Eoin Flannery | Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick (original) (raw)
Papers by Eoin Flannery
Journal of Southern African Studies
... the difficulties that La Guma had in securing publication, but more importantly van der Vlies... more ... the difficulties that La Guma had in securing publication, but more importantly van der Vlies's reading of La Guma's publication within ... However, once the Soviet Union was attacked by Nazi Germany, South African communism came to enjoy unprecedented support as the Union ...
New hibernia review
By the end of the nineteenth century Ireland had, in many respects, assumed the aspect of a quint... more By the end of the nineteenth century Ireland had, in many respects, assumed the aspect of a quintessential Gothic landscape “with all its nationalist and all its Gothic graves, with all its mouldering estates and emerging farms, its Land Acts, and its history of confiscations.”1 The contested nature of the Irish geographical and cultural landscapes meant that these topographies were haunted by the disinherited revenants of colonial misappropriation. Any Romantic sanitization of Ireland’s rugged terrain for the purposes of tourism belied the fractious memorial inheritances of the country’s disenfranchised population. Indeed, the Gothic had emerged, at least in part, to serve as a form of exfoliant of past injustice; as Leslie Fiedler observes, the Gothic “had been invented to deal with the past and with history from a typically Protestant and enlightened point of view.”2 Fiedler’s point resonates with both late nineteenth- and late twentieth-century narrations of Irish history. The G...
Third Text
... Speaking in interview in 2001, the revisionist historian RF Foster implicitly targets postcol... more ... Speaking in interview in 2001, the revisionist historian RF Foster implicitly targets postcolonial representations of Irish history, memory and literature, urging a rejection of 'the victimhood package that has been responsible for a great deal of fuzzy thinking about Irish history and ...
Utopian studies
Writing in Culture and Imperialism (1993), Edward Said suggests that the realms of cultural produ... more Writing in Culture and Imperialism (1993), Edward Said suggests that the realms of cultural production and imperial exercise were complicit, indeed interdependent, throughout the nineteenth century. In his view subspheres of Western culture, including education, literature, visual art, scientific study, and many others, provided superstructural buttresses to the exertions of imperial expansion and hegemony. And what was most insidious about these processes was the fact that "by the end of the nineteenth century, high or official culture still managed to escape scrutiny for its role in shaping the imperial dynamic and was mysteriously exempted from analysis whenever the causes, benefits, or evils of imperialism were discussed."1 At this juncture in the evolution of postcolonial studies as an international and interdisciplinary battery of critical resources, Said's argument has been heeded, and much sterling work has been completed on the imbrications of culture and impe...
Textual Practice
This article is a response to Bill Ashcroft's 'Critical Utopias', which appeared in t... more This article is a response to Bill Ashcroft's 'Critical Utopias', which appeared in this journal in 2007. In his earlier piece, Ashcroft offered a summary genealogy of the historical and literary historical links between Utopian Studies and Postcolonial Studies. While 'Critical Utopias' was a salutary intervention in this discursive dialogue between these two fields; by including the Irish case this article is designed as an extension to the geographical and historical limits of Ashcroft's piece. Therefore, my article offers a substantial outline of some recent work within Irish postcolonial studies and identifies the Utopian energies that sustain such criticism. Positioning Irish postcolonial critiques as differential, yet conversant, engagements with the processes of late twentieth century Irish modernisation, the article treats the issues such as: the philosophical and political subtleties of Edmund Burke; the civic republicanism of the United Irish moveme...
Irish Studies Review
This article deals with two novels by the Irish writer Colum McCann: Songdogs and This Side of Br... more This article deals with two novels by the Irish writer Colum McCann: Songdogs and This Side of Brightness. Reading the narratives of both texts through the work of anthropologist Victor Turner, the essay reveals how McCann's characters undergo processes of liminal experience, which occasion structural changes in their familial relationships and in their individual identity. Turner's work primarily focused on the ritual behaviours of tribal groups and how liminality was used as a physical means toward spiritual ends; I diagnose similar dynamics in McCann's two literary fictions.
Postcolonial Studies
... 6, No. 3, 2003 Hopes and impediments EOIN FLANNERY Ken Wiwa In the Shadow of a Saint London: ... more ... 6, No. 3, 2003 Hopes and impediments EOIN FLANNERY Ken Wiwa In the Shadow of a Saint London: Black Swan, 2001 314 pp. ISBN 055-299891-5 (pb) £7.99 ... He sought counsel in South Africa from Zindzi Mandela and Nkosinathi Biko, and in Burma from Aung San Suu Kyi. ...
