‘Ireland, and black!’: minstrelsy, racism, and black cultural production in 1970s Ireland
2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 22; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/09502360802044943
ISSN1470-1308
Autores Tópico(s)Irish and British Studies
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size I would like to thank Susan Cahill, Mairead Delaney, Paul Durcan, Moyra Haslett, Omaar Hena, P.J. Mathews, Chris Murray, Thérèse Smith, and the reader for Textual Practice for various suggestions and references helpful to this essay. Notes 1 [Thomas Carlyle], ‘Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question’, Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country (London), XL (February 1849), p. 530 (pp. 527–38). Reproduced by the History of Economic Thought website, http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/texts/carlyle/carlodnq.htm. Accessed 20 July 2006. 2 Colin Graham, Deconstructing Ireland: Identity, Theory, Culture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001), pp. 1–31. 3 John Mitchel, The Jail Journal, ed. Rev. T. Corcoran (Dublin: Browne and Nolan, n.d.), p. 44. 4 Graham, Deconstructing Ireland, p. 2. 5 Ireland has been the destination for relatively small numbers of immigrants for much of the twentieth century, until the late 1990s. Just to take one indication of recent trends, applications for asylum are estimated to have numbered 39 in 1992, rising sharply to over 11,000 in 2002, and then falling to around 4000–5000 in 2004 and 2005. Nigeria is the top stated country of origin for asylum applications to Ireland, accounting for roughly one-third of all applications between 2001 and 2005. Of all asylum applications received, usually less than 10 per cent are granted the right to reside in Ireland. These statistics are available from the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner: http://www.orac.ie/pages/Stats/statistics.htm. Accessed 14 February 2007. The preliminary report of the 2006 Census in Ireland indicates that net migration accounted for an increase in the population of the state by 11.4 per cent (186,408 people). The report also comments on the historical change in population growth over the last ten years, with immigration accounting for the most significant shifts in population growth, and specifically for the highest population on record in Ireland since 1861. See http://www.cso.ie/census/2006_preliminaryreport.htm. Accessed 14 February 2007. 6 Paul Gilroy, Between Camps: Nations, Cultures and the Allure of Race (London: Penguin, 2001), p. 11. 7 The history of racism in Ireland would have to take account, of course, of the complex relationship between Ireland and the British Empire, as a colony to be compared with the plantations in the West Indies (as Carlyle does in the article quoted at the beginning of this essay), but also as what W.J. McCormack calls ‘a metropolitan colony’, contributing to and participating in the empire as much as it was subject to imperialism. See McCormack, From Burke to Beckett: Ascendency, Tradition and Betrayal in Literary History (Cork: Cork University Press, 1994) for the discussion of ‘metropolitan colony’. See Steve Garner, Racism in the Irish Experience (London: Pluto, 2004) for the discussion of the ambivalent relationship between Ireland and the British Empire. 8 See Elizabeth Butler Cullingford, Ireland's Others: Gender and Ethnicity in Irish Literature and Popular Culture (Cork: Cork University Press, 2001), p. 133. The dangers of analogies were illustrated most acutely in the offence caused by President McAleese's recent comparison of the Holocaust to sectarianism in Northern Ireland, at the 60th anniversary ceremonies marking the liberation of Auschwitz: ‘they gave to their children an irrational hatred of Jews, in the same way that people in Northern Ireland transmitted to their children, an irrational outrageous hatred, for example, of Catholics, in the same way that people give to their children, an irrational outrageous hatred of those who have different colour’. President McAleese's comments were made on RTE's Morning Ireland radio programme on 27 January 2005, and can be found among her 2005 speeches on the website of Áras an Uachtaráin: http://www.president.ie/. Accessed 20 July 2006. 9 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (London: Pluto, 1986), p. 113. 10 This is not to deny the significant growth of academic work in various disciplines, principally sociology and history addressing the process of racialization. See Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (London: Routledge, 1995); Liam Greenslade, ‘White Skins, White Masks: Psychological Distress among the Irish in Britain’, The Irish in the New Communities: The Irish World Wide, Volume Two, ed. Patrick O'Sullivan (London: Leicester University Press, 1992), pp. 201–25; Under the Belly of the Celtic Tiger, edited by Ethel Crowley and Jim MacLaughlin (Dublin: Irish Reporter, 1997); Paul Cullen, Refugees and Asylum-Seekers in Ireland (Cork: Cork University Press, 2000); Bryan Fanning, Racism and Social Change in the Republic of Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002); Gretchen Fitzgerald, Repulsing Racism: Reflections on Racism and the Irish (Dublin: Attic Press, 1992); Dermot Keogh, Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland (Cork: Cork University Press, 1998); Ronit Lentin, The Expanding Nation: Towards a Multi-Ethnic Ireland (Dublin: Department of Sociology, Trinity College Dublin, 1999); Jim McLaughlin, Travellers and Ireland (Cork: Cork University Press, 1995); Racism and Anti-Racism in Ireland, edited by Robbie McVeigh and Ronit Lentin (Belfast: Beyond the Pale, 2002); and Steve Garner, Racism in the Irish Experience (London: Pluto, 2004). 