Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x5gtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-22T09:50:16.363Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Revealing Ireland's “Proper” Heart: Apology, Shame, Nation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Clara Fischer
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article contributes to feminist expositions of emotion and “matters of the heart” by highlighting the gendered nature of the mobilization of shame. It focuses on the role shame plays in state apology and the desire to recover pride. Specifically, it analyzes the state apology offered to the survivors of Magdalen Laundries by Enda Kenny, the Taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland. By drawing out how the state apology recreates the Irish nation, it traces the deployment of a potentially productive variety of the politics of shame, which comes to be subverted in the service of keeping the virtuous, feeling “heart” of Ireland—the nation's very core—intact across a temporal, moral continuum.

Type
Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , Fall 2017 , pp. 751 - 767
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ahmed, Sara. 2004. The cultural politics of emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Bartky, Sandra Lee. 1990. Femininity and domination: Studies in the phenomenology of oppression. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Beauvoir, Simone de. 1997. The second sex. Trans. and ed. Parshley, H. M.London: Vintage.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious life: The powers of mourning and violence. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Central Statistics Office. 2015. Survey on income and living conditions: 2013 Results. http://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/er/silc/surveyonincomeandlivingconditions2013/ (accessed June 13, 2017).Google Scholar
Clapper, Gregory S. 2007. Is love an affection or an emotion? Looking at Wesley's heart language in a new light. In The many facets of love: Philosophical explorations, ed. Oord, Thomas Jay. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Clough, Patricia T. 2010. The affective turn: Political economy, biomedia, and bodies. In The affect theory reader, ed. Gregg, Melissa and Seigworth, Gregory J.Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Darwin, Charles. 1998. The expression of the emotions in man and animals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Department of Social Protection. 2013. Social impact assessment of the main welfare and direct tax measures in Budget 2013. https://www.welfare.ie/en/downloads/2013-03_SIABudget2013_Final.pdf (accessed June 2015).Google Scholar
Dixon, Thomas. 2003. From passions to emotions: The creation of a secular psychological category. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dolezal, Luna. 2015. The body and shame: Phenomenology, feminism, and the socially shaped body. London: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Ehrenreich, Barbara. 2001. Nickel and dimed: On (not) getting by in America. New York: Metropolitan Books.Google Scholar
Finnegan, Frances. 2004. Do penance or perish. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, Clara. 2016a. Feminist philosophy, pragmatism, and the “turn to affect”: A genealogical critique. Hypatia 31 (4): 810–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, Clara. 2016b. Gender, nation, and the politics of shame: Magdalen laundries and the institutionalization of feminine transgression in modern Ireland. Signs 41 (4): 821–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gregg, Melissa, and Seigworth, Gregory J., eds. 2010. The affect theory reader. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harré, Rom, ed. 1986. The social construction of emotions. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
HIQA. 2015. Findings of Hiqa inspection of the child protection and welfare services provided to children living in direct provision raises serious concerns. https://www.hiqa.ie/hiqa-news-updates/findings-hiqa-inspection-child-protection-and-welfare-services-provided-children (accessed June 13, 2017).Google Scholar
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. 2012. The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Irish Government, Inter‐Departmental Committee. 2013. Report of the inter‐departmental committee to establish the facts of state involvement with the Magdalen laundries (the McAleese report). Dublin.Google Scholar
Jaggar, Alison. 1992. Love and knowledge: Emotion in feminist epistemology. In Women and reason, ed. Harvey, Elizabeth D. and Okruhlik, Kathleen. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