Journal of Postcolonial Writing
This essay examines two recent cinematic productions from France and Ireland, respectively: Micha... more This essay examines two recent cinematic productions from France and Ireland, respectively: Michael Haneke’s Hidden and Alan Gilsenan’s Zulu 9. These two films are considered comparatively in terms of migration, postcolonial identity and global capital. But the essay also focuses on how the formal features of the two cinematic, visual texts act and interact with the primary thematic concerns cited above. Thus, the essay foregrounds technical form as a crucial aspect of any consideration of contemporary postcolonial texts, not just cinematic or visual. The essay explores how different “forms” can co‐exist within one text and charts how these chafe against each other, particularly in Haneke’s Hidden, as competing sides in France’s colonial history come into conflict in the present – it is the issue of form that most explicitly underscores the violent tensions of the past erupting in the present. Likewise, Gilsenan’s much shorter film makes the viewer highly self‐conscious about the wa...
Irish Studies Review
Page 1. ■ Eamon Maher (ed.) CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES ON GLOBALISATION AND IRELAND ... Reimagining Ir... more Page 1. ■ Eamon Maher (ed.) CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES ON GLOBALISATION AND IRELAND ... Reimagining Ireland Volume 5 Edited by Dr Eamon Maher Institute of Technology, Tallaght PETER LANG Oxford Bern Berlin Bruxelles Frankfurt am Main New York Wien ...
Journal of Southern African Studies, 2009
... the difficulties that La Guma had in securing publication, but more importantly van der Vlies... more ... the difficulties that La Guma had in securing publication, but more importantly van der Vlies's reading of La Guma's publication within ... However, once the Soviet Union was attacked by Nazi Germany, South African communism came to enjoy unprecedented support as the Union ...
Irish Studies Review, 2011
... In his 'Foreword' to Words of the Grey Wind, John Wilson Foster succinctly conveys ... more ... In his 'Foreword' to Words of the Grey Wind, John Wilson Foster succinctly conveys the orientation of Arthur's work: 'At the heart of the essays is a paradox: transcending the self is sought through a relentless examination of the life' (xiv). ...
The Irish Review, 40, 2009
This chapter reviews publications in the field of ecocriticism published in 2013 and 2014. The ma... more This chapter reviews publications in the field of ecocriticism published in 2013 and 2014. The material under consideration deals with modernist literature, contemporary poetry and literary fiction, visual culture, the history of philosophy, gender studies, and the role of the humanities within current global climate change debates. The chapter is divided into five sections, which, in sequence cover: 1. The Posthuman and Ecofeminism; 2. Animal Studies and Non-Human Nature; 3. The Anthropocene; 4. Ecopoetics; 5. Irish Ecocriticism. The review covers single-author and edited volumes, but also draws attention to the valuable ecocritical theorization that is online in freely available, open-access scholarly journals. Each of the themed sections refers to previous publications in ecocriticism in order to situate the most recent work within the field, and to track any continuities, influences or points of productive contestation.
The public consists of all those who are affected by the indirect consequences of transactions to... more The public consists of all those who are affected by the indirect consequences of transactions to such an extent that it is deemed necessary to have these consequences systematically cared for. Officials are those who look out for and take care of the interests thus affected. Since those who are indirectly affected are not direct participants in the transactions in question, it is necessary that certain persons be set apart to represent them, and to see to it that their interests are conserved and protected. (Dewey 1927, pp. 15-16)
Introduction 9/11 can be located in a specific set of geographical locations, and the abbreviated... more Introduction 9/11 can be located in a specific set of geographical locations, and the abbreviated nomination indicates the calendar date of the attacks in 2001. Through the labours of policymakers and media agenda-setters, 9/11 has outgrown any sense of itself as a mere temporal marker and the event has transcended historical time and has entered epochal time. As legion literary critical volumes and scholarly essays amply illustrate, literature and, in particular, the novel, has responded variously to 9/11, though much of the literary output and pursuant literary criticism has tended to reflect on American legacies and experiences of 9/11. 1 In a recent literary critical survey, Catherine
…make your eldest sonne Isaac, leaving him all your kingdoms; and provide the rest with private p... more …make your eldest sonne Isaac, leaving him all your kingdoms; and provide the rest with private possessions: Otherwayes by deviding your kingdoms, yee shall leave the seed of division and discord among your posteritie; as befell to this Ile, by the division and assignement thereof, to the three sonnes of Brutus, Locrine, Albanact, and Camber. 1
Journal of Southern African Studies
... the difficulties that La Guma had in securing publication, but more importantly van der Vlies... more ... the difficulties that La Guma had in securing publication, but more importantly van der Vlies's reading of La Guma's publication within ... However, once the Soviet Union was attacked by Nazi Germany, South African communism came to enjoy unprecedented support as the Union ...
