murphy as fighting often lonely battles. But in fact we can see the whole society
being challenged from different grounds, helping individuals create their own new wisdom, borne out of their
personal struggle and social awareness. The paper will explore Juno and the Paycock, The Shadow of a Gunman
and Whistle in the Dark to see how patterns of violence are endorsed or rejected.
Lynch, John
Dalarna University, Sweden
“Evading the Media: Actualizing Memory in Films of the Northern Ireland Conflict”
Wisdom is often figured as intuitive knowledge that serves as a flash of insight into the nature of things. But
to paraphrase Paul De Man, insight necessarily produces blindness, a structuration of unseeing that does not
accord with the fixed ideas that generate the very illumination itself. But this is not a simple opposition, rather,
something of a paradox where the qualities work together to exemplify the mysteries of a complex text. My
paper seeks to consider this idea in relation to two films of the Northern Ireland conflict that self-consciously
sought to evade the fixed idea of it as established by the mainstream British media. The late Alan Clarke and
the artist Steve McQueen produced two films, Elephant and Hunger respectively, that mobilised particular
cinematic and aesthetic techniques to try to escape the limits of simplistic morality as habitually applied by
journalists when describing the brutality of events in the conflict. The paper considers how successful they
are in producing new circuits of understanding through the formal techniques employed but also where,
necessarily, they generate instances of blindness that creates gaps that can translate into a further sense of
anxiety.
Moi, Ruben
University of Tromsø, Norway
“Verse, Visuality and Vision: The Challenges of Ekphrasis in Ciaran Carson’s Poetry”
Together with poets such as Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon and Maeve McGuckian and visual artists such
as Rita Duffy, Dermot Seymour and Willie Doherty, Ciaran Carson is one of the many artists who has
challenged the ideas of authority and wisdom in their art and in the dominant discourses and social structures
of Northern Ireland over the last forty years. Carson is a well-known writer, folk musician and arts director,
and he displays a keen and convincing engagement with the visual arts in “A fusillade of question-marks:
some reflections on the art of the Troubles”, his contribution to the Troubles Archives Essays in 2009. His
imagination reveals a sharp sense of visuality, many of his poems engage with ekphrastic challenges and most
of his poetry volumes exhibit famous images of art on the cover. Nevertheless, Carson’s interaction with
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painting and visual arts still remains a largely unexplored field in the critical debates of his poetry, while his
preoccupations with music, maps and language have all been well attended to. This paper offers a reading
of the visual aspects of Carson’s poetry to suggest some of their poetic, aesthetic and political implications,
before discussing how crossovers between the poetic and the pictorial provoke new hermeneutic frames.
Nault, Edwige
Lille 3 Charles-de-Gaulle, France
“Challenging Church Authority on the Abortion Issue from the 1980s”
The Catholic Church’s strict prohibition on abortion exemplifies its long-standing moral conservatism. In
Ireland, this stronghold issue has resisted the country’s economic modernisation and moral changes that have
punctuated the 80s and 90s. Indeed, contraception, homosexuality and divorce have all been liberalised to
some extent. For centuries pregnancy terminations have been strictly forbidden by Catholic dogma, and the
Republic went so far as to vindicate unborn life by amending its constitution in 1983. Since then, several
referendums took place to strengthen this amendment ensuring that no early life could be destroyed. But in
the last two decades, change has been under way in the shape of a growing secularism and secularisation that
impacted Irish minds on moral issues and religious beliefs challenging, in turn, the Church moral authority.
While various surveys show increasing support in favour of a termination, legal proceedings were also initiated
to tweak the abortion-banning Eighth Amendment whether on the Irish or European stage. Although change
on the moral scale is unquestionably in process, assessing its real degree will give clues as to the actual threat
hanging upon Church authority on an issue that has been awkwardly handled on the political stage and in the
public arena. Thus, we will try to make out in which ways the abortion issue represents a challenge to Church
authority and also show that, in the Irish context, some actions have led to some sort of wisdom resulting in
real-world answers. Indeed, some lessons have been learned. The creation of the Crisis Pregnancy Agency
provided useful research and, amongst other major actions, contributed to the development of a governmentfunded network ensuring that women facing crisis pregnancy receive proper counselling on all their options.
This has been a success considering that the number of abortions has dropped significantly.
