As my classes end and the last few deadlines draw ever closer, I am tasked with confronting the intimidating task of compiling a portfolio of excerpts from my scholarly blog. Creating this blog and keeping it updated has been a challenge, but a welcome one nonetheless, and I have genuinely enjoyed the freedom and growth afforded to me in doing so. Being able to discuss topics with a more relaxed tone and contemporary angle has broadened my understanding of research in the Internet age. Settling on a research topic has been my biggest challenge during my MA, and this is certainly evident in the eclectic mix of topics discussed in the blog, including Irish writing, contemporary horror, music and transhumanism. I have thoroughly enjoyed being given the opportunity to cover these weird and wonderful topics and relate them to current events and contemporary media. My primary interests and eagerness to examine a wide range of topics and perspectives is evident from the beginning of this blog.
From one of my very first entries, on the 2nd of November 2022:
“Graduating has definitely brought me to reflect upon my last three years at University College Cork. I was always encouraged to experiment and investigate new methods of research during my time as an undergraduate student. Some of my favourite projects include a presentation I gave on “Sirens”, an episode of Ulysses where the narrative structure is based on musical forms (combining my two passions!), a group project I participated in where we recorded a podcast on vampires in literature from the 18th century to the present day, and a project where I investigated the disparity in gender representation in Irish music and how DIY collectives, events and initiatives can uplift women in the music industry.
I have always enjoyed taking a more multi-faceted approach to different projects, and I love challenging myself to think outside of the box when answering the question. However, with my first deadline approaching, I do feel under slightly more pressure to contribute to the academic field with more original ideas. I have chosen to write about how different 19th century thinkers represent the relationship between humans and technology. I found the seminar covering 19th century representations of modernity to be extremely engaging and I felt like the class group worked really well to collaborate and build off of our ideas and interpretations together. What I found most striking about these texts was the tendency of these authors to identify the worker with the machine, and their not-so-subtle reliance on essentialist ideas of gender. I found the presence of these essentialist ideas most interesting considering that these thinkers tend to praise technological advancement as it allows society to progress forward and for humans to work beyond their natural limitations. However, it is clear that the benefits of scientific and technological advancements were never intended to be divided out equally when we consider the issues of classism and sexism in 19th century society. Ure praises a particular employer for maximising profits “by substituting the industry of women and children for that of men; or that of ordinary labourers for trained artisans” (2). Even the more progressive Martineau often fails to meaningfully distinguish between man and machine in her admiration of the industrial process (Fielding and Smith, 419-20). When this idea popped up in our seminar discussions, I knew that I wanted to investigate this line of thinking even further in my essay”.
I remember finding the Theories of Modernity module particularly difficult, so it was gratifying to have this outlet where I could express the ideas I had encountered in my seminars in a less formal online space. The ideas I encountered in the Martineau text partially influenced my decision to look at how scientific and technological advancements informed perceptions of disability in literature, as I was struck by how Martineau addressed workers in his writing. Looking back on this early post, I do feel (and hope!) that my writing has become less robotic in tone since the beginning of the term! My interest in horror and the Gothic is reflected in this next excerpt:
3rd November, 2022 “Some Thoughts on the Public, Private and Pandemic in Pearl (2022)”:
“The film presents several contrasts to the audience throughout; public and private, repression and sexuality, tradition and progression. Pearl desires to move past her humble origins, desperate to be seen for what she believes she is: a star. She becomes fixated on “the pictures”, fascinated by the dancers she sees in her local cinema. The resident projectionist introduces Pearl to pornography, assuring her that it is soon to become legal and that she, too, could be on screen someday. In one of the more unsettling scenes of the film, Pearl goes home and simulates intercourse with a scarecrow, all the while fantasising about the projectionist. This is not the first time the protagonist is seen engaging in unusual and disturbing behaviours in private, speaking to her farm animals as if they were human and killing them when she feels they have insulted her or misbehaved. When Pearl’s controlling mother confronts her for leaving the house, Pearl murders her, showing her new, disturbingly defiant character.
It would be impossible to mention the backdrop of the influenza pandemic presents without relating it to the ongoing Covid pandemic. Pearl’s mother withholds food once she discovers that she has been to town, putting her father at risk. There is a feeling of isolation present throughout; the cinema is sparsely attended, and background characters are seen walking alone with their faces covered. One particular shot, where Pearl is watching a film, alone, and slips down her mask to eat, feels so mundane, but so unnervingly relevant to today, that it honestly caught me off-guard.”