New hibernia review
By the end of the nineteenth century Ireland had, in many respects, assumed the aspect of a quint... more By the end of the nineteenth century Ireland had, in many respects, assumed the aspect of a quintessential Gothic landscape “with all its nationalist and all its Gothic graves, with all its mouldering estates and emerging farms, its Land Acts, and its history of confiscations.”1 The contested nature of the Irish geographical and cultural landscapes meant that these topographies were haunted by the disinherited revenants of colonial misappropriation. Any Romantic sanitization of Ireland’s rugged terrain for the purposes of tourism belied the fractious memorial inheritances of the country’s disenfranchised population. Indeed, the Gothic had emerged, at least in part, to serve as a form of exfoliant of past injustice; as Leslie Fiedler observes, the Gothic “had been invented to deal with the past and with history from a typically Protestant and enlightened point of view.”2 Fiedler’s point resonates with both late nineteenth- and late twentieth-century narrations of Irish history. The G...
Third Text
... Speaking in interview in 2001, the revisionist historian RF Foster implicitly targets postcol... more ... Speaking in interview in 2001, the revisionist historian RF Foster implicitly targets postcolonial representations of Irish history, memory and literature, urging a rejection of 'the victimhood package that has been responsible for a great deal of fuzzy thinking about Irish history and ...
Utopian studies
Writing in Culture and Imperialism (1993), Edward Said suggests that the realms of cultural produ... more Writing in Culture and Imperialism (1993), Edward Said suggests that the realms of cultural production and imperial exercise were complicit, indeed interdependent, throughout the nineteenth century. In his view subspheres of Western culture, including education, literature, visual art, scientific study, and many others, provided superstructural buttresses to the exertions of imperial expansion and hegemony. And what was most insidious about these processes was the fact that "by the end of the nineteenth century, high or official culture still managed to escape scrutiny for its role in shaping the imperial dynamic and was mysteriously exempted from analysis whenever the causes, benefits, or evils of imperialism were discussed."1 At this juncture in the evolution of postcolonial studies as an international and interdisciplinary battery of critical resources, Said's argument has been heeded, and much sterling work has been completed on the imbrications of culture and impe...
Textual Practice
This article is a response to Bill Ashcroft's 'Critical Utopias', which appeared in t... more This article is a response to Bill Ashcroft's 'Critical Utopias', which appeared in this journal in 2007. In his earlier piece, Ashcroft offered a summary genealogy of the historical and literary historical links between Utopian Studies and Postcolonial Studies. While 'Critical Utopias' was a salutary intervention in this discursive dialogue between these two fields; by including the Irish case this article is designed as an extension to the geographical and historical limits of Ashcroft's piece. Therefore, my article offers a substantial outline of some recent work within Irish postcolonial studies and identifies the Utopian energies that sustain such criticism. Positioning Irish postcolonial critiques as differential, yet conversant, engagements with the processes of late twentieth century Irish modernisation, the article treats the issues such as: the philosophical and political subtleties of Edmund Burke; the civic republicanism of the United Irish moveme...
Irish Studies Review
This article deals with two novels by the Irish writer Colum McCann: Songdogs and This Side of Br... more This article deals with two novels by the Irish writer Colum McCann: Songdogs and This Side of Brightness. Reading the narratives of both texts through the work of anthropologist Victor Turner, the essay reveals how McCann's characters undergo processes of liminal experience, which occasion structural changes in their familial relationships and in their individual identity. Turner's work primarily focused on the ritual behaviours of tribal groups and how liminality was used as a physical means toward spiritual ends; I diagnose similar dynamics in McCann's two literary fictions.
Postcolonial Studies
... 6, No. 3, 2003 Hopes and impediments EOIN FLANNERY Ken Wiwa In the Shadow of a Saint London: ... more ... 6, No. 3, 2003 Hopes and impediments EOIN FLANNERY Ken Wiwa In the Shadow of a Saint London: Black Swan, 2001 314 pp. ISBN 055-299891-5 (pb) £7.99 ... He sought counsel in South Africa from Zindzi Mandela and Nkosinathi Biko, and in Burma from Aung San Suu Kyi. ...
