[lbo-talk] Those Evil Irish (question for Wendy L.)

Jason lists at moduszine.com
Tue Mar 27 09:07:53 PDT 2007


On 2007-03-27 16:44:02 +0100 Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:


> What do mean about some people refering to Northern
> Ireland as a "tribal problem"?

I mean the standard interpretation of the conflict as one gang of orange bigots knocking the crap out of another gang of green bigots and vice versa. This is referred to here as the two tribes thesis. Once beloved only of the guilt-ridden middle-class unionists of the Alliance party, the kind of unionists who don't much like the Orange Order, it has now become the official understanding of what has transpired in Northern Ireland of the years. Such a surface level reading of things ignores the very real and concrete historial, political and economic roots of the conflict. It does, however, have the advantage of making the British feel better about themselves - 'It's not imperalism that's the problem, it's those violent lunatic Irish'.

To see the conflict in these terms, that is the terms of idenity politics, is futile and reduces it to an intractable problem. The peace process and Belfast Agreement that followed it all view the North through the prism of orange-green idenity politics and as such can never lead to genuine soltution. It was conceived of as a confict management strategy and that is all it can ever be. The fact is that the agreement has actually increased sectarian tensions on the ground, though at least they tend to be expressed in whinging for more money and complaining about how much 'the other side' is getting rather than people being maimed and killed. The consequence of identity politics is that complaint is now directed to state rather than against it.

This mirrors the collapse of the left into pressure groups rather well and, in fact, the North of Ireland (and Ireland in general) is an excellent place to study. It went through the collapse of politics that now haunts America and particularly Britain some years in advance.

Seeing as how Slavoj Zizek is flavour of the month, I seem to recall something the 'The Ticklish Subject' where he suggested that the liberal-left tradtion of crying to the stae for help is hysterical because it is in fact the state that is the cause of the problem

Sinn Féin, by the way, have now come to accept the tribal analysis though they never really say so, giving up on the tradtional republican demand for national autonomy and the uniting of the people of Ireland. That republicans have never done enough to win large numbers of Protestants over to their cause is another matter.

Bish-bash-bosh, Jason.

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