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Probing the boundaries of Irish memory: from postmemory to prememory and back1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2015

Guy Beiner
Guy Beiner*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
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Extract

It has long been accepted that memory plays a prominent role in the construction of Irish identities and yet historians of Ireland were relatively late in addressing the vogue for memory studies that emerged in the 1980s. Its arrival as a core theme in Irish historical studies was announced in 2001 with the publication of History and memory in modern Ireland, edited by Ian McBride, whose seminal introduction essay – the essential starting point for all subsequent explorations – issued the promise that ‘a social and cultural history of remembering would unravel the various strands of commemorative tradition which have formed our consciousness of the past’. The volume originated in one of the many academic conferences held in the bicentennial year of the 1798 rebellion, which was part of a decade of commemorations that listed among its highlights the tercentenary of the battle of the Boyne, the sesquicentenary of the Great Famine, and the bicentenaries of the United Irishmen, the Act of Union, and Robert Emmet’s rising. The following years produced a boom of studies on Irish memory, which has anticipated another decade of commemorations. Eyes are now set on the centenaries of the Great War, the Irish Revolution and Partition, all of which will undoubtedly generate further publications on memory. It is therefore timely to take stock of this burgeoning field and consider its future prospects.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 39 , Issue 154 , November 2014 , pp. 296 - 307
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2014

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Footnotes

1

The ideas presented in this essay were first tried out in 2005, courtesy of Dr Enda Delaney, in a seminar entitled ‘Memory, history and society’, co-sponsored by the Department of Sociology and the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at University of Aberdeen. They were resurrected and regenerated in 2013 for a presentation at the Irish Studies Seminar in London, courtesy of Prof. Ian McBride. Before going to print, they were refined and tested at a workshop of the Irish Memory Studies Network coordinated by Dr Emilie Pine. I would like to thank the participants of these forums for their thoughtful comments.

References

2 Ian McBride, ‘Memory and national identity in modern Ireland’ in Ian McBride (ed.), History and memory in modern Ireland (Cambridge and New York, 2001), p. 42. For a review see Beiner, Guy, ‘History and memory in modern Ireland’ in I.H.S., xxxii, no. 128 (Nov. 2001), pp 600–2.Google Scholar

3 Frawley, Oona, ‘Introduction’ in Frawley, Oona (ed.), Memory Ireland, i: history and modernity (Syracuse, 2011), p. xix.Google Scholar

4 Frawley, Oona, ‘Toward a theory of cultural memory in an Irish postcolonial context’ in Frawley, (ed.), Memory Ireland i: history and modernity, p. 29.Google Scholar Cf. Nora, Pierre, ‘General introduction: between memory and history’ in Nora, Pierre (ed.), Realms of memory: the construction of the French past, (3 vols, New York, 1996), i, 1–20Google Scholar. Nora’s seminal introductory essay has become the standard against which all introductions of national memory collections are measured. It should be acknowledged that the wider project, which Nora directed, incorporated multi-faceted explorations of memory, without endorsing a single uniform working definition of collective memory; see Rousso, Henry, ‘Un jeu de l’oie de l’identité française’ in Vingtième Siècle, xv (July–Sept., 1987), pp 151–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Nora, however, has been faulted for neglecting France’s colonial experiences: see Stoler, Ann Laura, ‘Colonial aphasia: race and disabled histories in France’ in Public culture, xxiii, no. 1 (winter 2011), pp 146–9.Google Scholar

5 Frawley, ‘Introduction’, p. xx.

6 Ibid., p. xvii.

7 Ibid., p. xviii.

8 Ibid., p. xxiv.

9 These distinctions are at best tentative. Just as additional major studies of Irish memory are in the offing, there were several important antecedents to McBride’s collection, most notably Leerssen, Joep, Remembrance and imagination: patterns in the historical and literary representation of Ireland in the nineteenth century (Cork, 1996).Google Scholar

