Papers by Westley Barnes
A review of Jonathan Franzen's appearance at UEA Literary Festival on 29th September, 2015. Mr F... more A review of Jonathan Franzen's appearance at UEA Literary Festival on 29th September, 2015. Mr Franzen was promoting his current Novel Purity (2015) and was interviewed on this occasion by Professor Christopher Bigsby, directer of the Literary Festival and the Arthur Miller Centre at UEA. Parts of this article contain references to a conversation I had with Mr Franzen shortly after the event.
The article was featured on the UEA School of American Studies (AMA) Containing Multitudes blog, accessible at http://american-studies-uea.blogspot.co.uk/
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Conference Presentations by Westley Barnes
Out of the various issues surrounding state governance in the Republic of Ireland in the years fo... more Out of the various issues surrounding state governance in the Republic of Ireland in the years following independence (1922-), church collusion in political affairs and the legally enforced suppression of women's reproductive rights presents the most significant background for rhetoric of Irish biopolitics in the 21st century. This presentation is concerned with how sites of mass graves of Mothers and Infants imprisoned within the Magdalene Laundries system (c. 1900-1991) became identified by organisers of the Repeal the 8th campaign as the paradigmatic example of the state's collusion to repress the individual and civil rights of women in Ireland.
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In this presentation I consider a pedagogical argument regarding the place of ethics in represent... more In this presentation I consider a pedagogical argument regarding the place of ethics in representations of trauma. I will focus on two examples of visual historical archives, the documentaries Shoah (France:1985, Dir. Claude Lanzmann) and States of Fear (Ireland: 1999, Dir. Mary Raftery). Both documentaries received considerable attention upon release and influenced a large amount of public discourse relating to the events the documentaries focused on, namely testimonials by survivors of institutionalized violence, in the case of Shoah the Nazi genocide of European Jews in occupied Europe during the second world war, in States of Fear the physical and sexual abuse of children under the state's care in orphanages and industrial homes in the years following the foundation of the Irish state. I focus on the differences in terms of approaching and presenting survivor testimonials via the methodology of film's respective directors. However, one aspect of the shared legacies of Shoah and States of Fear, in how in their placing of the value of survivor testimonies in order to understand the moral implications of traumatic events, these projects influenced a process of historical evaluation that shaped how institutionalized violence is memorialized in the contemporary world. In the case of Shoah, arguments made on moral grounds on how testimony is the singularly vital way of interpreting the Holocaust have abounded in Holocaust studies since the documentary's release. In the case of States of Fear legal proceedings on behalf of the victims of institutional abuse emerged in the wake of the documentary's screening on Ireland's state broadcaster RTE.
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This paper considers declarative examples of pragmatism in the writings of author Michael Chabon ... more This paper considers declarative examples of pragmatism in the writings of author Michael Chabon and the philosopher Richard Rorty. I propose that there is evidence of considerable overlapping between the ideas of both authors, evidenced in how rhetorical questions posed in the respective texts allow for a discussion of politicised identity. What I find particularly striking is how Chabon and Rorty establish a positive reassessment of the achievability through declared reassertions of communal pride. An emphasis on the values of American heterogeneity therefore occurs in the writing of both authors at advanced stages in their respective careers. The stressing heterogenous are not merely coincidental, they are the result of a resurgent interest in rhetoric and pragmatism in Chabon's fiction, specifically the 2012 novel Telegraph Avenue. A reassessment of positive ideas of community, relating to a renewed interest in American cultural achievement, act as a response to postmodernist rhetoric in Rorty's books Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (1989) and Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth Century America (1998). What is of particular interest for me as an American Studies researcher is how ideas of a positive resurgence in the United States as a potentially heterogeneous democracy both predates and emerges during Barack Obama's tenure as President. A presidency which placed pragmatism and idealistic rhetoric at the core of public communications, Obama's recall of American liberal idealism was summarized in the campaign slogan "Yes We Can." The arguments this paper will analyse prioritise communal solidarity in both Chabon and Rorty's texts. In doing so I will argue that Chabon and Rorty respond to the threat of gentrification in culturally contested spaces. I will use Rorty's claim for the liberal ironist being the figure who strives for solidarity and a realization of the potentialities of American democracy. In doing so I argue how Rorty's rhetoric influences the spoken arguments made in Chabon's novel, specifically that of the role of communal solidarity as a model for critiquing gentrification.