I have always found epidemiology to be absolutely fascinating. While the influenza pandemic is only present as a backdrop to the disturbing events of Pearl, the frequent shots of characters donning masks and the sense of isolation (present in shots of sprawling, empty fields, Pearl’s silent, repressive home, the empty cinema in which she escapes her troubled household and her speech at the end of the film where she discusses her depression and loneliness) feel all too familiar to the contemporary viewer, three years into a global pandemic. I was similarly able to connect current understandings of the climate crisis to Mary Robinson’s Romantic poetry:
10th November, 2022 “Climate, Class, Contrasts and Complacency in Mary Robinson’s “The Wintry Day” and Now”:
“…I analysed the poetry of Mary Robinson, particularly “The Wintry Day” for my Romanticism and Modernity seminar. She contrasts mansions, silky chambers, people gathering around fires, singing, drinking, enjoying one another’s company, protected from the harsh conditions outside. Meanwhile, the poverty-stricken are left to freeze in “barren” hearths, braving the cruel force of nature. She paints comforting, joyful, domestic images before abruptbly ending these stanzas with “Ah! No!” and juxtaposing the wealthy’s celebrations with the grief and misery of the poor. The poor are isolated “in a cheerless nak’d room…where a fond mother famish’d dies” while the wealthy gather around “their shining heaps of wealth…sporting their senseless hours away”. Robinson exposes the massive disparity between classes as she describes how different members of society would experience the same day in Winter. The wealthy seem to possess little awareness of the conditions the poor are forced to face as they are exposed to the harshest conditions with little food or shelter. The oppositions between nature and culture, rich and poor, excess and barrenness are extremely striking and surprisingly relevant to today.
This poem written in the nineteenth century feels unsettlingly close to our current reality. It definitely brought me to wonder about my own role in all of this. Am I, like the wealthy citizens in Robinson’s poem, “senseless”? We are, of course, undeniably privileged in our ability to tune out negative news by switching off the television and deleting Twitter. What about those in the global South who are affected most, while the worst perpetrators–our friends Musk and Bezos, for example–propose ways to escape the planet that they helped to destroy? Transhumanism was another topic we discussed in class, but it feels so disturbingly cynical that our newfound ability to prolong our lives, play with the idea of consciousness, or explore new worlds, is being harnessed by the ultra-wealthy to transcend the consequences of their own actions.”
I found a bit of a groove in connecting my classwork to different current events and contemporary media. The next excerpt is from my favourite post, where I compared the music of the post-punk revival (often termed ‘post-Brexit music’) to the Dada art and writing we had been discussing for the Literary and Cultural Modernisms Module. I do feel like I really developed my voice here, and writing about a topic so close to my heart definitely assisted in this. There is definitely something to be said for the tendency to create absurdist and seemingly nonsensical art as a response to a world that can feel equally bizarre.
18th January, 2023 “I’ll Be Okay, I Just Need to Be Weird and Hide for a Bit: Modern Post-Punk and Dada”
“Dry Cleaning’s most popular song, “Scratchcard Lanyard”, involves a string of seemingly unrelated statements spoken by a seemingly disconnected Florence Shaw. In live performances, her apathetic delivery is amplified as she tends to stand almost entirely static, sighing into the microphone, almost rolling her eyes. I absolutely adore this song, most of all for the main hook: “Wristband, theme park, scratchcard, lanyard/Do everything and feel nothing/Do everything and feel nothing”. The line feels like a moment of clarity in a sea of lyrics that bear seemingly little meaning: “I think of myself as a hearty banana/With that waxy surface”. But, others interspersed in verses of nonsense reveal a sense of weariness, or a sort of existential angst: “I’ll be okay, I just need to be weird and hide for a bit/And eat an old sandwich from my bag” “You can’t save the world on your own/I guess”. The music video depicts Shaw wearing a dollhouse on her head and drinking from a tiny glass, singing into a tiny microphone, remaining relatively expressionless all the while. The contrast between the driving, more lively instrumental and the unenthusiastic vocals is reflected as the camera zooms out and we see Shaw standing static, staring right at the viewer with her head trapped in the house, while her bandmates are free to move as they please. The closest ‘canonical’ group I could compare them to would be Talking Heads, due to the warm, prominent basslines and funky guitar tones, but it’s difficult to describe the band in simple terms. The lyrics could be providing an insight into the neuroses of a struggling idealist, driven to near-madness by a monotonous but unrelenting life. The listing of different cities and products, conjures up an image of an individual who is simply going through the motions, doing everything, feeling nothing.
It likely goes without saying that the song resonated with me a lot. When I googled the lyrics for the first time, I discovered that the hook I had become so fixated on had been lifted from a tampon advertisement.
I was reminded again of this song while studying 20th century art movements (including Futurism, Surrealism and, most importantly, Dada) when I came across this quote by Francis Picabia:
“Dada is like your hopes: nothing
like your paradise: nothing
like your idols: nothing
like your heroes: nothing
like your artists: nothing
like your religions: nothing”
This felt like a perfect summation of the movement’s very core; the anger and hopelessness underpinning the amusing and nonsensical works being created. Nihilistic humour from a generation who felt totally disempowered during a time when the upper class acted as the gatekeepers of culture. Studying the writings of Marcel Duchamp and Tristan Tzara (for me) rendered conspicuous the prevalence of their ideas in contemporary art and music in the present day.”
