Space in a postcolonial reading of Irish short story

Raše, Tea. (2018). Space in a postcolonial reading of Irish short story. PhD Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Comparative Literature.
(Poslijediplomski doktorski studij književnosti, filma, izvedbenih umjetnosti i kulture) [mentor Grgas, Stipe].

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Abstract

This doctoral dissertation deals with Irish culture and literature through short stories, from the time of anti-colonial nationalism at the beginning of the 20th century, through postcolonial considerations of national identity throughout the 20th century, to its contemporary, global version at the dawn of the new millennium. The main thesis is that a postcolonial reading of space in modern Irish short story is not only illuminating in terms of the development of national culture and literature, which is the subject of Irish studies, but can also represent a valuable contribution to the methodology of postcolonial theory and short story theories. One of the aims of the dissertation was to determine whether, and if so when, short story as a countergenre (Claudio Guillén, 1971), in relation to the English novel, succeed in assisting processes of decolonization. If the short story can be considered a form of attack on official cultural rhetoric and an articulation against social norms through the liberation of subjective vitality, it seems reductive to take naturalism as a dominant art form in Irish literature. Relying on Frank O’Connor's thesis (1985) that the modern short story gave voice to submerged populations, and adding that in Ireland it can be read as more than a century long biography of place that, among other things, grew out of a strategy of resistance, the short story production is devided into four groups which emerged from a synchronistic view of its development throughout time. These are: Voices far from home, Women's voices, Voices at home, and Immature voices. Such an approach has ensured a recognition of spontaneous subaltern practices as spatial interventions into a concrete place, labelled with the syntagm of 'making space out of place'. While postcolonial criticism, as well as similar conceptualizations of space, liken place with specific locations or anything that has the so-called specific local character and associate space with abstract flows of global capital, the idea of 'making space from place' refers to unplanned, uncertain and therefore insecure, while at the same time emancipatory spatial actions, stemming from an intact heterogeneity of culture, customs, and bodyly practices inscribed in place, rather than the spatial practices of organized resistance movements with more or less expected outcomes. In such a context, place becomes pervasive space that is turned into an area of permanent identity construction through direct and spontaneous actions of individuals placed within broader spatial constellations.

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