Post by maolsheachlann on Jan 13, 2020 16:20:23 GMT
I saw that the Desmond Fennell thread was locked-- I imagine this was by accident. I hope it's OK to start another.
I've just read Cuireadh Chun na Tríú Réabhlóide : Aiste Dhaonnachtach by Desmond Fennell. It's a pamphlet published in 1984. As with all Fennell's work, it's highly eccentric. He thinks the goal of the Irish Revolution (the Gaelic Revival and 1916 etc.) was not mere independence from the UK, nor yet the revival of the Irish language, but a humanistic project to create a more integrated, spiritual society.
I think there's a lot of truth to this. It seems to be very much the case that almost everybody involved in the Gaelic revival and "advanced nationalism" at that time hoped that Ireland would develop in a way different from the UK and other developed countries-- less materialistic and more spiritual, basically. And, indeed, independence from Britain purely for its own sake, or the revival of the Irish language purely for its own sake, seems rather pointless to me.
He argues that the goal of the Gaelic Revival was not to revive Irish per se, but to revive Irish as a language in which people could express their full humanity -- something he did not consider possible in contemporary Irish or English. He quotes Heidegger's famous formulation of language as "the house of being".
My problem with Fennell is that he is always so categorical. Everything is simply stated rather than argued, and he is never tentative. It's hard to see how such self-assurance could be justified. The pamphlet is also extremely utopian. Such a high aspiration seems barely achievable.
At the same time, I think he has a depth of insight and imagination way beyond most Irish commentators of recent decades. In the pamphlet, he writes about the modern crisis of alienation, something which he sees as being at the root of Marxism as well as nationalism. I do think this is a huge problem which is hardly addressed in our public discourse, and I do think it was a motivation of much Irish nationalism, especially at the time of 1916. Whether you call it "rootedness", "integration", "holism", or something else, I think society is really lacking a sense of connection and wholeness which our modern way of life fails to give us-- because we are so detached from history, place, other people, tradition, etc., and because the different aspects of our lives (worker, consumer, citizen, viewer, etc.) are so disconnected from each other.
I've just read Cuireadh Chun na Tríú Réabhlóide : Aiste Dhaonnachtach by Desmond Fennell. It's a pamphlet published in 1984. As with all Fennell's work, it's highly eccentric. He thinks the goal of the Irish Revolution (the Gaelic Revival and 1916 etc.) was not mere independence from the UK, nor yet the revival of the Irish language, but a humanistic project to create a more integrated, spiritual society.
I think there's a lot of truth to this. It seems to be very much the case that almost everybody involved in the Gaelic revival and "advanced nationalism" at that time hoped that Ireland would develop in a way different from the UK and other developed countries-- less materialistic and more spiritual, basically. And, indeed, independence from Britain purely for its own sake, or the revival of the Irish language purely for its own sake, seems rather pointless to me.
He argues that the goal of the Gaelic Revival was not to revive Irish per se, but to revive Irish as a language in which people could express their full humanity -- something he did not consider possible in contemporary Irish or English. He quotes Heidegger's famous formulation of language as "the house of being".
My problem with Fennell is that he is always so categorical. Everything is simply stated rather than argued, and he is never tentative. It's hard to see how such self-assurance could be justified. The pamphlet is also extremely utopian. Such a high aspiration seems barely achievable.
At the same time, I think he has a depth of insight and imagination way beyond most Irish commentators of recent decades. In the pamphlet, he writes about the modern crisis of alienation, something which he sees as being at the root of Marxism as well as nationalism. I do think this is a huge problem which is hardly addressed in our public discourse, and I do think it was a motivation of much Irish nationalism, especially at the time of 1916. Whether you call it "rootedness", "integration", "holism", or something else, I think society is really lacking a sense of connection and wholeness which our modern way of life fails to give us-- because we are so detached from history, place, other people, tradition, etc., and because the different aspects of our lives (worker, consumer, citizen, viewer, etc.) are so disconnected from each other.