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“The kind of rain we knew is a thing of the past-
deep-delving, dark, deliberate you would say... more “The kind of rain we knew is a thing of the past-
deep-delving, dark, deliberate you would say,
browsing on spire and bogland; but today
our sky-blue slates are steaming in the sun,
our yachts tinkling and dancing in the bay
like racehorses. We contemplate at last
shining windows, a future forbidden to no one.”
-Derek Mahon, Kinsale (Collected Poems,Gallery Press, 2000)
The rise of financial prosperity in certain elements of Irish society during the “Celtic Tiger”
era (circa 1994-2008) has been a subject of unusual responses in contemporary Irish poetry ;
unusual in terms of the polarity and often lack of responses to this social development and
its aftermath by leading contemporary Irish poets.
In discussing how established Irish poets such as Derek Mahon, Paula Meehan , Rita Ann
Higgins and Denis O’Driscoll have conveyed in their work significantly polarized frames of
argument on the merits or discontents of the “Tiger Years”, this paper seeks to provide an
understanding of why themes exploring innocence, denial and anxiety have been such a
crucial component in the writing of memory in the poetry of Ireland’s most prosperous era .
Equally important themes which permeate the poetry of the era include abstraction and an
overt silence on the subject in the cases of major poets such as Eavan Boland and Ciaran
Carson. The tendency of these major poets to fleetingly mention contemporary social changes
implicit during this era, or to indeed show little interest at all in their work, demonstrates a
desire not to withhold commentary on an Ireland that was radically changing in a peacetime
that was unanticipated at the beginning of their careers in print.
Alternatively, a generation of recession-era poets such as Sarah Berkeley and John
Mcauliffe have criticized the materialistic attitudes and elitist formalism which surrounded
the promise of what Celtic Tiger Ireland would offer young and disadvantaged Irish people,
starkly contrasting to halcyon optimism Mahon presented in “Kinsale” (1999).
This paper asserts that the most pertinent problem that Irish poetry faced in the wake of the
social changes implied during the Celtic Tiger era is that of representation. Divisions of
career stature and of histories in print, as well of those of gender and most readily of poetic
formalism versus experimentalism are transparent throughout poetry being published in
Ireland during this era and its immediate aftermath. These problems of representation
within contemporary Irish poetry reflect post-enlightenment arguments of what poetry
strives to achieve; either a portrayal of the realist sense of present-day empirical experience
or a moderately stylised attempt at linking poetics to the forms and legends that have
framed poetry since the beginning of recorded history, namely the argument of realism versus allegory.
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Papers by Westley Barnes
The article was featured on the UEA School of American Studies (AMA) Containing Multitudes blog, accessible at http://american-studies-uea.blogspot.co.uk/
Conference Presentations by Westley Barnes
deep-delving, dark, deliberate you would say,
browsing on spire and bogland; but today
our sky-blue slates are steaming in the sun,
our yachts tinkling and dancing in the bay
like racehorses. We contemplate at last
shining windows, a future forbidden to no one.”
-Derek Mahon, Kinsale (Collected Poems,Gallery Press, 2000)
The rise of financial prosperity in certain elements of Irish society during the “Celtic Tiger”
era (circa 1994-2008) has been a subject of unusual responses in contemporary Irish poetry ;
unusual in terms of the polarity and often lack of responses to this social development and
its aftermath by leading contemporary Irish poets.
In discussing how established Irish poets such as Derek Mahon, Paula Meehan , Rita Ann
Higgins and Denis O’Driscoll have conveyed in their work significantly polarized frames of
argument on the merits or discontents of the “Tiger Years”, this paper seeks to provide an
understanding of why themes exploring innocence, denial and anxiety have been such a
crucial component in the writing of memory in the poetry of Ireland’s most prosperous era .