Journal of Postcolonial Writing
This essay examines two recent cinematic productions from France and Ireland, respectively: Micha... more This essay examines two recent cinematic productions from France and Ireland, respectively: Michael Haneke’s Hidden and Alan Gilsenan’s Zulu 9. These two films are considered comparatively in terms of migration, postcolonial identity and global capital. But the essay also focuses on how the formal features of the two cinematic, visual texts act and interact with the primary thematic concerns cited above. Thus, the essay foregrounds technical form as a crucial aspect of any consideration of contemporary postcolonial texts, not just cinematic or visual. The essay explores how different “forms” can co‐exist within one text and charts how these chafe against each other, particularly in Haneke’s Hidden, as competing sides in France’s colonial history come into conflict in the present – it is the issue of form that most explicitly underscores the violent tensions of the past erupting in the present. Likewise, Gilsenan’s much shorter film makes the viewer highly self‐conscious about the wa...
Irish Studies Review
Page 1. ■ Eamon Maher (ed.) CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES ON GLOBALISATION AND IRELAND ... Reimagining Ir... more Page 1. ■ Eamon Maher (ed.) CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES ON GLOBALISATION AND IRELAND ... Reimagining Ireland Volume 5 Edited by Dr Eamon Maher Institute of Technology, Tallaght PETER LANG Oxford Bern Berlin Bruxelles Frankfurt am Main New York Wien ...
Journal of Southern African Studies, 2009
... the difficulties that La Guma had in securing publication, but more importantly van der Vlies... more ... the difficulties that La Guma had in securing publication, but more importantly van der Vlies's reading of La Guma's publication within ... However, once the Soviet Union was attacked by Nazi Germany, South African communism came to enjoy unprecedented support as the Union ...
Irish Studies Review, 2011
... In his 'Foreword' to Words of the Grey Wind, John Wilson Foster succinctly conveys ... more ... In his 'Foreword' to Words of the Grey Wind, John Wilson Foster succinctly conveys the orientation of Arthur's work: 'At the heart of the essays is a paradox: transcending the self is sought through a relentless examination of the life' (xiv). ...
The Irish Review, 40, 2009
This chapter reviews publications in the field of ecocriticism published in 2013 and 2014. The ma... more This chapter reviews publications in the field of ecocriticism published in 2013 and 2014. The material under consideration deals with modernist literature, contemporary poetry and literary fiction, visual culture, the history of philosophy, gender studies, and the role of the humanities within current global climate change debates. The chapter is divided into five sections, which, in sequence cover: 1. The Posthuman and Ecofeminism; 2. Animal Studies and Non-Human Nature; 3. The Anthropocene; 4. Ecopoetics; 5. Irish Ecocriticism. The review covers single-author and edited volumes, but also draws attention to the valuable ecocritical theorization that is online in freely available, open-access scholarly journals. Each of the themed sections refers to previous publications in ecocriticism in order to situate the most recent work within the field, and to track any continuities, influences or points of productive contestation.
The public consists of all those who are affected by the indirect consequences of transactions to... more The public consists of all those who are affected by the indirect consequences of transactions to such an extent that it is deemed necessary to have these consequences systematically cared for. Officials are those who look out for and take care of the interests thus affected. Since those who are indirectly affected are not direct participants in the transactions in question, it is necessary that certain persons be set apart to represent them, and to see to it that their interests are conserved and protected. (Dewey 1927, pp. 15-16)
Introduction 9/11 can be located in a specific set of geographical locations, and the abbreviated... more Introduction 9/11 can be located in a specific set of geographical locations, and the abbreviated nomination indicates the calendar date of the attacks in 2001. Through the labours of policymakers and media agenda-setters, 9/11 has outgrown any sense of itself as a mere temporal marker and the event has transcended historical time and has entered epochal time. As legion literary critical volumes and scholarly essays amply illustrate, literature and, in particular, the novel, has responded variously to 9/11, though much of the literary output and pursuant literary criticism has tended to reflect on American legacies and experiences of 9/11. 1 In a recent literary critical survey, Catherine
…make your eldest sonne Isaac, leaving him all your kingdoms; and provide the rest with private p... more …make your eldest sonne Isaac, leaving him all your kingdoms; and provide the rest with private possessions: Otherwayes by deviding your kingdoms, yee shall leave the seed of division and discord among your posteritie; as befell to this Ile, by the division and assignement thereof, to the three sonnes of Brutus, Locrine, Albanact, and Camber. 1