10 Halbwachs, Maurice, The collective memory (New York, 1980)Google Scholar; idem, On collective memory (Chicago, 1992). For an anthology of key texts see Olick, Jeffrey K., Vinitzky-Seroussi, Vered and Levy, Daniel (eds), The collective memory reader (New York and Oxford, 2011)Google Scholar; see also Erll, Astrid and Nünning, Ansgar (eds), Cultural memory studies: an international and interdisciplinary handbook (Berlin and New York, 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 ‘Popular memory’ was conceived in the early 1980s and later used to great effect by the oral historian Alistair Thomson; see Popular Memory Group, Johnson, Richard and Dawson, Graham, ‘Popular memory: theory, politics, method’ in Johnson, Richard, McLennan, Gregor, Schwartz, Bill and Sutton, David (eds), Making histories: studies in history-writing and politics (London, 1982), pp 205–52Google Scholar; Thomson, Alistair, Anzac memories: living with the legend (Oxford, 1994).Google Scholar For a noteworthy example of a study of ‘popular memory’ see Bodnar, John E., Remaking America: public memory, commemoration, and patriotism in the twentieth century (Princeton, 1992).Google Scholar For early works on ‘social memory’ see Burke, Peter, ‘History as social memory’ in Butler, Thomas (ed.), Memory: history, culture and the mind (Oxford and New York, 1989), pp 97–113Google Scholar; Fentress, James and Wickham, Chris, Social memory (Oxford and Cambridge MA, 1992)Google Scholar.

12 Hirsch, Marianne, Family frames: photography, narrative and postmemory (Cambridge, MA, 1997), p. 22.Google Scholar

13 Hirsch, Marianne, The generation of postmemory: writing and visual culture after the Holocaust (New York, 2012).Google Scholar Hirsch maintains a website dedicated to promulgating her work on postmemory, see http://www.postmemory.net

14 Young, James E., At memory’s edge: after-images of the Holocaust in contemporary art and architecture (New Haven, 2000), pp 2, 5, 38–41.Google Scholar For a recent example, see Kaplan, Brett Ashley, Landscapes of Holocaust postmemory (New York, 2011)Google Scholar.

15 Hirsch, Family frames, p. 22.

16 For example Fuchs, Anne, Phantoms of war in contemporary German literature, films and discourse: the politics of memory (Houndmills and New York, 2008), pp 45–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar (chapter on ‘Family narratives and postmemory’); Kopp, Kristin Leigh and Niżyńska, Joanna (eds), Germany, Poland, and postmemorial relations: in search of a livable past (New York and Basingstoke, 2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Kaiser, Susana, Postmemories of terror : a new generation copes with the legacy of the ‘dirty war’ (New York, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Serpente, Alejandra, ‘The traces of “postmemory” in second-generation Chilean and Argentinean identities’ in Lessa, Francesca and Druliolle, Vincent (eds), The memory of state terrorism in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay (New York, 2011), pp 133–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Hirsch, Family frames, pp 13, 22.

19 Stanley, Liz, Mourning becomes ... post/memory and commemoration of the concentration camps of the South African War 1899–1902 (Manchester, 2006), p. 21.Google Scholar In its hyphenated form, the separation of postmemory from memory becomes redundant.

20 This problem resembles anthropological criticism of sharp distinctions between oral history (narratives recalling events within an informant’s lifetime) and oral tradition (transmitted passed over several generations); see Tonkin, Elizabeth, Narrating our pasts: the social construction of oral history (Cambridge, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 See Terdiman, Richard, Present past: modernity and the memory crisis (Ithaca and London, 1993)Google Scholar.

22 Nora, ‘Between memory and history’, p. 1.

23 See Hobsbawm, Eric, ‘Introduction: inventing traditions’ in Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence (eds), The invention of tradition (Cambridge, 1983), pp 1–14.Google Scholar

24 Connerton, Paul, How modernity forgets (Cambridge and New York, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Connerton, Paul, How societies remember (Cambridge, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Ardener, Edwin, ‘The construction of history: “vestiges of creation”’ in Tonkin, Elizabeth, McDonald, Maryon and Chapman, Malcolm (eds), History and ethnicity (London and New York, 1989), p. 25.Google Scholar

26 McBride, ‘Memory and national identity’, p. 8.

27 See Kelly, James, ‘“We were all to have been massacred”: Irish Protestants and the experience of rebellion’ in Bartlett, Thomas, Dickson, David, Keogh, Dáire and Whelan, Kevin (eds), 1798: a bicentenary perspective (Dublin, 2003), pp 312–30Google Scholar (especially pp 313–15).

