Brian F . McCabe
University of La Verne, College of Law, Director of the Writing Center & Adjunct Professor of Writing
Brian McCabe holds a Ph.D. in English from Claremont Graduate University, from California's Monterey Bay Area. Additional master's degrees in Irish Literature and Culture from Boston College and Student Development from Seattle University and a bachelor's degree in English from Gonzaga University round out his profile. Dr. McCabe's experience includes teaching First Year Writing, Literature, English as a Second Language, and over ten years tutoring students. Brian's interests include modern and contemporary poetry and drama, Irish studies, teaching, and designing curricula. Currently, Brian teaches writing at the University of La Verne College of Law and serves as editor for both Foothill: a journal of poetry and (formerly) Voices of Claremont Graduate University, C.G.U.'s formal research journal. Brian's publications include "The Passionate Transitory: A Jesuit Metaphysical Poetics of Patrick J. Kavanagh," published in the International Journal of the Humanities; and "Brian Friel's Modern Irish Drama: Writing the Past, Present, & Future" for Voices of Claremont Graduate University; he is a major contributor to All Things Dickinson. Brian has presented on the work of Irish American women poets at the American Conference for Irish Studies, and on Frank McGuinness' Carthaginians as Theatre of Consolation and Hybridity at the Hybrid Irelands Conference at the University of Notre Dame. Brian has received grants for his research and study from Claremont Graduate University, the American Comparative Literature Association, the Modern Language Association, University of La Verne College of Law, and the University of Notre Dame.
Supervisors: Dr. Eric Bulson, Dr. Brian Ó Conchubhair, Dr. Lori-Anne Ferrell, Prof. Jemima Galan, and Prof. Teri McMurtry-Chubb
Supervisors: Dr. Eric Bulson, Dr. Brian Ó Conchubhair, Dr. Lori-Anne Ferrell, Prof. Jemima Galan, and Prof. Teri McMurtry-Chubb
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Papers by Brian F . McCabe
She was born in Newtownards, County Down and moved to Dublin as a child. Retaining strong links with Northern Ireland, she spent most of her summers with her extended family in Donaghadee. She now divides her time between Dublin and Connemara.
WS: What do you think are the most important issues facing Irish women today, and how do you see writing as a way to discuss or engage with those issues?
CDF: The most important issues facing Irish women today concern the provision of equal opportunities in the fields of education and employment. Although contraception is now legal and available, the on-going debate on abortion is a constant in any discussion on women's rights. Additional issues regarding the welfare of those living on the margins of society, i.e., the members of ethnic minorities, women and girls who are being trafficked for sex, asylum-seekers, are a cause for concern also.
In theory, first and second level education in Ireland is free, as are third level undergraduate courses but, in practice, many of the disadvantaged (both men and women) cannot afford to register for or attend these courses, nor is it easy for teenagers or young adults from a background unfamiliar with the concept of study to attend second or third level institutions.
Though equal pay and opportunities exist for women in the workforce, the landmark Equality Tribunal case which Micheline Sheehy Skeffington has recently won against her former employer, NUI Galway, for discrimination in not promoting her, prove otherwise. Many women cannot afford to work outside the home as childcare costs are prohibitive. Most of the lower-paid work is done by women. Within the ethnic minorities, especially the Traveller Community, arranged marriages for girls as young as sixteen between cousins are commonplace.
“All profound changes of consciousness, by their very nature, bring with them characteristic amnesias. Out of such oblivions, in specific historical circumstances, spring narratives.”
-Benedict Anderson,
Imagined Communities
“Nations, like narratives, lose their origins in the myths of time, and only fully realize their horizons in the mind’s eye.”
-Homi K. Bhabha,
Nation & Narration
In his Discourse on Colonialism, Aimé Césaire writes, “A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization. A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization. A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization” (Césaire np). Postcolonial and historicized readings of Irish literatures describe the evils of colonialism, and the ways it has distorted nationhood and nation-building to serve the ends of greedy empires. But, what happens to a nation or nations in the vacuum after a major colonial power abandons the colony or is driven out? Obviously, there is much hard work involved, sacrifice on all sides, and recognition of past wrongs inflicted. In the epigraphs above, Anderson and Bhabha remind us that more than simply politics, there is also a cultural element involved, indeed, essential to such work. For the Irish, whose civilization and lands have been ravaged by colonization and internal struggles for
centuries, this cultural element often finds voice in the theater. Dramatic theater allows artists to create socio-reflective spaces in which audiences can participate in the postcolonial experience to some extent, and certainly find their preconceived ideas challenged. In the space of theater, a mirror is held up to the nation, vital questions are proposed, and a community emerges to collectively search for answers. The cultural artistry of Ireland allows these nations to reconceive of themselves and their pasts in terms of their present and future. The liminal space which postcolonial drama occupies presents audiences and participants with questions of hybridity, as a potential solution to cultural and national essentialism.