11 Claire Connolly (ed.), Theorizing Ireland (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003). 12 Cheryl Herr, ‘The Erotics of Irishness’, Critical Inquiry, 17 (1990), p. 6 (pp. 1–34). 13 This essay is part of a larger project on race and racialization in Ireland since 1922. For a related essay, see John Brannigan, ‘Race, Cosmopolitanism, and Modernity: Irish Writing and Culture in the Late Nineteen Fifties’, Irish University Review 34.2 (Autumn/Winter 2004), pp. 332–50. 14 Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 (London: Profile, 2004), p. 665. 15 Brendan Behan, The Complete Plays (London: Methuen, 1978), pp. 204–5. 16 See Ulick O'Connor, Brendan Behan (London: Abacus, 1993 [1970]), pp. 203–20; Richard Wall, ‘Introduction’, An Giall/The Hostage (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1987), pp. 1–21; Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation (London: Jonathan Cape, 1995), pp. 513–29. 17 Behan, The Complete Plays, pp. 254–5. 18 Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the “Racial” Self (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 186. 19 Ibid., p. 180. 20 Mary MacGoris, ‘Juvenile Brendan Unkind to Behan’, Irish Independent, 15 March 1972, p. 7. 21 Thanks to Mairéad Delaney, archivist at the Abbey Theatre, who checked with Finola Eustace, who was one of the stage directors for the production in the Peacock Theatre, and is now head stage director at the Abbey Theatre. 22 Indeed, the substance of Oliver Marshall's criticism of the play in the Irish Press is that its ‘rather dated quality’ puts it out of step with ‘these liberal days’. Oliver Marshall, ‘The Peacock: Cork Leg Leads a Merry Dance’, The Irish Press, 15 March 1972, p. 7. 23 Perhaps of more tangential interest is the fact that Barney McKenna was renowned for his banjo playing, and indeed is credited among others for bringing the banjo into Irish folk music, but it is an instrument associated historically with minstrel shows, and before this with slave plantations in America. 24 Seamus Kelly, ‘Brendan Behan – Dubliners Combination at Peacock’, The Irish Times, 15 March 1972, p. 12. The play was also reviewed on 15 March 1972 in Irish Independent (p. 7), The Irish Press (p. 7), Evening Herald (p. 4), Evening Press (p. 4), and on 31 March 1972 in Hibernia (p. 19). 25 See for example bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (London: Turnaround, 1992) and Kobena Mercer, Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1994). 26 The Black and White Minstrel Show was one of the most popular variety shows on British television, achieving regular viewing figures during the 1960s of 16 million. It was broadcast as a regular Saturday night show from June 1958 to July 1978. It was possible for Irish viewers to receive BBC broadcasts from British transmitters, especially on the east coast and in areas bordering Northern Ireland. 27 Angela Davis had also been the subject of recent songs, ‘Angela’ by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and ‘Sweet Black Angel’ by The Rolling Stones. 28 Paul Durcan, O Westport in the Light of Asia Minor (Dún Laoire: Anna Livia Books/ Dublin Magazine Press, 1975), p. 57. Thanks to Paul Durcan for clarifying my hunches about the cultural and political allusions in the poem. 29 Cullingford, Ireland's Others, pp. 155–6. 30 Ibid., p. 155. 31 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 67. 32 John Kelly, Sophisticated Boom Boom (London: Jonathan Cape, 2003). I am very grateful to my colleague P.J. Mathews for this reference to Lynott. 33 For the story of Phil Lynott's upbringing, see Philomena Lynott, with Jackie Harden, My Boy: The Philip Lynott Story (Dublin: Hot Press Books, 1995). See also Mark Putterford, Phil Lynott: The Rocker (London: Omnipress Books, 2002), Stuart Bailie, The Ballad of the Thin Man: The Authorized Biography of Phil Lynott and Thin Lizzy (London: Boxtree, 1996), and Ken Brooks, Phil Lynott and Thin Lizzy: Rockin' Vagabond (London: Agenda, 2000). 34 Gerry Smyth, Noisy Island: A Short History of Irish Popular Music (Cork: Cork University Press, 2005), p. 39. 35 Smyth, p. 37. 36 New Spotlight (Dublin), 5 August 1971, p. 2. 37 New Spotlight (Dublin), 22 April 1972. 38 New Spotlight (Dublin), 21 December 1972, pp. 22–3. 39 See Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 40 An argument made persuasively about Victorian and Edwardian cross-racial dressing in Gail Ching-Liang Low's White Skin/Black Masks: Representation and Colonialism (London: Routledge, 1996). 41 See Putterford, Phil Lynott: The Rocker, p. 67; also Mark J. Prendergast, Irish Rock: Roots, Personalities, Directions (Dublin: The O'Brien Press, 1987), p. 44. 42 Putterford, p. 67. 43 Although Hendrix was a key icon for Lynott of a successful black rock musician, in an art form which was overwhelmingly white, Hendrix's reputation as a specifically black musician is not itself without its problems, as Paul Gilroy discusses in The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (London: Verso, 1993), pp. 93–94. 44 Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, p. 85. 45 Prendergast describes Lynott thus in his tribute to the rock star in Irish Rock, pp. 274–76. 46 John Ardagh, Ireland and the Irish: Portrait of a Changing Society (London: Penguin, 1995 [1994]), p. 342. 47 See footnote 10 above for the studies mentioned here.
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