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Beyond Boundaries: Toward an Interdisciplinary Irish Studies

1996; Irish American Cultural Institute; Volume: 31; Issue: 1-2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/eir.1996.0008

1550-5162

Marilyn Cohen,

Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

BEYOND BOUNDARIES: TOWARD AN INTERDISCIPLINARY IRISH STUDIES MARILYN COHEN The argument offered is simple: a fundamental relationship exists between how knowledge is sought and the nature of the learning obtained. The ways in which we organize to conduct our research have a necessarily profound impact on what we are likely to find. THEODORE HERSHBERG, 19811 in her 1991 reflection on a new historicism in anthropology emphasizing variable historical contexts as essential to interpretation, Joan Vincent argues that critical moments always exist within a chain of critical moments . This recognition of process “allows us to avoid dehistoricizing ‘this year’s heroic paradigm’ and imbuing it with a centrality it does not possess.”2 Critical moments also exist within a sense of crisis in the world which, when recognized, calls for critical engagement. The “rehistoricist project,” emerging from the rubble of deconstruction, shifts attention to discontinuity , differentiation, contextualization, and the inclusion of neglected categories of actors rather than universals, metanarratives or dualisms. In this article, I will argue that Irish studies are presently wrestling with the emotionally charged and competing undercurrents of such a critical moment. Interdisciplinary approaches, which are just beginning to influence scholarly practice, are the current “heroic paradigms” offering “transfer points for renewal across a wide range of disciplines.”3 Perspectives that resist compartmentalization and suggest integration and resolutions also create linkages that can counter the persistent marginalization BEYOND BOUNDARIES: TOWARD AN INTERDISCIPLINARY IRISH STUDIES 137 1 Theodore Hershberg, “The New Urban History: Toward an Interdisciplinary History of the City,” in Philadelphia, ed. Theodore Hershberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 23. 2 Joan Vincent, “Engaging Historicism,” in Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present, ed. Richard Fox (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1991), 49– 50. 3 Ibid., 51. of Irish studies. A recognition that the complexity of human social life and change are best explored through collaboration and transdisciplinary questions and concepts need not sacrifice historical specificity for generalization or comparison. Since this softening of disciplinary boundaries is in its infancy, it is timely to reflect upon its potential and possible research agendas that aim to integrate Irish experience and neglected categories of Irish people into comparative theoretical debates concerning the “big problems ” of the past and present. THE DOMINANCE OF EMPIRICISM IN IRISH STUDIES As in other parts of the world under English hegemony, the “Bethamite moment” of rationalization, centralization and quantification associated with the first phase of industrial capitalist development in England deeply imprinted both Irish lived experience and scholarship.4 Ireland’s economy , whether agricultural or industrial, was inextricably tied to English hegemony in terms of specialization, markets and their cultural mediations . The arithmetic “accountancy of humanity,” which gradually dominated nineteenth century Britain, provided a cultural foundation for the empiricist assumption that numbers and data can and should speak for themselves.5 In Ireland, during the early decades of the nineteenth century, attempts to apply scientific objective data gathering techniques began. A profusion of statistical and ordnance surveys ensued which gathered and published quantitative data on many aspects of Irish social life. These data, along with the census and other state-sponsored data gathering endeavors, have been mined by generations of scholars.6 Equally compelling in the legitimation of a dominant scientific empiricism was the professionalization of academic disciplines by the early BEYOND BOUNDARIES: TOWARD AN INTERDISCIPLINARY IRISH STUDIES 138 4 The concept of “Bethamite Moment” was coined by Joan Vincent in her analyses of Uganda’s market economy and the Great Famine in County Fermanagh, Ireland. See “Culture , History Place: Local Discourses and Historical Anthropologies,” Paper Presented at the 1990 Annual Meetings of the American Anthropological Association. 5 E.J. Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968), 79. 6 See, e.g., Arthur Young, A Tour in Ireland (London: George Bell & Sons, 1892); Sir Charles Coote, Statistical Survey of the County of Cavan (Dublin: Graisberry and Campbell, 1802); Statistical Survey of the County of Armagh (Dublin: Graisberry and Campbell, 1804); Rev. John Dubourdieu, Statistical Survey of the County of Down (Dublin: Graisberry & Campbell , 1802); Statistical Survey of the County of Antrim (Dublin: Graisberry & Campbell, 1812); Edward Wakefield, An Account of Ireland, Statistical and Political (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orne and Brown, 1812). twentieth century...