Fortnight Publications Ltd.

Ex-Pat PaddiesAuthor(s): Michael QuinnSource: Fortnight, No. 341 (Jul. - Aug., 1995), p. 27Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25558507 .

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Ex-pa Pade

In his notoriously narrow analysis of "the prevailing

image of Northern Ireland culture," published in

the Guardian a year ago, the novelist and journalist

Ronan Bennett took a swinging side-swipe at the

state of the north's arts-for which, largely, read

theatre and literary fiction.

Writing in a venomous vein, Bennett pronounced

upon the political health of the region's current

artistic life like some quack doctor dispensing exotic

elixirs on his way through a hick, nowheresville town

in a badly cliched western. Usually such characters

end up being run out of town. Not Bennett, though.

Not here, anyway. For Bennett is actually seldom in

town, preferring instead to pontificate about the

place from the informed insularity of his permanent

London base.

Like the other pundits who cash in their ex-pat

credentials for full-time professional Paddy status,

Bennett's understanding of the realities of the current

state of play here is, to be momentarily generous,

somewhat tenuous.

Seen through the interminable tunnel vision,

typical of the self-exiled, the 'troubles' and their

continuing legacy maywell seem to demand that one

clings to anachronistic notions of mutually exclusive

sectarian dualities and dangerously simplistic political

reductions-hence, presumably, the risible banalities

of Bennett's Love Lies Bleeding. The real difficulty for

Northern Irish writers and artists is, in actual fact,

their own reluctance, or refusal, to write with their

individualistic, pluralistic voices.

There's no doubting the huge reservoir of talent

in the north. What is in question is whether that

talent has the desire to be anything other than what

it currently is-passive, parochial, insular, small

minded, dictated to, gaily dancing to a tune not of its

own making. Also in question, perhaps more crucially

so, is whether there exists the critical consensus to

allow for, or, indeed, to agitate actively for any re

envisioning to take place.

On the whole, the level of criticism of the arts (or

at least the performing arts) operates largely at the

dismal level of the lowest common denominator in

which process is nothing, product is all and the

cosmetic subterfuge of apparently 'real' surfaces

disguises the painful lack of any authentic substance.

What Ronan Bennett salivates over and salutes as

'politically aware' material can actually be seen, in

the cold, discriminating light of day, forwhatitis: the

product of an entrenched colonial mentality that

continues to stunt and stultify authentic expression

here; the notion that one can only confront one's

own realities according to the un-realities on

another's political, social, economic or cultural

peccadilloes and prejudices.

There were those who railed against Bennett's

thinly disguised apologia for an even more thinly

understood 'cause' last year who refused, for once,

to allow silence to be misinterpreted as de facto

countenance. All of them, significantly, practition

ers, none of them critics. But what has changed?

Indeed, it takes a huge leap of the imagination

not to say faith-to conceive of the majority of our

critics-cun-would-be local celebrities taking issue with

the assertive arrogance of detached, metro-centric

commentator despite their right-never mind their

responsibility-to do so.

But whither now the whispered resentments of

Northern Irish writers, actors, artists and poets?

Frustrated with the vapidity of the artistic status quo

and the numbing sterility ofwhat passes for informed,

objective criticism of their work, they retreat into

self-referential cliques whose only active raison d 'etre

is solipsistic and self-aggrandising self-affirmation.

Unable, or unwilling, to articulate alternatives

through notionally political methods-woven into

banners, scratched onto placards, gouged and spray

painted onto walls (a ludicrous notion in any case) -

their frustrations, which could be forcefully exorcised

if only they recognised the strength of their own

natures, continue to confound, confuse and

dishearten while such aspirations to other modes of

thinking and different models ofworking as do exist,

remain, at best, crippled, at worst, still-born.

At a moment in political history when old certain

ties and crabbed dogmas are finally coming under

searching, sustained scrutiny, isn't it about time that

Northern Irish writers, actors and artists made a

committed effort to re-situate themselves within a

new nexus; within a context that acknowledges the

past, warts and all, but looks to the future specifically

by dealing directly and honestly with the multiple

and often over-lapping identities that constitute the

definition of what it means to be Northern Irish

now?

And isn't it time, too, that cultural critics and

commentators faced up to their role in that process

and began to argue about-and, indeed, celebrate

the labyrinthine complexities of one of the most

dynamic and most diverse cultures in western

Europe?

It's not much to ask for but, lamentably, on past

evidence, a great deal to hope for.

In all of this only one thing is certain-that in

complaining about the lackof a critical artistic culture in Northern Ireland the most vociferous response

will be enraged, outraged kneejerk criticism. The

irony is tantalisingly bittersweet.

MICHAEL QUINN

berates the moral and intellectual cowardice of the north's cultural critics.

'passive, parochial,

insular, small minded, dictated to, gaily dancing to a tune not of

its own making'

JULY/AUGUST 1995 FO R T N I G H T 27

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