UCD School of Sociology –
Seminar Series 2017-2018
Speaker: Ryan Nolan, PhD candidate, UCD School of Sociology
Rituals of Exclusion? Identity, Ideology and Inequality in the Centenary Commemorations of the 1916 Rising.
Looking
at Irish nationalism and the 1916 Centenary Commemorations, this paper will
shed light on the role that nationalism has in sculpting the parameters of
these commemorative events. This study will focus on the role that rituals,
nationalism and commemoration have in the (re)production of solidarity,
nationalist identity and the legitimation of social organisations, social
hierarchies, and social inequalities. Examining speeches dated throughout the
Centenary Commemorative year sourced from key social and political actors in
Ireland, this paper argues that these commemorative events hold more relevant
information about Ireland in 2016, than Ireland in 1916. Adopting the
methodology of critical-discourse analysis this paper strives to uncover the
latent influences and subtle alterations of history adopted in this
commemorative period.
This
paper attempts to unearth the significant role that elite representations of
the Rising have in rewriting the past into a cleaner and more accessible
narrative. A narrative which generates legitimacy for Ireland’s political
elites through the construction of inconsistent ties with Ireland’s past. This
paper exposes the politicization of Irish memory by the political elite in
these commemorations, and details how Irish history has been distorted in the
2016 commemorations to specifically generate ties of legitimacy and allegiance
between the contemporary political elite and the history, ideologies and
philosophies of the 1916 participants. This paper suggests that the centenary
commemorations of the 1916 Rising, speak more about the contemporary Irish
social and political climate, than an accurate and objective reading of
Ireland’s past.
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