Teaching the Famine
by Patrick O'Sullivan

Anniversaries

Throughout the Irish Diaspora, as 1995 and the 150th anniversaries of the Famine events approached, there became evident a wish to know and commemorate. This public wish to know was certainly one of the things that helped me in the creation of my volume on The Meaning of the Famine. (For more on this, see my Introduction, and own own chapter on famine theory, in The Meaning of the Famine.)

The 150th anniversary of events may seem an odd one to chose to commemorate. The point has been made - for example, has been made to me recently by President Mary Robinson - that the 100th anniversary was somehow still too close to the Famine. Evidently we are not dealing only with anniversaries, but with very longterm processes of healing and remembering.

At the same time one anniversary can seem to mask another. 1995 could have been remembered too as the 250th anniversary of 1745, the battles of Fontenoy and Culloden. Culloden and 'the '45' are now seen as defining events in the formation of the British identity - but we seem to have lost sight of Irish emigre participation in and (most important) financing of those events. (For more on this see my Introduction to Religion and Identity, Volume 5 of The Irish World Wide).

Now, with 1997 past, the 150th anniversary of 'Black '47', we look ahead to 1998's Irish Studies conference circuits. And we find that - predictably, and most probably rightly - 1998 is very much going to be the 200th anniversary of 1798. Predictably, and most probably rightly...

But does this mean that we are going to stop thinking about the Famine? Does this mean that we are going to stop studying the Famine?

Teaching the Famine

Here are some thoughts of mine about teaching the Famine...
What I would do first is formally identify a series of teaching problems.

a.    The 3 texts problem. The 'discourse of the famine' is shaped by 3 texts (Trevelyan, Mitchel and Woodham-Smith) - which seem to have circumscribed discussion and (until recently) blocked scholarship. We need to critically explore these texts, overcoming and transcending them - especially we need to show how newer scholarship can rescue us from their hegemony.

We could use the 3 texts problem - and this is part of the inter-disciplinary, critical project that is Irish Diaspora Studies - to look more generally at the ways in which key texts shape and circumscribe debates within academic disciplines, and shape entire disciplines.

b.    The 'political economy' problem. Discussion of the Irish Famine by historians has, in any case, tended to stay too much within the 1840s and the particular version of 'political economy' - with its ideological and theological underpinnings - then being peddled. We need to relativise this debate, showing the origins of 'political economy', and, just as important, subsequent developments. Thus, in our own time, scholars like Sen and Hirschmann can be seen as re-drawing the map of 'political economy'.

c.    The 'famine studies' problem. A seemingly obvious way of developing the study of the Irish Famine is to link that study with study of famine in our own time - and in the future. Indeed, again this point was raised by then-President Mary Robinson when I met her early in 1997.

But though the development seems obvious it is not straightforward. In my published chapter on famime theory I have indicated that 'common knowledge' about the Irish Famine may in fact distort our understanding of famine in our own time. Study of the Irish Famine does provide insights - but these insights will not arise if the Irish Famine is studied in isolation. There is a major project, which someone has to take in hand, some day, of integrating study of the Irish Famine within present day 'famine theory'.

d.    the 'diaspora problem'. The connections between the Irish Famine and Irish emigration seem - as ever - self-evident. But they are not as straightforward as they seem. Thus, at one level it can be argued - as Mokyr does - that emigration, in a sense, 'caused' the Famine.

Further, present day 'famine studies' would force us to interrogate 'common knowledge' about the Irish Famine - for example to ask the question: when faced by famine, why emigrate?

This may, in fact, be one of the ways in which the Irish Famine was an unusual famine.

I could go on. But that is most probably enough to be going on with...

The line that I would take is then that every one of these 'problems' is, in effect, already - for the teacher - a solution. Each 'problem' offers a way of 'teaching the Famine' and linking that teaching to wider issues. Cumulatively we will then have rescued study of the Irish Famine from strange and unhelpful isolation, and will have used that study to illumine real life problems in our world today - and in our world in the next century.

Patrick O'Sullivan
January 1998