"Besides the Obvious": Postcolonial Criticism, Drama, and Civil Society

"Besides the Obvious": Postcolonial Criticism, Drama, and Civil Society VICTOR MERRIMAN {Tlhe history 0/the integration of Ireland and the Irish into Western modernity is not only not the only st01Y but also not the only possibility. (Lloyd 105) This paper is a reflection on the proposition that, in Irish theatre criticism, some important aspects of civil society in Independent Ireland are written to the margins of public consciousness, if not written out altogether. I begin with some remarks on Independent Ireland (I922- present), on colonialism and its aftermath, nationalism, subjectivity, human agency, and the state. I consider the condition of contemporary theatre criticism - both journalistic and academic - and offer a view as to its implications for the art form, drama, and society in Ireland, as the cultural mutations of globalisation elaborate in the early years of the twenty-first century. Throughout this discussion, my usage of the term Independent Ireland acknowledges a lack of fit, a set of unquiet spaces, between the EU memberstate and the nation unfulfilled, between the appearance of postcoloniality and the consequences of neo-colonialism - the failure to decolonise. Conceptually , Independent Ireland brackets off Eire(fhe Republic of Ireland from itself, and the deployment of this critical term points to the need, in discussing Ireland in the twentieth century, for a framework that embraces the contradictions arising in the Irish Free State and enduring in the Republic of Ireland: structural continuity with the colonial province. in tension with the aspiration to an autonomous, albeit partitioned, state. In this sense, the construct Independent Ireland gives conceptual shape to the achievements, betrayals, and evasions of what Fintan O'Toole has narned a Republic of Elsewhere (Black Hole 13), always deferred. That Ireland is one for which, according to Peadar Kirby, nearly eighty years after independence, "deeper challenges [than selfgovernment and wealth creation] remain" (Poverty 144). Modern Drama. 47:4 (Winter 2004) 624 Postcolonial Criticism, Drama, and Civil Society 625 I argue in detail elsewhere (see Merriman) that Independent Ireland is a neo-colonial state, in which coercive narratives of identity interact to marginalise experiences. events, persons, and groups whose defining quality is difference from an assumed nonn, or dominant consensus. Postcolonial criticism re-centres in critical and public discourse what that consensus excludes. Positions marginalised as different need to be considered in critical practice beside "the obvious" if a plural democratic order is to be imagined. Lest there be any misunderstanding, I am not proposing that postcolonial critique be installed as a master narrative to the exclusion of other ways of seeing. It is in itself a plural fonn of critical practice, needing to be constantly reviewed and interrogated as the material circumstances in which it operates, and that it helps to constitute, mutate. When admitted to the critical conversation, postcolonial critique enriches efforts to understand the theatre-society relation, and expands the range of activity available to be valorised as cultural production. In short, postcolonial critical practice enables a more nuanced account of Irish theatre than might otherwise be possible. Postcoloniality is a state of critical desiring, a form of consciousness that first emerges when colonialism is challenged by anti-colonial movements. In the case of Ireland, such oppositional movements organised around the idea of the nation. The explicit appeal of the nationalist anti-colonialist project is a positive one. Its central promise is that the struggle for a nation will deliver a good life in an independent state. That state is thought of in utopian terms, as a social order based on political and economic independence. The promise of Irish nationalism is that an independent Ireland will privilege above all the common interests of its citizenry in peaceful coexistence, social solidarity, and opportunity. There is a compelling body of evidence to support the contention that in Independent Ireland, "Ireland's long-postponed social revolution [...J the egalitarian objectives of Irish nationalism [...J were not realised, even in part" (Breen et al. 6). The postponement, or negation, of decolonisation by indigenous govenunents in previously colonised states is not an experience unique to Ireland. The Filipino writer Renata Constantino insists that liberation is not a destination and is experienced or denied in human practices. Specifically, collective yearning...