Talks by Brian F . McCabe
She was born in Newtownards, County Down and moved to Dublin as a child. Retaining strong links with Northern Ireland, she spent most of her summers with her extended family in Donaghadee. She now divides her time between Dublin and Connemara.
WS: What do you think are the most important issues facing Irish women today, and how do you see writing as a way to discuss or engage with those issues?
CDF: The most important issues facing Irish women today concern the provision of equal opportunities in the fields of education and employment. Although contraception is now legal and available, the on-going debate on abortion is a constant in any discussion on women's rights. Additional issues regarding the welfare of those living on the margins of society, i.e., the members of ethnic minorities, women and girls who are being trafficked for sex, asylum-seekers, are a cause for concern also.
In theory, first and second level education in Ireland is free, as are third level undergraduate courses but, in practice, many of the disadvantaged (both men and women) cannot afford to register for or attend these courses, nor is it easy for teenagers or young adults from a background unfamiliar with the concept of study to attend second or third level institutions.
Though equal pay and opportunities exist for women in the workforce, the landmark Equality Tribunal case which Micheline Sheehy Skeffington has recently won against her former employer, NUI Galway, for discrimination in not promoting her, prove otherwise. Many women cannot afford to work outside the home as childcare costs are prohibitive. Most of the lower-paid work is done by women. Within the ethnic minorities, especially the Traveller Community, arranged marriages for girls as young as sixteen between cousins are commonplace.
“All profound changes of consciousness, by their very nature, bring with them characteristic amnesias. Out of such oblivions, in specific historical circumstances, spring narratives.”
-Benedict Anderson,
Imagined Communities
“Nations, like narratives, lose their origins in the myths of time, and only fully realize their horizons in the mind’s eye.”
-Homi K. Bhabha,
Nation & Narration
In his Discourse on Colonialism, Aimé Césaire writes, “A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization. A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization. A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization” (Césaire np). Postcolonial and historicized readings of Irish literatures describe the evils of colonialism, and the ways it has distorted nationhood and nation-building to serve the ends of greedy empires. But, what happens to a nation or nations in the vacuum after a major colonial power abandons the colony or is driven out? Obviously, there is much hard work involved, sacrifice on all sides, and recognition of past wrongs inflicted. In the epigraphs above, Anderson and Bhabha remind us that more than simply politics, there is also a cultural element involved, indeed, essential to such work. For the Irish, whose civilization and lands have been ravaged by colonization and internal struggles for
centuries, this cultural element often finds voice in the theater. Dramatic theater allows artists to create socio-reflective spaces in which audiences can participate in the postcolonial experience to some extent, and certainly find their preconceived ideas challenged. In the space of theater, a mirror is held up to the nation, vital questions are proposed, and a community emerges to collectively search for answers. The cultural artistry of Ireland allows these nations to reconceive of themselves and their pasts in terms of their present and future. The liminal space which postcolonial drama occupies presents audiences and participants with questions of hybridity, as a potential solution to cultural and national essentialism.
Tomás MacAnna's and John D. Stewart's A State of Chassis (1970), John Boyd's The Flats (1971), Graham Reid's Dorothy (1980), The Hidden Curriculum (1982), Remembrance (1985) and Callers (1987), Martin Lynch's Castles in the Air (1983), Christina Reid's Joyriders (1986), Frank McGuinness's The Bread Man (1990), Tom Murphy's The Patriot Game (1991), Vincent Woods's At the Black Pig's Dyke (1992), Bill Morrison's trilogy A Love Song for Ulster (1993), Michael Harding's Hubert Murray's Widow (1993), Anne Devlin's After Easter (1994), and Marie Jones's A Night in November (1994). Most of these plays have been published. In addition, there are television plays on the North, which it is beyond the scope of this study to include.
(Murray 188)
In addition to these seventeen works, Murray also refers to lists from 'Northern Ireland's Political Drama', by D. E. S. Maxwell, which adds another twenty-four plays which deal directly or indirectly with the Northern situation:
A list of plays in which "the troubles" are directly the subject would include: Wilson John Haire's Within Two Shadows (1972), Brian Friel's The Freedom of the City (1973) and Volunteers (1975), David Rudkin's Ashes (1974) and The Saxon Shore (1986), Stewart Parker's Catchpenny Twist (1977), Bill Morrison's Flying Blind (1977), Graham Reid's The Death of Humpty Dumpty (1979) and The Closed Door (1980), Martin Lynch's The Interrogation of Ambrose Fogarty (1982), Robin Glendinning's Mumbo-Jumbo (1987) and Culture Vultures (1988), Stewart Parker's Pentecost (1987), Anne Devlin's Ourselves Alone (1985), Kenneth Branagh's Public Enemy (1987), and Frank McGuinness's Carthaginians (1988). […] In plays where the brutalities of the warring factions are not directly the issue, their assumptions pervade the daily run of domestic and social discourse: John Boyd's The Street (1976), set in 1930s Belfast; Christina Reid's Tea in a China Cup (1983), a family chronicle; the Charabanc Theatre Company's Somewhere Over the Balcony (1987), a view from a block of high-rise flats of the Belfast scene around it. More allusively, dramatists have turned to particular spots of time past for analogues, metaphors, of the present violence, some situation prefiguring its future: Brian Friel's Translations (1980) and Making History (1988); Frank McGuinness's Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme (1985); Stewart Parker's Northern Star (1984); Tom Kilroy's Double Cross (1986).
