Introduction

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Melanie Swiatloch
sion became a further factor to spread messages strengthening the Catholic community
during the Civil Rights Marches in Northern Ireland (ibid. 30/31). These
first approaches to re-establish an Irish identity show how print-media (and later
other forms of media) can strengthen a smaller community both via messages
partly written in Irish but also to make nationalist approaches public. Thus, printmedia
not only supports languages-of-power but also language communities that
want to express their common belonging. As language in general and languages
used in print-media form a central part of Anderson’s theory the next chapter will
deal with the significance that language has played in Ireland.
Identity and identity construction in relation to culture are one of the major
topics of this paper which makes a short definition necessary as well. Chris Barker
describes a difference between the two terms in that culture is a form of process
whereas cultural identity refers to ethnicity, class, race and so forth (Barker 382).
Stuart Hall furthermore argues that there are at least two ways in which cultural
identity may be described. On the one hand it can be seen as “one, shared culture,
a sort of collective ‘one true self’, hiding inside the many other, more superficial or
artificially imposed ‘selves’, which people with a shared history and ancestry hold
in common” (Hall 1999, 393). Cultural identities thus “reflect the common historical
experiences” (ibid. 393). On the other hand, according to Hall, difference
also plays an important role for the creation of identity (ibid. 394). Besides, identities
are never fixed entities but constantly undergo changes and are “always in
progress” (Hall 1998, 2). This twofold cultural imprint is also stressed by Homi K.
Bhabha in the terms of “baffling alikeness” and “banal divergence” that constitute
the cultural hybrid (Bhabha 1998, 54) which is discussed further in chapter 3.3.2.
Máiréad Nic Craith in addition stresses the fact that identity is always multilayered
and not two-dimensional as often depicted in the case of Northern Ireland.
In this sense she refers to Michael Billig’s term “pastiche personality” which
assumes that identity adapts to different contexts (Nic Craith 2003, 5), as for example
Jake in Eureka Street who belongs to the Catholic community but not to the
Irish-speaking or republican community, or Saoirse in Where They Were Missed who
belongs to the Catholic and Irish-speaking community but is not fully accepted as
such as she in the eyes of her classmates in the South belongs to the Northern
Irish community. As identities are progress-like this means for Northern Ireland
that “identities are being reshaped” and “new significant others emerge” (ibid. 6).
At the same time Nic Craith points out that there are not simply two communities,
either. Instead, the two larger groups of Protestants and Catholics consist of
many “competing factions and interest-groups.” Many people are even members
of a number of communities. Thus the two larger groups are divided into the
nationalist community, the Irish-speaking community, the Catholic community, et
cetera (ibid. 8). Conflict in Northern Ireland, in her view, results in the fact that
“groups […] essentialize cultures, exaggerate differences and usually construct
them where they do not exist” (ibid. 10). Although Nic Craith is right when talk-