Transatlantic Irish and the racial state

Unrestricted Many decades after the narrator in the “Cyclops” chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses lamented the loss of “the winged speech of the sea-divided Gael,” scholars have come to realize that Irish travels on the Green Atlantic merit systematic study like that given to the Black Atlantic. Yet it is only recently that any Irish Studies scholars have considered the Atlantic world as a framework that exceeds the usual binational approach to diaspora. In American Ethnic Studies, Irish America receives little consideration, except perhaps within the unstable category of “whiteness studies.” My dissertation assumes a different stance. It argues that comparison of the transnational experiences of the Irish in two quite different racial states, Britain and America, enriches comprehension of the racialization processes on both sides of the Atlantic.; The Irish not only fitted into the US racial state, I argue; they helped to form it. The claim that the Irish “became white” over time in the United States, while justified with regard to the shifting perceptions of race in US culture, does not account for the legal position of the nineteenth-century US state, which deemed the Irish “white” upon arrival. Till now, little heed has been paid either to the state’s role in the Americanization of the Irish or to the Irish role in the development of US state institutions.; My dissertation contributes a significant rethinking of racial formation in the United States, from a comparative and transnational perspective through a synthesis of seldom-connected theories and theorists. My Introduction explores Carl Schmitt’s concepts “sovereign power” and “nomos,” along with Giorgio Agamben’s concept of “bare life” in relation to the victims of the Famine, to the nineteenth-century British colonial state. Foucault’s concepts of biopower and governmentality in turn provoke reconsideration of the classic works of Omi and Winant, and of David Theo Goldberg, on the racial state. I undertake that task through the work of Nicos Poulantzas, whose seminal concepts of the methodologies of state formation are especially useful to describe the complex struggle between the economic and the political in the nineteenth-century evolution of the US state. Although none of these thinkers ever squarely confronts race, racialization, or colonialism, my synthesis and extension of their work furnish a more nuanced location of the post-Famine Irish in racial formations in the Atlantic world. Chapter 2 undertakes such a theoretical synthesis through the writing of James Joyce.; The oft-remarked rapidity with which the Irish Famine faded from historical and popular memory is usually attributed to the emigration of so many Famine victims and to the Famine’s role as an agent of the colonial modernization of Ireland. Yet the hidden afterlife of the Famine may be discerned in Ireland’s preeminent literary work, Ulysses. Joyce’s concern with the biopolitical management of life and death in what was then a British colony is readily apparent in “Hades” and “Lestrygonians,” chapters seeded with allusions to the Famine and emigration alike. Through close reading of such episodes, Chapter 2 exposes the Famine’s wake in the Atlantic world and thus rearticulates the Irish experience in the United States.; Chapter 3 compares Frederick Douglass’s liberating 1845 journey from America to Ireland with the opposite transatlantic flight of two Famine-era Irishmen, John Hughes, Archbishop