Interesting how things develop, i think this is a great way to start this blog.
Yesterday i got a comment regarding my understanding on the word “republicanism” in an Irish context. Now don’t get me wrong, i KNOW where i come from and why it would be easy to think i might be attaching the wrong meaning to the word. So lets talk “Irish Republicanism” and its implications. While doing so, we might define other words in an Irish context along the line.
I’m gonna start by quoting one of my favorite authors when it comes to irish politics, Paul Dixon:
“(..) nationalists and unionists ideologies are not static but dynamic, shifting over time in response to changing circumstances. The term ‘nationalist’ is often used to describe someone who aspires to a united Ireland but is opposed to the use of violence to achive it, while ‘republican’ often shares much of the analysis of the ‘nationalist’ but is prepared to use violence. So all republicans are nationalists, but not all nationalists are republicans(…)“
Paul Dixon, Northern Ireland: Politics of War and Peace, page 7
So there you have it. What does this mean in my world? exactly that.
As a young girl making my way into irish history on my own, with no help whatsoever considering i was growing up on the other side of the world, in another language and with little notion of the island of Ireland’s current history, you can imagine how films and other media affected my so called “self-thought” education as regards to past events. As you can imagine, there was no independent line of opinion in the so called “self-taught” first few years of my Irish history education. (then again, is there ever one?)
Films like Michael Collins or Braveheart, while might help creating this very unique and nationalist sense of self about what “I” am and what I’m not by defining myself as part of something, it also brings along this confusing idea of taking other people’s views on different matters as your own. This lead to some very funny debates in forums (specially with uneducated Americans who took Breaveheart as a historical fact and didn’t know the difference between Ireland and Scotland) that ended up making me even more interested to find out the “truth”(if there is one) about the past. Sometimes a mirror to the future of what you can become if you don’t take matters into your own hands, can be a very hard reality to face for a 18 year old girl.
But back to the subjective views of Irish history in film, now being aware of this at the start of my journey, it had a counter effect on me: If the director of the film Michael Collins is portraying him as the underdog hero and demonizing De Valera, surely there must be more to the story….. right?
Little did i know the historic rendezvous i was getting myself into.
Ireland.. Politics of War and Peace 