(Maxwell 1-2)
Philomena Muinzer (1987) cites 9 additional plays in her article, 'Evacuating the Museum: The Crisis of Playwriting in Ulster' (however, at the time of this writing, this piece was unavailable). To these lists one could add several recent works by Celia de Fréine, Gary Mitchell, Owen McCafferty, Jimmy McLeavey, Tim Loane, and Stacey Gregg, among others. This demonstrates that the field of texts which describes, interrogates, mourns, or exploits (at worst) the Troubles as a central aspect of life in the North is by no means small. However, while many of these plays utilize the Troubles and its still-ongoing peace process as a backdrop for satire –Loane’s Caught Red Handed (unpublished) or Paulin’s Hillsborough Script (1987)– or exploitation –Scanlon’s McGowan Trilogy (2014)– or love-across-the-barricades style romance –Graham Reid’s Remembrance.
The themes of reconciliation and peace as a process undertaken by individuals are only vaguely addressed in the vast majority of these works, if at all. Often when they are, they fail completely for lack of support, or against the ever-present twist ending which features the gun or the bomb. Three works, however, present reconciliation a viable, if challenging possibility for the people of Northern Ireland. Frank McGuinness’ Carthaginians, Marie Jones’ A Night in November, and Owen McCafferty’s Quietly offer a spectrum of reconciliatory writing that runs from the tentative to the profound. These three plays capture much of the essence of the process: its nature as emotionally charged, its demand for absolute honesty, its danger for the unprepared. As Ashley Taggart writes in “Theatre of War?: Contemporary drama in Northern Ireland”, “The dramatist must have an audience prepared to undergo sometimes painful self-examination. He or she must have the confidence to imbue local events with universal significance; and above all find ways to humanise the inhumane, while resisting the temptations of polemic” (Taggart in Jordan, Theatre Stuff 82). The authors of these three plays, the dramatists, skirt the edges between farce and melodrama, between hatred and a too-easy-forgiveness and present audiences with works that challenge and, at times, justifiably shame.
“There is no nation on earth that does not respect, read, and write its own language as a matter of honour.”
-Teabóid Gallduff, 1589-1674
“The alphabet is an abolitionist. If you would keep a people enslaved, refuse to teach them to read.”
-Harper’s Weekly, November 9, 1867
“Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.”
-Bertolt Brecht, 1898-1956
I. Introduction
The three quotes which introduce this work –from three different eras, from speakers who could not have known one another’s agendas due to their distance across time– present distinct impressions of literacy and literature and their deep import for cultures and peoples in contact. The quotes are provided, respectively, by Tony Crowley, in “Encoding Ireland: Dictionaries and Politics in Irish History;” Karen Chambers, in “‘The Alphabet Is an Abolitionist’: Literacy and African American in the Emancipation Era;” and Peter McLaren, in “Critical Literacy and Postcolonial Praxis: A Freirian Perspective” provide the theoretical framework for a discussion of two authors writing inherently political texts in languages forbidden them, Frederick Douglass and Seathrún Céitinn (Geoffrey Keating, in English). While these topics may seem vastly separated by time and subject matter, they are, in fact, more vitally related than readers may think. From the Irish Penal Era (debatably dated as beginning in 1690 and lasting until 1800) to the time of American slave emancipation in 1862, a link, forged of bigotry and subjugation –and implemented by means of the utter control of language– by the British Empire and the emerging American Empire connects the seemingly disparate lives of those its noose constricted. The small, rainy island kingdom of Ireland found itself at the mercy of its larger and more formidable sister-island, Britain, in its insatiable quest for empire; this was only natural, as Ireland was virtually the first stop on empire’s route out of Britain. Both the British and American slave-trades of the colonial period, as well, if not more fully, worked toward the oppression of countless millions of Africans forced to the shores of the Americas as slaves. Among many methods of control the empire used to keep its servile labor force in check was found in the domination of language. In British Colonial America laws restricting the education of Negro slaves came into being as early as 1640, while in Ireland the sheer barbarism of the people forced the rulers of the Empire to ban the teaching and learning of the Irish (Gaelic) language entirely beginning as early as 1366. While both writers and their respective cultures suffered under empire’s oppression, at the same time, powerful acts of critical literacy in the vein of Paulo Freire allowed them to work toward not only their freedom, but also for that of their peoples. In their efforts to suppress literacy and control language, the similar natures of the 1740 Negro Act of South Carolina and the 1366 Statute of Kilkenny informed and empowered insubordinate actions and rebellious writing-back-to-Empire by African American slave Frederick Douglass in his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself, and colonized Irish Jesuit Seathrún Céitinn in Feasa Foras ar Éirinn.