James, William. 1981. The emotions. In The principles of psychology, vol. II. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kenny, Enda. 2013. Full text of Enda Kenny's apology to Magdalene laundries survivors. Irish Examiner, February 19. http://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/full-text-of-enda-kennys-apology-to-the-magdalene-laundries-survivors-585372.html#; (accessed September 2015).Google Scholar
Locke, Jill. 2007. Shame and the future of feminism. Hypatia 22 (4): 146–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lorde, Audre. 1984. The uses of anger: Women responding to racism. In Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. Berkeley: Crossing Press.Google Scholar
Luddy, Maria. 2007. Prostitution and Irish society, 1800–1940. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
The Magdalene Sisters. 2002. Directed by Peter Mullan. Dublin: A PFP Films Production in association with Temple Films.Google Scholar
McCarthy, Rebecca Lea. 2010. Origins of the Magdalen laundries: An analytical history. London: McFarland.Google Scholar
Meyers, Diana Tietjens. 1997. Emotions and heterodox moral perception: An essay in moral social psychology. In Feminists rethink the self, ed. Meyers, Diana Tietjens. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Munt, Sally R. 2008. Queer attachments: The cultural politics of shame. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha C. 2001. Upheavals of thought: The intelligence of emotions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha C. 2004. Hiding from humanity: Disgust, shame, and the law. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
O'Donnell, K., Pembroke, S., and McGettrick, C. 2013. Oral history of Mary Smith. In Magdalene institutions: Recording an oral and archival history. Government of Ireland Collaborative Research Project, Irish Research Council.Google Scholar
O'Donnell, Katherine, Pembroke, Sinead, and McGettrick, Claire. 2015. Magdalene oral history collection. Digital Repository of Ireland, Irish Qualitative Data Archive. https://repository.dri.ie/catalog/dn39x152w (accessed June 13, 2017).Google Scholar
O'Halloran, Marie. 2013. Taoiseach refuses SF call for apology. Irish Times, February 6.Google Scholar
O'Sullivan, Eoin, and O'Donnell, Ian. 2012. Coercive confinement in Ireland: Patients, prisoners and penitents. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Pedwell, Carolyn, and Whitehead, Anne. 2012. Affecting feminism: Questions of feeling in feminist theory. Feminist Theory 13 (2): 115–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Philomena. 2013. Directed by Stephen Frears. A coproduction of BBC Films, Baby Cow Productions, BFI, Magnolia Mae Films, and Pathé.Google Scholar
Probyn, Elspeth. 2005. Blush: Faces of shame. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Raftery, Mary. 2003. Restoring dignity to Magdalens. Irish Times, August 21.Google Scholar
Raftery, Mary, and O'Sullivan, Eoin. 1999. Suffer the little children: The inside story of Ireland's industrial schools. Dublin: New Island Books.Google Scholar
RTE. 2015. Drowned Syrian brothers buried in Kobane. RTÉ News, September 4. https://www.rte.ie/news/2015/0904/725594-syrian-family-kobane/ (accessed June 13, 2017).Google Scholar
Ryan, S. 2009. Report of the commission to inquire into child abuse (the Ryan report). Dublin. http://www.childabusecommission.ie/publications/index.html (accessed June 13, 2017).Google Scholar
Smith, James. 2004. The politics of sexual knowledge: The origins of Ireland's containment culture and the Carrigan report (1931). Journal of the History of Sexuality 13 (2): 208–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, James. 2007a. Ireland's Magdalen laundries and the nation's architecture of containment. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, James. 2007b. The Magdalene sisters: Evidence, testimony … action? Signs 32 (2): 431–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Erin N., and Wallace, Lora Ebert. 2012. For shame: Feminism, breastfeeding advocacy, and maternal guilt. Hypatia 27 (1): 76–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
TheJournal.ie. 2013. VIDEO: Taoiseach stops short of apologising for Magdalene laundries, angering survivors. February 5. http://www.thejournal.ie/enda-kenny-magdalene-laundries-apology-783527-Feb2013/ (accessed June 13, 2017).Google Scholar
Tomkins, Silvan. 1995. Shame‐humiliation contempt‐disgust. In Shame and its sisters: A Silvan Tomkins reader, ed. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky and Frank, Adam. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Valente, Joseph. 2005. Race/sex/shame: The queer nationalism of At swim two boys. Éire‐Ireland 40 (3 and 4): 58–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, Iris Marion. 2005. Menstruation. In On female body experience: Throwing like a girl and other essays. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar