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The
literary corpus of this work, based on the Irish diaspora in
South America, is made up of various historical,
journalistic and literary documents from 1865 to 1915 and
from the turn of the twentieth century. The research deals
with the implications of the various causes that brought
about the different instances of dislocation and literary
representations of the diasporic community in Argentina and
Brazil. My aim is to show, through both canonical and
non-canonical narratives, the transformations in the process
of construction of the Irish diasporic community identity in
the countries mentioned above in terms of political,
economic, historical and social conditions. It also focuses
on the way in which the aesthetics of the representation of
cultural encounters produces new bonds between the concepts
of identity and nation both in relation to the host country
and to the motherland. I argue that the literary strategies
used by writers and journalists in the process of
construction of “new” cultural identities shape a new
imaginary that either promotes the growth and strengthening
or the uprooting of their communities, or, either stimulates
the emigration flow of fellow-citizens or their return, or
their migration to less barren lands (a diaspora of the
diaspora).
I start from the theoretical premise that cultural
identities are constructed dialogically through the
different narratives produced by the inhabitants of the
diasporic space (foreigners and natives) or by their
fellow-citizens in Ireland. I uphold the view that this
constant interaction between the natives and other diasporic
communities and between those host countries and the
immigrants’ motherland create a narrative web that shows
that unlike the whitening process of the Irish in the United
States that is directly related to the concept of “race”,
the Irish immigrants under the “Southern Cross” go through a
process of inclusion that is directly related to the concept
of class (economic and political power) attained by the
purchase of land and the access to education. In this way, a
literary diasporic aesthetics, distinctive of South America,
is shaped.
Keywords: Irish diasporic literature; the Irish in
Argentina and Brazil; William Bulfin; William Scully; Paul
Durcan; Juan José Delaney; Anne Enright. |
