Introduction

222
Melanie Swiatloch
are nowadays paying attention to Northern Irish themes in which mostly the conflict
between Protestants and Catholics and also the impact of belonging to one of
these communities is dealt with, concerning themselves with Northern Ireland’s
tradition of the Troubles in the latter half of the twentieth century.
Critics were also eager to know whether a complete decolonisation of culture
was possible. This question, however, is as controversial as discussions in postcolonial
studies and elsewhere have always been. Hence, some critics have argued
the age of colonisation was only a passing event that could be ignored once independence
was achieved. Objecting to this others have argued that it was impossible
to overcome this stage once colonisation had taken place in the past (ibid. 30).
When looking at Northern Ireland it is indeed hard to imagine that colonisation
can be left entirely behind when the dimension of the division between Catholics
and Protestants in some parts of the country, especially in Belfast, is still clearly
visible.
In some countries, like in India, the trend goes to primarily writing in the native
languages again (ibid. 30). Although there are nowadays some authors writing
in Irish like Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill it is almost unthinkable that no books are produced
in English anymore as English is still the dominating language. Ireland’s
colonial past cannot be forgotten and a pre-colonial Ireland not reconstructed.
Therefore in my opinion syncreticists’ views are to be preferred who argue that
peoples with a colonial past will always remain “cross-cultural hybrids” (ibid. 30).
The influence of the colonising power will always linger in the background, not
only culturally but also literally.
In literature language is an influential tool for transporting certain data from
the author to the reader. As language is also considered as a “medium of power”
(Ashcroft 38), it is of greatest importance for the colonised entity to find a way
through this medium to step out of coercion. Ashcroft, Griffith and Tiffin in this
respect speak of the “abrogation and appropriation” (ibid. 38) of language. With
abrogation they mean the “refusal of the categories of the imperial culture, its
aesthetic, its illusory standard of normative or ‘correct’ usage, and its assumption
of a traditional and fixed meaning ‘inscribed’ in the words” and with appropriation
“the process by which the language is taken and made to ‘bear the burden’ of
one’s own cultural experience” (ibid. 38). This set of abrogation and appropriation
is not new to Irish literature but still in use.
The Irish twentieth century was marked by conflict with a first climax in the
1916 Easter Rising, the following Anglo-Irish War, the Civil War and the final
outbreak of the ongoing conflict in Northern Ireland. Michael Storey has argued
that early writers of Troubles fiction 24, such as Daniel Corkery, Frank O’Connor
and Sean O’Faolain, used to write in a postcolonial tradition (Storey 63). Aspects
of place and displacement and the creation of a specific Irish cultural identity
24 Storey defines stories of the Troubles as a kind of fiction that deals with any conflict that occurred
in Ireland during the twentieth century (Storey 63).