28 Musgrave depositions (T.C.D., MS 871).

29 Kelly, James, Sir Richard Musgrave, 1746–1818: ultra-Protestant ideologue (Dublin, 2009)Google Scholar, especially pp 90–150; Whelan, Kevin, The tree of liberty: radicalism, Catholicism and the construction of Irish identity 1760–1830 (Cork, 1996), pp 131–75Google Scholar (especially pp 135–45); Andrews, Stuart, Irish rebellion: Protestant polemic, 1798–1900 (Basingstoke and New York, M2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially pp 20–50.

30 Ciosáin, Niall Ó, ‘Famine memory and the popular representation of scarcity’ in McBride, (ed.), History and memory, p. 102.Google Scholar

31 McBride, ‘Memory and national identity’, p. 36.

32 Bartlett, F. C., Remembering: a study in experimental and social psychology (Cambridge and New York, 1995; orig. edn 1932), p. 20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 See for example, Mandler, Jean M., Stories, scripts and scenes: aspects of schema theory (Hillsdale, NJ, 1984)Google Scholar.

34 Erll, Astrid, ‘Remembering across time, space, and cultures: premediation, remediation and the “Indian Mutiny”’ in Erll, Astrid and Rigney, Ann (eds), Mediation, remediation, and the dynamics of cultural memory (Berlin and New York, 2009), pp 109–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Bolter, J. David and Grusin, Richard A., Remediation: understanding new media (Cambridge, MA, 1999)Google Scholar; Grusin, Richard A., Premediation: affect and mediality after 9/11 (Basingstoke and New York, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 McBride, ‘Memory and national identity’, p. 4.

36 Samuel, Raphael, Theatres of memory: past and present in contemporary culture (revised edn, London, 2012)Google Scholar.

37 Honko, Lauri, ‘The folklore process’ in Hakamies, Pekka and Honko, Anneli (eds), Theoretical milestones: selected writings of Lauri Honko (Helsinki, 2013), pp 29–54.Google Scholar Cf. Nora’s critical comments on the function of an oral history archive as a lieu de mémoire: ‘It is no longer a more or less intentional record of actual memory but a deliberate and calculated compilation of a vanished memory. It adds a secondary or prosthetic memory to actual experience’: Nora, ‘Between memory and history’, pp 9–10.

38 McGarry, Fearghal, The Rising, Ireland, Easter 1916 (Oxford and New York, 2010), p. 4Google Scholar; idem, Rebels: voices from the Easter Rising (Dublin, 2011).

39 See the essay by Eve Morrison that is featured on the website in order to encourage use of the collection: Eve Morrison, ‘Bureau of Military History witness statements as sources for the Irish Revolution’; http://www.bureauofmilitaryhistory.ie/abouthistoricalessays.html

40 Ebbinghaus, Hermann, Über das Gedächtnis: Untersuchungen zur experimentellen Psychologie (Leipzig, 1885)Google Scholar; first translated into English by Ruger, Henry A. and Bussenius, Clara E. as Memory: a contribution to experimental psychology (New York, 1913)Google Scholar.

41 See Assman, Jan, ‘Collective memory and cultural identity’ in New German Critique, lxv (1995), pp 125–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Communicative and cultural memory’ in Meusburger, Peter, Heffernan, Michael and Wunder, Edgar (eds), Cultural memories: the geographical point of view (Dordrecht, Heidelberg, London and New York, 2011), pp 15–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Assmann, Aleida, ‘Memory, individual and collective’ in Goodin, Robert E. and Tilly, Charles (eds), The Oxford handbook of contextual political analysis (Oxford New York, 2006), pp 210–24Google Scholar.

