Diasporic identifications: exile, nostalgia and the Famine past in Irish and Irish North-American popular fiction, 1871–1891

Abstract

During the nineteenth century, "exile" became a key term to describe the Irish-diasporic community in North America. More recently, scholars in the fields of diaspora studies and Irish studies have described this community as a "victim diaspora" with connotations of forced expulsion, exile, and nostalgia for the homeland. Moreover, among scholars and within the Irish-American community, the notion exists that the Great Irish Famine (1845-1851) constitutes the IrishAmerican "charter myth", that it was the starting point of an IrishAmerican identity. This article sheds a different light on these (self-) identifications by discussing the concepts of origin myth, exile and nostalgia and also considers the concept of diasporic belonging in the context of Irish and Irish North-American works of popular "Famine fiction" written between 1871 and 1891. Consequently, the impact of these late nineteenth-century literary considerations on presentday conceptualisations of the Irish-American community as a victim diaspora are discussed.

Recalling the Hunger Winter: Evoking famine memory beyond the national

“…The alleged cultural traits of ‘apathy’ and ‘laziness’ are also employed in various newspaper writings on hunger in Indonesia in the 1940s and India in the 1950–1960s ( De Locomotief , 1949; Nieuwsblad voor de Hoeckse Waard en Ijselmonde , 1951; NRC , 1973). This language is reminiscent of earlier discussions of famine that posit famine sufferers as ‘Other’, such as contemporary reporting on the Great Irish Famine in the London Times (Janssen, 2018). The distinctions in ascribed cultural traits show the ‘differential memorability’ in recollections of the Hunger Winter: different tropes are adopted for ‘western’ and ‘non-western’ episodes of hunger.…”

“…As has been shown for recollections of other periods of hunger, perhaps most extensively in scholarship on the textual and visual legacies of the Great Irish Famine (e.g. Corporaal, 2017;Cusack, 2018;Janssen, 2016;Kelleher, 1997;Morash, 1995), their transfer typically happens in highly formalised ways: a select number of narrative schemata or templates (Straub, 2008;Wertsch, 2002) and common figures or tropes recur repeatedly. These recurring images and motifs include the famished mother and child, the dehumanisation of famine victims and distinct victim-perpetrator roles (Corporaal and De Zwarte, 2022;Janssen, 2016;Kelleher, 1997).…”

“…Corporaal, 2017;Cusack, 2018;Janssen, 2016;Kelleher, 1997;Morash, 1995), their transfer typically happens in highly formalised ways: a select number of narrative schemata or templates (Straub, 2008;Wertsch, 2002) and common figures or tropes recur repeatedly. These recurring images and motifs include the famished mother and child, the dehumanisation of famine victims and distinct victim-perpetrator roles (Corporaal and De Zwarte, 2022;Janssen, 2016;Kelleher, 1997). Together, these have come to form a cultural repertoire of representations, and it is precisely their formulaic nature which ensures that such images can travel beyond their national contexts.…”

“…Studies on the transnational dimensions of famine memory usually centre on the role of diasporic communities in the construction and transmission of hunger legacies, especially across the Atlantic Ocean (e.g. Corporaal et al, 2014;Janssen, 2018;King, 2012;McGowan, 2014;Mark-FitzGerald, 2013). The few studies that touch upon other forms of transnational famine recollections typically focus on (post)colonial memory frameworks, such as Margaret Kelleher's (1997) The Feminization of Famine, which identifies recurring motifs in representations of the Great Irish Famine and the Bengal famine of the 1940s, or Laurence Gourievidis' (2010) The Dynamics of Heritage, which shows how the Migration Museum in Adelaide represents immigrants from the Scottish Highland Clearances alongside Great Irish Famine immigrants.…”

The Great Irish Famine in Irish and UK history textbooks, 2010–2020

“…David Lloyd (2000: 221) favours the label 'colonial catastrophe'. I (Janssen, 2018) critically reassess the concepts of origin myth and victim diaspora. Popular historian Tim Pat Coogan (2012) claims that the Famine was an act of genocide.…”