of New York, and John Mitchel, the Irish revolutionary turned proslavery activist. In Ireland on the eve of the Famine, Douglass wrote that for the first time in his life he felt a complete human being. Mitchel, on the other hand, resisted British colonialism yet supported US slavery. The comparison of such transatlantic encounters frames not only racial subject formation but also church/religious power within a distinctly transnational context. My investigation of Hughes reveals how, contrary to received wisdom, Catholic religious imperialism flowed through the national imperialisms of both Britain and the US.; Leaving the black/white binary that preoccupies many scholars of Irish America, Chapter 4 continues west to California, the major “contact zone” between the Irish and Chinese. Here I distinguish citizenship, for which the Irish qualified upon entry into the United States, from nationality, which the Irish had to earn through two principal conduits: the cultural imaginary and state apparatuses. This chapter exposes how US state structures, infused with the ideological imperatives of Manifest Destiny, enabled the Irish in the West to embody ideal American citizenship more quickly than did their counterparts back East. An array of archival evidence –including government reports, laws, speeches, and newspaper articles – supports this assertion. The chapter shows how state political-legal disciplinary apparatuses provided extremely powerful conduits through which the Irish attained ideal American citizenship by denying it to the Chinese.; Citizenship, gender, race, and class constitute the focus of Chapter 5. Through the prism of popular culture – specifically, cartoons and theater – I contrast the feminization of the Chinese man with a peculiarly overlooked phenomenon, the masculinization of the Irish woman. Touching a theme that runs throughout the dissertation, the chapter further traces the acculturation-to-assimilation paths along which second-generation Irish women embraced, and were embraced by, ideal American womanhood.; In Chapter 6 I examine forms of cultural production generally overlooked by American Studies scholars: Irish American literature of the period. First were Famine Irish writers who arrived in the US from 1845 onwards and published until about 1875. Inspired by Archbishop Hughes, immigrants such as Mary Anne Sadlier and Father Hugh Quigley wrote socially and politically conservative novels intended to confine their Irish American readers to an insular, Catholic, Irish nationalist viewpoint, yet they claimed for those same readers a place within the unfolding national narrative of the United States. Particular attention is given in this chapter to the subgenre addressed specifically to Irish woman servants. In addition, the chapter investigates the dramatic change in emphasis that occurs in the work of certain second-generation Famine Irish American writers. Sons and daughters of Famine Irish who published after 1875 to the turn of the century, these authors fully embraced Catholic American citizenship while simultaneously rejecting militant Irish nationalist ideology.; Embodying a quite different manifestation of the Green Atlantic’s possibilities is James Connolly, one of the great unorthodox Marxist theorists of his time. Connolly wrote some of his most important work, including Labour in Irish History, in the United States, where he spent several years as a union organizer before returning to Ireland in time to lead the doomed Easter Rising of 1916. Chapter 7 