Austerity and Irish Women’s Writing and Culture, 1980–2020 focuses on the under-represented relationship between austerity and Irish women’s writing across the last four decades. Taking a wide focus across cultural mediums, this collection of essays from leading scholars in Irish studies considers how economic policies impacted on and are represented in Irish women’s writing during critical junctures in recent Irish history. Through an investigation of cultural production north and south of the border, this collection analyses women’s writing using a multimedium approach through four distinct lenses: austerity, feminism, and conflict; arts and austerity; race and austerity; and spaces of austerity. This collection asks two questions: what sort of cultural output does austerity produce? And if the effects of austerity are gendered, then what are the gender-specific responses to financial insecurity, both national and domestic? By investigating how austerity is treated in women’s writing and culture from 1980 to 2020, this collection provides a much-needed analysis of the gendered experience of economic crisis and specifically of Ireland’s consistent relationship with cycles of boom and bust. Thirteen chapters, which focus on fiction, drama, poetry, women’s life writing, and women's cultural contributions, examine these questions. This volume takes the reader on a journey across decades and forms as a means of interrogating the growth of the economic divide between the rich and the poor since the 1980s through the voices of Irish women.
Author(s): Deirdre Flynn, Ciara L. Murphy
Series: Routledge Studies in Irish Literature
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 266
City: New York
Cover
Half Title
Series Information
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
1 Irish Women’s Writing and Culture Under the Shadow of Austerity
Cycles of Boom and Bust: Austerity as Violence
Social Change
Irish Women’s Writing and Austerity
Woman as Nation
Pregnancy and Motherhood
Waking the Feminists: A Women’s Protest
Chapter Outlines
Austerity, Feminism, and Conflict
Arts and Austerity
Race and Austerity
Spaces of Austerity
Notes
Works Cited
Section 1 Austerity, Feminism, and Conflict
2 Two Opposing Narratives?: The Field Day and LIP Pamphlets
Disparate Fields of Power: The Field Day (1983–1988) and LIP Pamphlets (1989–1992)
Overcoming Austerity By Opening Up the Irish Cultural Sphere
Upholding and Dismantling Austerity: The Habitus of the Field Day and LIP Pamphlets
“Compositional Codes”: The LIP and Field Day Pamphlets
The Aftermath of the Field Day Anthology I–III
Notes
Works Cited
3 Austerity, Conflict, and Second-Wave Feminism in the North of Ireland
Introduction
Forming Charabanc Theatre Company
Illuminating Shared Herstories
Second-Wave Feminism On the Island of Ireland
Feminist Politics and the Female Gaze
Consciousness-Raising Through Performance
Artistic and Commercial Success
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
4 #WakeUpIrishPoetry: Austerity and Activism in Contemporary Irish Poetry – A Personal Reflection
Introduction
Interlude: Reflections From the Background(s), Or the Hall of Mirrors, Or How We See Ourselves Disappear
Is This Where I Start?
Is This Where I Start?
Is This Where I Start?
Is This Where I Start?
Is This Where I Start?
Is This Where I Start?
Is This Where I Start?
Is This Where I Start?
Background(s)
Fired!
MEAS – Measuring Equality in the Arts Sector
Interlude: [silence]
Foregrounds
Wake Up Irish Poetry
SAOI – Safe Arts of Ireland
Foresisters: A Word On Feminist Grassroots Activism in the Irish Arts
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
Section 2 Arts and Austerity
5 Kermit, Cows, and Headless Chickens: Women’s Comedy Monologues After the Tiger
Introduction
Little Gem
Charolais
Pondling
Conclusion
Note
Works Cited
6 Balancing Acts: From Survival to Sustainability in Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance
Introduction: On Balance
The Problem: Theatre Against the Odds
Theatre57: ‘Female, 30s, No Children, Pays €512 Rent Per Month’ (Who We Are 2018)
Cultural Currency and Struggling Artists: Precarious Lives in Fortress Europe
Conclusion: Acts of Balance in Creative Futures
Note
Works Cited
Section 3 Race and Austerity
7 Intersectionality in Contemporary Melodrama: Normal People (McDonald/Abrahamson, 2020)...
Kissing Candice: Fantasy, Nihilism and Interracial Romance
Normal People: Precarity, Multiraciality and Emotional Capitalism
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
8 Austerity and the Precarity of Whiteness: Polish Characters in Stacey Gregg’s Shibboleth (2015)...
‘Look Out for the Lads’: Shibboleth and the Precarity of Working-Class Whiteness
‘Other People’s Politics’: Middle-Class Whiteness and the Privilege of Invisibility in Here Comes the Night
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
9 Black Irish Culture
Who Gets to Be Irish?
Shared Colonial History
Celtic Tiger and the Changing Nature of Who Gets to Be Irish
Citizenship Imagery
2004 Citizenship Referendum
Austerity Through the Lens of the African Woman
African Presence in Ireland During Celtic Tiger
New Strategies for a New Ireland
Irish Essentialism
Blackness and Its Threat to Irishness
Fear of the Black Body
Media and Racist Backlash
Taking Up Space
Conclusion
Note
Works Cited
Section 4 Spaces of Austerity
10 Austerity, Irish Literary Tropes, and Claire Keegan’s Fiction
Reconsidering Realism and Irish Literary Tropes in the Mid-Twentieth Century
Antarctica, Entrapment, and the Romance Plot
Tentative Breakthrough, Female Agency, and Bildungsroman
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
11 Celtic Tiger Saga Fiction: Patricia Scanlan’s City Girls and Marian Keyes’ Walsh Family
Introduction
Irish Women’s Popular Fiction: From Scanlan to Keyes
Patricia Scanlan’s City Girl
Marian Keyes’ Walsh Sisters
Conclusion
Works Cited
12 ‘Just the Way It Is’: Portraits of Austerity in Short Fiction By Women From the North of Ireland
Austerity and Gender: Louise Kennedy
Austerity and Youth: Lucy Caldwell and Wendy Erskine
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
13 Motherhood, Referendums and Austerity in Contemporary Irish Women’s Writing
Introduction
Divorce
The Eighth Amendment
2004 Citizenship Referendum
Conclusion
Note
Works Cited
Index