Ruczaj, Maciej
Centre for Irish Studies, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic
“‘Wise foolishness of saints’: Charismatic Authority in Patrick Pearse’s Writings”
In the first two decades of the 20th century the dawn of the new era in the political theories of leadership is
heralded by Weber’s concept of “charismatic authority” or Schmitt’s image of the sovereign. Both challenge
the rationalistic basis of authority and both seek for their imagery in the religious and theological context. In
this paper Patrick Pearse’s writings (both literary and political) are analyzed as Irish counterparts to this panEuropean tendency. One of the key-words in Patrick Pearse’s literary and political writings is a “fool”, quite
consistently used in a sense which can be called “Paulinian” in accordance to Apostle’s recurrent juxtaposition
of the apparent “foolishness” of the elected (“We are fools for Christ’s sake”) and the “false wisdom” of “this
world”. In this paper Pearse’s “ethics of foolishness” are to be examined as negotiating between the tradition
of radical Christianity and the contemporary Zeitgeist as articulated in the above mentioned Weber’s and
Schmitt’s theories. The paper attempts to sketch their gradual development from the passive recognition of
the supernatural, miraculous and redemptive interventions of the Divine into the natural order towards the
belief in the revolutionary, creative power of “foolishness” to overthrow the established hierarchies.
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Sebbane, Nathalie
University of Paris 3 Sorbonne-Nouvelle, France
“Magdalene Laundries. A Case of Authorities Contested”
Since the late 90s, the scandal surrounding the treatment of women in Magdalene Laundries has received
considerable media and public attention and coverage. Up to very recent times, the Catholic Church has had
to bear the full brunt of accusations of degrading treatment within these institutions. In 2010, Justice For
Magdalens ( JFM), an organisation created to demand and obtain public excuses and a restoration scheme for
former inmates, asked the Irish Human Rights Committee to start an inquiry into the Irish State’s responsibility
and involvement in admission into and abuses within the Laundries. JFM then went further, and addressed a
request to the United Nations Committee Against Torture. The case thus shifted to a human rights cause and
the Irish State was asked to comply with requirements by the UN. This paper proposes to examine how the
case of Magdalene Laundries questions the moral monopoly of the Catholic Church in Ireland, in a context
of increasing secularization of society but also, how the State is responding to new challenges to its own
authority when confronted to international legislation. It will also examine issues of support groups, such as
JFM and their contribution to redefining a new national narrative and discourse that takes into account the
experiences of women in Irish history.
Sørensen, Bent
Aalborg University, Denmark
“Sean-nós, Sean-nua…”
This paper examines the dynamics between old and new ways in Irish music. The traditional unaccompanied
song in Gaelic nowadays known as sean-nós, or the old style, is not the most commercially viable type of music
in an age with little patience for longish laments without vibrant beats or obscene lyrics. What then might be
the sean-nua, or new style that is more befitting for today’s audience? Paradoxically the answer might lie in
looking backward while at the same time looking forward. Some of Ireland’s biggest names in contemporary
popular music have been enamoured of the idea of crossing old with new, creating a hybrid form that would
at once contain the wisdom of the old style and yet yield some authority in the marketplace. One such artist
is Van Morrison, who in biographies is routinely introduced as a sean-nós man, as also in the following quote
by Paul Durcan, comparing Morrison to Patrick Kavanagh: “Both Northerners – solid ground boys. Both
primarily jazzmen, bluesmen, sean nós. Both concerned with the mystic – how to live with it, by it, in it; how
to transform it; how to reveal it. Both troubadours. Both very ordinary blokes. Both drumlin men – rolling
hills men.” A decade ago the once popular Sinead O’Connor attempted a come-back with an album titled
Sean Nós Nua, on which she, self-confessedly, ‘sexed-up’ traditional Irish songs, some sung in Gaelic, much
as Van Morrison had done two decades earlier with his collaboration with the Chieftains, Irish Heartbeat.
I propose to look specifically at examples from these two albums where the vocal stylings of these singers
resemble the sean-nós in its canonical meaning, yet are examples of boundaries of Irish time and place being
transcended in the songs’ hybrid musical style, lending new meaning to both sean-nós and nua.
