Introduction

210
Melanie Swiatloch
included the use of military revolt (ibid. 224) as it can also be seen in the case of
Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Concerning the whole of Ireland one can
take the Irish Renaissance, which came into being around 1890, as the moment
when the Irish realised the importance of their long subjugated culture and that it
was time to stand up against British rule and change the current state of affairs.
Said describes how a colonised people have to rediscover their own identity:
For the native, the history of colonial servitude is inaugurated by loss of the
locality to the outsider; its geographical identity must thereafter be searched
for and somehow restored. Because of the presence of the colonizing outsider,
the land is recoverable at first only through the imagination (Said
225).
Hence, before the south of Ireland gained its independence in 1921-2 the Irish
had to reinvent their culture by invoking the Gaelic language and the old myths in
order to mark themselves off from the British as these traditions had been connected
to their country for centuries. Its revival is what is expressed by Said with
the term imagination. To stick to the old language and myths again united the
Irishmen in a new form, Anderson’s imagined community (see chapter 2.2). For
the excluded brothers in the North the struggle for an independent self continued,
however.
Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin illustrate several stages of literary production in
the postcolonial development. As a first stage they mention colonial writings during
the imperial period. These writings were done by an “elite whose primary
identification is with the colonizing power” (Ashcroft 5), like travellers or settlers.
It is important to notice here that these writings should not be mistaken for cultural
writings by natives of the invaded country. As a second important stage they
refer to the emergence of literary works by the natives themselves. “The producers
signify by the very fact of writing in the language of the dominant culture that
they have temporarily or permanently entered a specific and privileged class endowed
with the language” (ibid. 5). However, these works were not fully developed
yet, due to the censorship of colonial control. Only the people in charge
decided what was to be published and what not (ibid. 6). In the case of Ireland
this development is somewhat more difficult to locate than in other colonial territories
as the process of colonisation began so early and the Irish language and
customs were gradually superseded by British ones. Yet, as Döring has observed,
in Ireland these stages took place, too. He mentions Oscar Wilde as a prominent
example who by taking on the air of a British gentleman showed that British attitudes
were not superior at all but accessible to theoretically everyone:
[…] By taking on the idiom and guises of the English aristocracy, like in a
cultural masquerade, and by making them his chosen medium of mimicry
and self-invention, Wilde can be seen to undermine their status of superiority
and rob them of exclusive claims (Döring 99).