SPeCTReSS Fellowship Report #1
Ciaran O’Neill, Universidade São Paulo, July-September 2014
This short report aims to outline the various activities undertaken by me during my time at USP, São
Paulo last summer. Overall the fellowship was an enriching experience, offering me the chance to
meet a wide variety of people (academic and non-academic) and discuss my ideas with them in ways
that sometimes contrasted quite starkly with the sort of conversations I had been having
beforehand. As I am at the malleable early phase of a new research project it was arguably the most
valuable moment at which to undertake this sort of mobility fellowship and I can say that, without
doubt, my thoughts about my own research project have been greatly affected and enhanced by my
time in Brazil.
For the sake of clarity I will briefly describe the project I am working on and the new directions it is
taking, before moving on to discuss the various workshops, lectures and conferences I attended in
Brazil while on the fellowship. I will end with some thoughts that may be of some use to others who
will follow the same route over the next three years or so.
The project
I am currently working on a history of modern Ireland, provisionally entitled Power, Trauma, and
Authority in Modern Ireland, which uses the collective trauma of the Irish famine (1845-52) as an
anchor in order to rewrite the history of power relations in Ireland in the nineteenth century.
This will largely be based on a List 1 module I teach at Trinity, drawing heavily on power theory to
divide an essentially interpretive synthesis, but also utilizing fresh research on key archival resources
– from the Chief Secretary’s Office, from state papers held at Kew Gardens, and developing work I
have done already on Irish elites over the past 5-7 years. The centerpiece of the argument will rest
on how Ireland’s governing systems responded to and adapted to the post-famine environment, and
how cultural trauma affected them and the people they controlled.
Histories of Ireland usually treat of the nineteenth century as if it was irrevocably changed by the
Famine years of 1845-52. Many classic survey histories either begin or end with the Famine,
reinforcing the idea that the trauma of the event changed Ireland fundamentally (Lyons 1971, Lee,
1973, Ó Tuathaigh 1972). Others prefer to concentrate on the political narrative, thus circumventing
a concentration on the social and cultural trauma of the event (Jackson 1999, Hoppen 1999, Bew
2007, Foster 1989, D.G. Boyce 1990). Other scholars have focused their attention on land (Vaughan
1994, Donnelly Jr 1973-), to the exclusion of any consideration of how the government and
administration of Ireland coped with systemic failure at a moment of increased investment in Irish
infrastructure. I believe the cultural trauma of the famine has impacted not only our understanding
of that event (Ó Gráda 1999, Kinealy 1998), but has negatively impacted on our understanding of the
continuity of power relations either side of the event and into the twentieth century. This
monograph aims to trace this post-trauma recalibration and stabilization, and to inter-weave it with
the study of power and resistance under a contested authority.
The book, then, will hone in on the spread of infrastructural power, institutional power, and softer
forms of coercion, radiating out from Dublin Castle and London. It will have two main theoretical
bases: Power theory, on the one hand, and trauma theory – an element of the book that has grown
in importance since I began interacting with trauma theory under the Spectress project. Nt only have
I benefitted from SPeCTReSS, then, it is in fact helping to direct the fulcrum of this next book project
in ways that I had not foreseen.
Working with the various international researchers that SPeCTReSS has exposed me to have been
incalculably useful to me as I embark on the new research project.
The Fellowship
It seems pertinent to mention that my formal interactions with USP were limited by the fact that
much of the humanities faculty of the university was on strike for the period of the fellowship, with
library access limited to one of the specialist libraries (Brasiliana) for the duration of my time there.
Nevertheless we managed to circumvent the ‘ban’ on public lectures by arranging two lectures at
USP in a clandestine manner, thanks to the ingenuity and wide networks of my host – Prof. Laura
Izarra. As a scholar who is deeply interested in interdisciplinary approaches to history, and one who
has written quite a bit about literature as well as history, it was particularly appropriate that I was
based at FFLCH in USP, which thankfully continued to have an accessible building while I was based
at USP. Perhaps a look at the history department building will give colleagues some idea of how
when Brazilian universities go on strike, they mean it:
History Dept, USP, 10 July 2014
My first lecture at USP built on work I am undertaking with my graduate student, Mai Yatani, on
feminist novels of the 1890s, mostly written by cosmopolitan ex-pat Irish women living in London
who were writing a sort of alternative national identity or national script. This paper was delivered
on 18 August 2014. My second lecture at USP looked directly at the SPeCTReSS project and how it
was influencing the book I am writing. I did this at the tail end of the fellowship, on the 15
September. I called it ‘Power, Trauma, and modern Ireland’, allowing the first third of the hour to
become a sort of clarion call for wider engagement with SPeCTReSS across other faculties. We
invited other departments to the talk, and had some contact with the head of the History
department at USP, Sara Albieri – who was very kind and encouraging about the network and its
aims. Here is an image looking out from the cafe of the History Dept moments before delivering that
lecture:
Pre-lecture coffee, USP, 15 September 2014
In between these two lectures I delivered a keynote lecture at Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa, Rio De
Janeiro, where the ABEI (Associação Brasileira de Estudos Irlandeses) hosted the 9th Symposium of
irish Studies in South America, where I had the chance to disseminate my research to a wide variety
of people working on Irish Studies in Argentina and Brazil. This was a wonderful event, generously
hosted by the Irish embassy in Brasilia, along with USP and Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de
Janeiro. We also had the wonderful Prof. Nicholas Grene (School of English, TCD) in attendance,
along with TCD alumnus and author Declan Hughes, some of whom you can see in this photograph,
featuring my (quite blurred) mentor, Prof. Laura Izarra:
Pre Irish Studies Conference, Rio De Janeiro, 24 August 2014
So in terms of outreach and dissemination these three lectures were the main device during my stay
at USP. What cannot be as easily measured, however, are the various interactions I had with
Brazilian culture, with Brazilian scholars and postgraduate students, all of which enriched my
everyday life as well as my research. The opportunity to go to Brazil, to meet extraordinarily talented
researchers and engage with their ideas, to teach and to learn (I learned much more than I taught)
really made this a transformative experience.
Ciaran O’Neill, December 2014.