Irish Studies vs Irish Diaspora Studies
by Patrick O'Sullivan

One way of picturing 'Irish Diaspora Studies' is to create, simply for debate and to clarify themes, a perhaps artificial dichotomy between 'Irish Diaspora Studies' and 'Irish Studies'. This suggestion arises partly through discussion with friends and colleagues in the United States - where tensions within or between 'Irish Diaspora Studies' and 'Irish Studies' are becoming evident. I am also encouraged to develop these themes by a private letter, looking at the world-wide state of 'Irish Studies', from Patrick O'Farrell, in Australia.

I am interested in the nature of academic disciplines, their mores, their individual strengths and limitations - and I am interested in ways of helping individual disciplines communicate with each other. For me, 'Irish Studies' ought to be an area of inter-disciplinary study, where the methods, and the rewards, of an inter-disciplinary approach should be self-evident.

But... 'Irish Studies', as it has emerged, is mostly literature - and a very limited canon at that - plus a bit of history - but mainly the bits of history that you need if you are to understand the literature. 'Irish Studies' as (mostly) literature may be a form of 'entryism' - this is how 'Irish Studies' infilitrates academia and gets on to the curriculum. I would suspect then that, in the end, this means that 'Irish Studies' is being shaped by the demands of academic career structures.

These problems need not be as great as they seem to be - were it not that, for one reason or another, the study of literature has entered a strange hermetic and hermitic phase, which makes dialogue between the scholar of literature and other scholars... difficult. To say the least.

Bluntly, a lot of this is curriculum-led, and, on the worldwide stage, the shape of the curriculum is decided by whatever texts are readily available, off the shelves, in Milwaukee.(1) (Indeed, in planning The Irish World Wide series I accepted this as one planning parameter - I encouraged chapters on texts like Thoreau's Walden, or Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, texts that I knew were available in Milwaukee.)(2)

There is also the issue of 'Irish Studies' as a servant of the Irish nation state and its tourist industry. And alongside that I would put 'Irish Studies' as the servant of other nation states where 'Irish Studies' has, for one reason or another, pitched its tent. Thus, in a recent review of a very good book about the Irish in New York I noted a reluctance to study the Irish who actively disliked the United States - a long and honourable tradition stretching from, at least, Thomas D'Arcy McGee, through Nora Lavin (Mary Lavin's mother), to my postbag yesterday.(3)

Against this version of 'Irish Studies' I find myself increasingly placing what I call 'Irish Diaspora Studies' or 'Irish Migration Studies'. We could look here at 'notions of diaspora' and the meanings of 'emigration'/'immigration'/'migration' in our area of study. We could show that - and we could show how and why - 'Irish Diaspora Studies' has an agenda that differs from that of 'Irish Studies'. Thus 'Irish Diaspora Studies' transcends - and is not mesmerised by - the histories of individual nation states. 'Irish Diaspora Studies' can be seen as intrinsically critical of 'Irish Studies' - for it demonstrates what 'Irish Studies' leaves out. Thus, there are possibilities of conflict.

But I think there are too possibilities of resolution, a vision of our area of study that becomes aware of limitations, and tries to overcome them. This question then remains: should we regard 'Irish Diaspora Studies' as a sub-department of 'Irish Studies', or should we, as I do, regard 'Irish Studies' as a sub-department of 'Irish Diaspora Studies'?

I would have to add that, to 'Irish Diaspora Studies', the world-wide spread of 'Irish Studies' is of great interest, a cultural phenomenon within and connected to our Diaspora.(4) They do not study us, but, yes, we do study them.(5)

Patrick O'Sullivan

Notes

1. I mean no disrespect to Milwaukee. Indeed, since watching Michael Moore's television programme, I have increasing respect for Milwaukee. But there are problems of texts and sources, problems which bedevil both 'Irish Studies' and 'Irish Diaspora Studies'.
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2. See James P. Myers, jun., '"Till their... bog-trotting feet get talaria": Henry D. Thoreau and the immigrant Irish', in Patrick O'Sullivan, ed., The Creative Migrant, Volume 3 of The Irish World Wide, Leicester University Press, Leicester, London & New York, 1994, and my Introduction to that volume, pp 6-8. And see James P. Cantrell, 'Secularization of Irishness in the American South: a reading of the novels of Ellen Glasgow and Margaret Mitchell', in Patrick O'Sullivan, ed., Religion and Identity, Volume 5 of The Irish World Wide, Leicester University Press, London & New York, 1994.

   I think that every person of Irish heritage in the world should read Thoreau's Walden, or (if you can't manage that) at least read Chapter X, 'Baker Farm', or (if you can't manage that) at the very, very least read the last paragraph of 'Baker Farm'. All right - read the last sentence of Chapter X, 'Baker Farm'. Not to make you any wiser, but to make you ask, 'What IS going on here?' And ask, 'How do we take this seriously?'
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3. I have posted a full length version of this review on this Irish Diaspora Studies Web site, as 'New York, New York'.
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4. See Nessan Danaher, 'Irish Studies: a historical survey across the Irish Diaspora', in Patrick O'Sullivan, ed., The Irish in the New Communities, Volume 2 of The Irish World Wide, Leicester University Press, Leicester & London, 1992.
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5. This Discussion Paper, 'Irish Studies vs Irish Diaspora Studies', is the outline of a paper that was given at the Conference of the British Association for Irish Studies, Salford, England, September 1997.
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