Michael Pierse

Introduction: Gathering Tensions

This introductory chapter considers the compelling relationship between home and diaspora for those who claim an Irish heritage internationally and for those who inhabit the two states on the island of Ireland. It asks what has been swept aside in the cultural and intellectual imaginary of globalised Irishness and explores how The Gathering 2013 grappled with various meanings of Irishness, and with various representations of belonging, amid a deeply troubling and contradictory set of social and economic transformations. Contemporary post-Crash political tensions and long “Decade of Centenaries” (1912–2013) commemorative practices converged during The Gathering 2013 and successive years to problematise how Ireland (North and South) represented itself on a world stage.

“Coeval but Out of Kilter”: Diaspora, Modernity and “Authenticity” in Irish Emigrant Worker Writing

Across various fields of cultural production, the Irish diaspora’s impact on how Ireland markets itself abroad and sculpts its identity within has profoundly shaped the Irish imaginary. Within this imaginary, a range of contradictions and silences abound. Among them is the frequent omission of worker narratives and proletarian struggles from often sanitised representations of Irish diasporic experience. By applying David Lloyd’s ideas on the “non-modern” and “out of kilter” “recalcitrant culture” of Ireland under Empire to early twentieth-century narratives of Irish emigrant experience in Britain, Pierse considers how Patrick MacGill’s, James Hanley’s and Robert Tressell’s writings depict the Irish abroad and their relationship to concepts of “home.” The chapter considers how these narratives have salient lessons for our conceptualisation of the Irish diaspora today.