examines Connolly’s transatlantic encounters with syndicalism and other political movements that deeply influenced his political practice. His experiences confirm the assertion of Linebaugh and Rediker that the Atlantic, that “many-headed hydra,” offers an alternative perspective on the history of social and political movements. Like Douglass, Connolly is defined not by motifs of settlement and assimilation, (reterritorialization,) but by movement and circulation, (deterritorialization,) affording a distinctly postnational and “oceanic” perspective.在詹姆斯·乔伊斯的《尤利西斯》（Ulysses）“独眼巨人”（Cyclops）章节中，叙述者哀叹“被大海分隔的盖尔人的羽翼之语”已然失落。数十载光阴逝去后，学者们终于意识到，绿色大西洋（Green Atlantic）语境下的爱尔兰流散经历，理应获得与黑色大西洋（Black Atlantic）同等的系统性研究。然而直至近年，爱尔兰研究（Irish Studies）领域的学者才开始将大西洋世界视为超越流散研究中常见双民族框架的研究语境。在美国族裔研究（American Ethnic Studies）范畴内，爱尔兰裔美国人的议题罕受关注，仅在摇摆不定的“白人研究（whiteness studies）”框架中略有涉及。 本博士论文秉持迥异视角：笔者主张，对比爱尔兰族群在英国与美国这两个种族国家（racial state）中的跨国经历（transnational experiences），可深化对大西洋两岸种族化进程（racialization processes）的理解。笔者认为，爱尔兰族群不仅融入了美国的种族国家体系，更参与塑造了这一体系。此前学界常称爱尔兰裔在美国社会中随时间推移“成为白人”，这一论断虽契合美国文化中种族认知的流变，却未能解释19世纪美国国家的法律立场——彼时美国法律自爱尔兰移民入境之初便将其归类为“白人”。迄今为止，学界既鲜有关注国家在爱尔兰裔美国化（Americanization）进程中所扮演的角色，也未重视爱尔兰族群对美国国家机构（state institutions）发展的推动作用。 本博士论文从跨国比较视角出发，整合此前鲜有被关联的理论与理论家，为美国种族形成（racial formation）研究提供了极具意义的重新思考。绪论部分探讨了卡尔·施密特（Carl Schmitt）的“主权权力（sovereign power）”与“法权秩序（nomos）”概念，以及乔治奥·阿甘本（Giorgio Agamben）的“赤裸生命（bare life）”概念，并将其与19世纪英国殖民国家语境下的饥荒受害者相关联。随后，福柯（Foucault）的生命权力（biopower）与治理术（governmentality）概念，促使我们重新审视奥米与温南特（Omi and Winant）以及戴维·西奥·戈德堡（David Theo Goldberg）关于种族国家的经典论述。笔者借助尼科斯·普兰查斯（Nicos Poulantzas）的研究完成这一梳理——其提出的国家形成方法论核心概念，尤有助于阐释19世纪美国国家演进过程中经济与政治之间的复杂博弈。尽管上述思想家均未直接直面种族、种族化或殖民主义议题，但笔者对其理论的整合与拓展，为大西洋世界中饥荒后爱尔兰族群的种族化处境提供了更为精微的定位。第二章便通过詹姆斯·乔伊斯的文本展开此类理论整合。 学界常将爱尔兰大饥荒迅速淡出历史与大众记忆的现象，归因于大量饥荒受害者的外流，以及饥荒作为爱尔兰殖民现代化推手的角色。然而，饥荒的隐秘余波可在爱尔兰最具代表性的文学作品《尤利西斯》中窥见端倪。乔伊斯对彼时作为英国殖民地的爱尔兰岛之生死生命政治管理的关切，在“冥府”（Hades）与“勒斯特律戈涅斯人”（Lestrygonians）两章中展露无遗——这两章均充斥着与饥荒及移民相关的典故。通过对此类章节的细读，第二章揭示了饥荒在大西洋世界留下的印记，并由此重新阐释了爱尔兰裔在美国的经历。 第三章对比了弗雷德里克·道格拉斯（Frederick Douglass）1845年从美国前往爱尔兰的解放之旅，与两位饥荒时代爱尔兰人截然相反的跨大西洋流动：纽约大主教约翰·休斯（John Hughes），以及爱尔兰革命家转而支持美国奴隶制的约翰·米切尔（John Mitchel）。在饥荒前夕的爱尔兰，道格拉斯曾写道，他人生中首次感受到完整的“人之为人”的体验。而米切尔虽反抗英国殖民主义，却支持美国的奴隶制。此类跨大西洋相遇的比较，不仅构建了种族主体形成的研究框架，更将教会/宗教权力置于鲜明的跨国语境中加以审视。笔者对休斯的研究揭示，与主流认知相悖，天主教宗教帝国主义借由英国与美国的民族帝国主义得以传播。 第四章跳出诸多爱尔兰裔美国研究学者所关注的黑/白二元框架，将研究向西延伸至加利福尼亚——爱尔兰族群与华人族群的主要“接触地带（contact zone）”。在此，笔者区分了公民权（citizenship）与民族身份（nationality）：爱尔兰移民入境美国时便具备公民权资格，而民族身份则需通过两大主要途径获得：文化想象与国家机器。本章揭示，受昭昭天命（Manifest Destiny）意识形态驱使的美国国家结构，使得西部爱尔兰裔比东部同胞更快地成为理想的美国公民。一系列档案证据——包括政府报告、法律条文、演讲与报纸文章——佐证了这一论断。本章还展示了美国国家的政治-法律规训机器，如何通过剥夺华人的公民权，为爱尔兰族群铺就了通往理想美国公民身份的强大通道。 第五章聚焦公民权、性别、种族与阶级议题。笔者借助大众文化棱镜——具体而言是漫画与戏剧——对比了华人男性的女性化刻板印象，与一个长期被忽视的现象：爱尔兰女性的男性化建构。本章贯穿了本论文的核心主题之一，即第二代爱尔兰裔女性所经历的“文化适应-同化”路径：她们既接纳了理想的美国女性气质，也被美国社会所接纳。 第六章探讨了美国研究学者普遍忽视的文化生产形式：这一时期的爱尔兰裔美国文学。首先是1845年起移居美国并持续创作至约1875年的饥荒一代爱尔兰作家。受休斯大主教启发，玛丽·安妮·萨迪尔（Mary Anne Sadlier）与休·奎格利神父（Father Hugh Quigley）等移民创作了兼具社会与政治保守倾向的小说，旨在将爱尔兰裔读者局限于封闭的天主教爱尔兰民族主义视角，但同时又为这些读者在美国不断演进的国家叙事中争取一席之地。本章特别关注了专门面向爱尔兰女性佣人的文学子类型。此外，本章还考察了部分第二代饥荒一代爱尔兰裔美国作家创作重心的显著转变：这些1875年至世纪之交发表作品的作家，既是饥荒移民的子女，便彻底接纳了天主教美国公民身份，同时摒弃了激进的爱尔兰民族主义意识形态。 詹姆斯·康诺利（James Connolly）则展现了绿色大西洋可能性的另一重面向——他是其时代最具颠覆性的马克思主义理论家之一。康诺利的诸多重要著作均创作于美国，其中包括《爱尔兰历史中的劳工》（Labour in Irish History）。他曾以工会组织者的身份在美国旅居数年，随后返回爱尔兰并领导了注定失败的1916年复活节起义（Easter Rising）。第七章考察了康诺利的跨大西洋遭遇，包括其对工团主义与其他深刻影响其政治实践的政治运动的接触。他的经历印证了莱诺瑙（Linebaugh）与雷迪克尔（Rediker）的论断：大西洋这个“多头蛇怪”，为社会与政治运动史提供了别样的研究视角。与道格拉斯一样，康诺利的身份并非由定居与同化（再领土化，reterritorialization）的主题所定义，而是由流动与循环（去领土化，deterritorialization）所塑造，这为我们带来了鲜明的后民族主义与“海洋性”研究视角。