Revealing Ireland's “Proper” Heart: Apology, Shame, Nation

Abstract

This article contributes to feminist expositions of emotion and “matters of the heart” by highlighting the gendered nature of the mobilization of shame. It focuses on the role shame plays in state apology and the desire to recover pride. Specifically, it analyzes the state apology offered to the survivors of Magdalen Laundries by Enda Kenny, the Taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland. By drawing out how the state apology recreates the Irish nation, it traces the deployment of a potentially productive variety of the politics of shame, which comes to be subverted in the service of keeping the virtuous, feeling “heart” of Ireland—the nation's very core—intact across a temporal, moral continuum.

Abortion and Reproduction in Ireland: Shame, Nation-building and the Affective Politics of Place

“…13 For work on affect and emotion, see Meyers (1997); Hemmings (2005); Koivunen (2010); Pedwell and Whitehead (2012). For work on shame, see Nussbaum (2004);Fischer (2016Fischer ( , 2017Fischer ( , 2018a; Locke (2016). she should have been entitled to under the PLDPA, nor did Ms Z (as I shall refer to the anonymous person of the latter case), who was instead sectioned.…”

“… 13 For work on affect and emotion, see Meyers (1997); Hemmings (2005); Koivunen (2010); Pedwell and Whitehead (2012). For work on shame, see Nussbaum (2004); Fischer (2016, 2017, 2018a); Locke (2016). …”

Gender and the Politics of Shame: A Twenty‐First‐Century Feminist Shame Theory

“…The mass institutionalization of gendered Others in Ireland was thus reflective of a politics of shame that excised transgressive women and children to satisfy the demands of a national imaginary in which Irish identity was premised on the superior virtue of the Irish (and Irish women in particular), when compared to the former colonizer. In an article published in this journal, “Revealing Ireland's ‘Proper’ Heart: Apology, Shame, Nation,” I trace this politics of shame to the present day in an analysis of the Taoiseach's (Irish Prime Minister's) recent apology to Magdalen Laundry survivors (Fischer ). I show that the state apology, while proclaiming national self‐assessment and regret, again involves that classic mechanism of shame—hiding—to present Ireland as a morally progressive, magnanimous nation while covering the contemporary shaming of single mothers.…”

Triumph and concession? The moral and emotional construction of Ireland's campaign for abortion rights

“…The 8th amendment had been inserted into the Constitution in 1983 following a period of intense lobbying by the 'Pro-Life Amendment Campaign' (Barry, 1988). In the aftermath of the Irish War of Independence (1916)(1917)(1918)(1919)(1920)(1921)(1922), the reproductivity of Irish women would become an issue of keen national interest As Fischer (2017) explains, postcolonial identity in Ireland was built via a 'disidentification' with Britain which was contingent on the moral and sexual purity of Irish women vis-à-vis their British counterparts. Subsequently, the Constitution of the Republic of Ireland, written in 1937 by then President Eamon de Valera institutionalised a 'conservative ideal of motherhood', obligating the 'control of women's reproductive capacity' (Gilmartin and Kennedy, 2019: 125).…”

“…Moreover, it was religious institutions like the Magdalene Laundries and the ‘Mother and Baby Homes’ which incarcerated ‘sexually deviant’ women (Lentin, 2015: 153). By removing their ‘transgressive’ bodies from the public landscape, such institutions served to hide ‘Ireland's assumed national blemishes’ (Fischer, 2017: 754). Many pregnant Irish women sought to avoid such institutionalisation through immigration to the UK, and following the introduction of the 1967 Abortion Act, those with financial means could access legal abortions there.…”