Equally important themes which permeate the poetry of the era include abstraction and an
overt silence on the subject in the cases of major poets such as Eavan Boland and Ciaran
Carson. The tendency of these major poets to fleetingly mention contemporary social changes
implicit during this era, or to indeed show little interest at all in their work, demonstrates a
desire not to withhold commentary on an Ireland that was radically changing in a peacetime
that was unanticipated at the beginning of their careers in print.
Alternatively, a generation of recession-era poets such as Sarah Berkeley and John
Mcauliffe have criticized the materialistic attitudes and elitist formalism which surrounded
the promise of what Celtic Tiger Ireland would offer young and disadvantaged Irish people,
starkly contrasting to halcyon optimism Mahon presented in “Kinsale” (1999).
This paper asserts that the most pertinent problem that Irish poetry faced in the wake of the
social changes implied during the Celtic Tiger era is that of representation. Divisions of
career stature and of histories in print, as well of those of gender and most readily of poetic
formalism versus experimentalism are transparent throughout poetry being published in
Ireland during this era and its immediate aftermath. These problems of representation
within contemporary Irish poetry reflect post-enlightenment arguments of what poetry
strives to achieve; either a portrayal of the realist sense of present-day empirical experience
or a moderately stylised attempt at linking poetics to the forms and legends that have
framed poetry since the beginning of recorded history, namely the argument of realism versus allegory.
The article was featured on the UEA School of American Studies (AMA) Containing Multitudes blog, accessible at http://american-studies-uea.blogspot.co.uk/
deep-delving, dark, deliberate you would say,
browsing on spire and bogland; but today
our sky-blue slates are steaming in the sun,
our yachts tinkling and dancing in the bay
like racehorses. We contemplate at last
shining windows, a future forbidden to no one.”
-Derek Mahon, Kinsale (Collected Poems,Gallery Press, 2000)
The rise of financial prosperity in certain elements of Irish society during the “Celtic Tiger”
era (circa 1994-2008) has been a subject of unusual responses in contemporary Irish poetry ;
unusual in terms of the polarity and often lack of responses to this social development and
its aftermath by leading contemporary Irish poets.
In discussing how established Irish poets such as Derek Mahon, Paula Meehan , Rita Ann
Higgins and Denis O’Driscoll have conveyed in their work significantly polarized frames of
argument on the merits or discontents of the “Tiger Years”, this paper seeks to provide an
understanding of why themes exploring innocence, denial and anxiety have been such a
crucial component in the writing of memory in the poetry of Ireland’s most prosperous era .
Equally important themes which permeate the poetry of the era include abstraction and an
overt silence on the subject in the cases of major poets such as Eavan Boland and Ciaran
Carson. The tendency of these major poets to fleetingly mention contemporary social changes
implicit during this era, or to indeed show little interest at all in their work, demonstrates a
desire not to withhold commentary on an Ireland that was radically changing in a peacetime
that was unanticipated at the beginning of their careers in print.
Alternatively, a generation of recession-era poets such as Sarah Berkeley and John
Mcauliffe have criticized the materialistic attitudes and elitist formalism which surrounded
the promise of what Celtic Tiger Ireland would offer young and disadvantaged Irish people,
starkly contrasting to halcyon optimism Mahon presented in “Kinsale” (1999).
This paper asserts that the most pertinent problem that Irish poetry faced in the wake of the
social changes implied during the Celtic Tiger era is that of representation. Divisions of
career stature and of histories in print, as well of those of gender and most readily of poetic
formalism versus experimentalism are transparent throughout poetry being published in
Ireland during this era and its immediate aftermath. These problems of representation
within contemporary Irish poetry reflect post-enlightenment arguments of what poetry
strives to achieve; either a portrayal of the realist sense of present-day empirical experience
or a moderately stylised attempt at linking poetics to the forms and legends that have
framed poetry since the beginning of recorded history, namely the argument of realism versus allegory.