Kärt Vahtramäe
University of Tartu, Estonia
“Revealing and Taming the Beast: The Role of Poetry in Defining and Describing Death”
One of the functions of elegiac poetry is to remember and recollect what was lost, and to preserve the lost
in words. Thus, elegiac poetry, which holds a significant position in the Irish literary tradition, can assist
both the poet and the reader in their work of mourning – verbalising the loss enables them to deal with it,
distance oneself from it, and relate to it in a meaningful way. The topic of loss also tends to link back to the
process of negotiating, adapting and accepting the concept of one’s own mortality. Poetry discussing these
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issues may address an individual personally, but has also traditionally had a role in the society as a space in
which the question of death can be presented and tackled publicly. The poet seems to be given a position
of special authority, competence and responsibility in this process as the one with greater insight into the
wild and unpredictable death as well as with suitable skills for making this wilderness understandable and
accessible to a wider audience. The presentation will draw on Paula Meehan’s “The man who was marked
by winter” and “Woman found dead behind Salvation Army hostel” (1994) – two poems that describe the
“unnatural” deaths of anonymous members of the society – to study the individual compulsion and/or social
obligation the persona feels to verbalise, visualise, and explain away the witnessed deaths.
12
Authority and
Wisdom
participant contact list
Surname, Name
Affiliation
Email
Armstrong, Charles
University of Agder, Norway
[email protected]
Benson, Ciarán
UCD School of Psychology, Dublin, Ireland
[email protected]
Blom, Maria
S:t Mikaelsskolan, Mora, Sweden
[email protected]
Carroll, James Joseph
Irish Embassy, Stockholm, Sweden
[email protected]
Carroll, Margot
Irish Embassy, Stockholm, Sweden
Coughlan, Pat
University of Cork, Ireland
[email protected]
Dean, Stephen Duane
King's College London, UK
[email protected]
Dodou, Katherina
Dalarna University, Sweden
[email protected]
Elias, Camelia
Roskilde University, Denmark
[email protected]
Erten, Tugce
Dalarna University, Sweden
[email protected]
Foster, John Wilson
Queen’s University, Belfast; Northern Ireland
[email protected]
Friberg-Harnesk, Hedda
Mid-Sweden University, Sweden
[email protected]
Gilsenan Nordin, Irene
Dalarna University, Sweden
[email protected]
Gray, Billly
Dalarna University, Sweden
[email protected]
Gray, David
University of Coleraine, Northern Ireland
[email protected]
Hellstenius, Emma
Gymnasium School, Borlänge, Sweden
[email protected]
Hilliges, Marita
Dalarna University, Sweden
[email protected]
Hybinette, Agneta
Dalarna Univesity, Sweden
[email protected]
Holmsten, Elin
Dalarna University, Sweden
[email protected]
Huber, Werner
Universität Wien, Austria
[email protected]
Jarosz, Olga
Dalarna University, Sweden
[email protected]
Jian, Li
Dalarna University, Sweden
[email protected]
Johnson, Anthony W.
Åbo Akademi, Finland
[email protected]
Karhio, Anne
NUI Galway, Ireland
[email protected]
Karnicka, Anna
Dalarna University, Sweden
[email protected]
13
Authority and
Wisdom
Keatinge, Ben
South East European University, Tetovo,
Macedonia
[email protected], b.keatinge@
seeu.edu.mk
Korthals, Thomas
Independent Scholar, Soest, Germany
[email protected]
Louro, Maria Filomena
Universidade do Minho, Portugal
[email protected]
Lynch, John
Dalarna University, Sweden
[email protected]
Moi, Ruben
Tromsø University, Norway
[email protected]
Nault, Edwige
Lille 3 Charles-de-Gaulle, France
[email protected]
O’Donnell, Mary
Writer and Academic, Ireland
[email protected]
Olsson, Joakim
S:t Mikaelsskolan, Mora, Sweden
[email protected]
Pettersson, Stefan
Dalarna University, Sweden
[email protected]
Qwarnström, Loretta
Dalarna University, Sweden
[email protected]
Rostedt, Lisa
S:t Mikaelsskolan, Mora, Sweden
[email protected]
Ruczaj, Maciej
Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic
[email protected]
Sørensen, Bent
Aalborg University, Denmark
[email protected]
Vahtramäe, Kärt
University of Tartu, Estonia
[email protected]
Vanky, Anna-Marie
Dalarna University, Sweden
[email protected]
14
A New Ireland?
representations of history