Abstract for Crosscurrents conference, University of Aberdeen, April 2009.

Title of Paper:

Myles na gCopaleen, flanerie and the language revival movement in post-independence Ireland.

Abstract:

Studies of Brian O’Nolan’s journalism have assessed his verbal wit in relation to the socio-political context of post-independence Ireland. This talk contributes to this contextualisation of O’Nolan’s work, under his pseudonym Myles na gCopaleen, and will address O’Nolan’s journalistic style through a consideration of how modernity enabled Ireland to develop a collective mass culture of general agreement that adhered to the social, cultural and political ethos of dominant cultural nationalism. I use Walter Benjamin’s definition of a flaneur to illuminate the relationship between modernity, nationalism and language in O’Nolan’s work. Benjamin defines a twentieth-century flaneur as a salaried employee, like a journalist, who produces news and literature for the entertainment and persuasion of his contemporaries. This form of flanerie encourages the notion that passive observation is adequate for knowledge of social reality. In contrast to this, Benjamin’s nineteenth-century flaneur’s goalless loitering and irresolution acted as a point of resistance to the homogenisation of mass production. I argue that O’Nolan, a twentieth-century salaried journalist, employs the tactics of mass production to consume the staged extravagances of post-independence nationalism in its promotion of ‘Irish Ireland’. Rather than adopting a passive acceptance of the values of cultural nationalism, O’Nolan’s use of parody, hyperbole and aimless narratives resist both modernity and nationalism’s control of national forms and identities. I will offer close readings of extracts from Cruiskeen Lawn, focusing on how O’Nolan highlights the ridiculous aspects of the Irish language movement which attempt to create a purer ethnicity, to emphasise the value of framing O’Nolan’s linguistic and journalistic response to modernity and nationalism in terms of a loitering flaneur.