42 For an elaboration on the methodology for an archaeology of social memory see Beiner, Guy, Remembering the Year of the French: Irish folk history and social memory (Madison, WN, 2006), pp 313–19Google Scholar.

43 Shane Hegarty, ‘Bringing the war back home’ in Irish Times, 8 Nov. 2008, p. B4. The Thomas Davis lecture series was broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1 from late October to late December 2008 and was accompanied by the publication of Horne, John (ed.), Our war: Ireland and the Great War (Dublin, 2008)Google Scholar. For the publicity and public debate see http://www.rte.ie/1918

44 Irish Examiner, 19 May 2011. For the deliberately ‘de-centred’ choice of location of the National War Memorial Gardens see Johnson, Nuala Christina, Ireland, the Great War, and the geography of remembrance (Cambridge and New York, 2003), pp 108–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 See Horne, John and Madigan, Edward (eds), Towards commemoration: Ireland in war and revolution, 1912–1923 (Dublin, 2013)Google Scholar.

46 See Johnson, Christopher D., Memory, metaphor, and Aby Warburg’s atlas of images (Ithaca, NY, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 For recognition of the role of memory by advocates of ethnosymbolism see Hutchinson, John, ‘Warfare, remembrance and national identity’ in Leoussi, Athena S. and Grosby, Steven (eds), Nationalism and ethnosymbolism: history, culture and ethnicity in the formation of nations (Edinburgh 2007), pp 42–52.Google Scholar For an example of applying an ethnosymbolic approach to the study of Irish history and memory see Githens-Mazer, Jonathan, Myths and memories of the Easter Rising: cultural and political nationalism in Ireland (Dublin, 2006)Google Scholar.

48 Mannheim, Karl, Essays on the sociology of knowledge (London, 1952), 286–320Google Scholar [the emphasis in the quotation appears in the original]. Mannheim’s theory has since been affirmed by empirical studies; for a recent example see Howard Schuman and Corning, Amy, ‘Generational memory and the critical period: evidence for national and world events’ in Public Opinion Quarterly, lxxvi, no. 1 (Jan. 2012), pp 1–31.Google Scholar

49 Elliott, Marianne, Robert Emmet: the making of a legend (London, 2003), pp 80–5.Google Scholar Among the different versions of Emmet’s speech that were in circulation after his trial, one variation has him explicitly declaring: ‘It is a claim on your memory, rather than on your candour, that I am making’: Geoghegan, Patrick M., Robert Emmet: a life (Dublin, 2002), p. 247.Google Scholar See also Beiner, Guy, ‘The legendary Robert Emmet and his bicentennial biographers’ in The Irish Review, xxxii (2004), pp 98–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 Richard Robert Madden papers (T.C.D., MS 873/96, 155, 156, 627); Leon Ó Broin papers (N.L.I., MS 29,950); see also Madden, Richard Robert, The United Irishmen: their lives and times (Dublin, 1846), 3rd ser., no. 1, pp 223Google Scholar and 396. McSkimin’s history of 1798 was published posthumously as McSkimin, Samuel, Annals of Ulster; or, Ireland fifty years ago (Belfast, 1849)Google Scholar and republished as History of the Irish Rebellion in the year 1798; particularly in Antrim, Down and Derry (Belfast, 1853).

51 See Dolan, Anne, Commemorating the Irish Civil War: history and memory, 1923– 2000 (Cambridge, 2003)Google Scholar.

52 See Higgins, Roisín, Transforming 1916: meaning, memory and the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising (Cork, 2012), pp 40Google Scholar, 83.

53 See, for example, the concluding comments in Foster, Roy, Modern Ireland 1600–1972 (London, 1988), p. 595.Google Scholar

54 See the reviews and replies published online in the Dublin Review of Books (http://www.drb.ie/essays/the-history-of-the-last-atrocity; http://www.drb.ie/reviews/reply-to-john-regan) and Reviews in History (http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1303), as well as running commentary spread over several issues of the popular magazine History Ireland.