Although this post is slightly different from the others on this blog, I wanted to include it as an example of one with a more interdisciplinary angle. I had begun to feel like there was a cyclical nature to art and literature after seeing how relevant the writings of the Romantic poets on the environment were to contemporary climate discourse. Studying Dada and reading about the artists who created absurd works out of anger at the circumstances of the First World War immediately reminded me of the bizarre “Scratchcard Lanyard”. I was able to draw upon my own passion for music here. As I began to refine my research during semester two, I wanted to focus more on medicine and disease in different texts, as I chose to examine a contemporary text that I adored:
1st February, 2023 “The Other Side: Pessimistic Humanism in Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go“:
“Francis Fukuyama describes the transhumanist movement as one where humans “must wrest their biological destiny from evolution’s blind process of random variation and adaptation and move to the next stage as a species”. Transhumanists believe in the employment of technology to allow humans to transcend our anatomical limitations, allowing us to reach the next stage of evolution.
(…) However, transhumanist ideology has been subject to criticism. Billionaire cowboy and ex-Twitter CEO Musk has faced backlash for his claims that we are to flee to Mars and become one with technology through his Neuralink (a brain implant which he hopes could “restore full-body functionality to someone who has a spinal cord injury” . Ashley Capoot writes: “Musk invested tens of millions of his personal wealth into the company and has said, without evidence, that Neuralink’s devices could enable “superhuman cognition,” enable paralyzed people to operate smartphones or robotic limbs with their minds someday, and “solve” autism and schizophrenia”. (…) While transhumanist ideas are becoming increasingly topical in popular culture and academic scholarship, there exists the ever-present rebuttal that these ideas–especially those touted by the Musks and Bezoses (?) of the industry–exist to benefit the exceedingly wealthy.
(…) Ishiguro follows Kathy and her friends Ruth and Tommy as they navigate friendship and romance as they come of age in Halisham. It is not until the end of the novel that the characters realise that their circumstances are inescapable; that the art that they were made to create at Hailsham as children was not some key to their escaping, but rather was being collected as part of a protest by their mentors and different human rights activists to demonstrate that the students possessed souls and that the practice that had benefitted humanity so greatly had been actively violating the rights of a manufactured outgroup. The process of donation is treated with an unusual sense of honour by the end of the novel, after Kathy is left to care for her friend and romantic interest, Tommy. As Tommy draws closer to being summoned for his fourth donation, Kathy describes the way in which ‘completion’ (a euphemism for death used throughout the text) is treated by those who face it:
“I’ve known donors to react in all ways to their fourth donation. Some want to talk about it all the time, endlessly and pointlessly. Others will only joke about it, while others refuse to discuss it at all. And then there’s this odd tendency among donors to treat a fourth donation as something worthy of congratulations. (…) Even the doctors and nurses play up to this: a donor on a fourth will go in for a check and be greeted by whitecoats smiling and shaking their hand”.
The novel ends after Tommy’s ‘completion’, as Kathy faces a future having outlived the vast majority of her peers. Ishiguro’s choice to examine the outgroup of a supposedly utopian society brings the reader to reflect upon the ramifications of this accelerated technological development. The miraculous medical advancements that have come about as a result of the cloning are often mentioned, yet it is difficult to feel optimistic about these changes when the primary characters actively suffer as a result. The new medical treatments are not seen directly in the text, only alluded to, rendering them all the more difficult to believe.”
In this last excerpt, I reviewed a research seminar where Dr Tina O’Toole of the University of Limerick spoke on the New Woman in Rosamund Jacob’s The Troubled House, examining the role of avant garde art in twentieth century politics and the role of women in Ireland during the Civil War. Irish writing is, admittedly, something of a blind spot of mine, and the New Woman writers of the twentieth century have been unfortunately often overlooked, often facing controversy for representing women’s sexuality and Queer relationships. This seminar inspired me to further consider the role of different artistic mediums in texts and to examine a wider variety of perspectives.
15th April, 2023 “Dr Tina O’Toole on Avant Garde Feminism in Early Twentieth Century Ireland”:
“Dr O’Toole focused on Rosamund Jacob’s The Troubled House as an example of Irish New Woman literature. Jacob encountered great difficulty in securing a publisher for the book, which focuses on the breakdown of Irish domestic life during the Civil War and the limited public spaces afforded to women in the Free State and counterculture in twentieth century Dublin. The narrator, Margaret Cullen, is an example of the more traditional ‘womanly woman’, while her husband represents the older nationalist generation. She encounters two New Women who live and work together, in contrast with her more traditional values. Nix, an artist, is sexually liberated and has a love for Modernism. Margaret’s home life is troubled when one of her sons joins the army, causing his father to reject him. The novel also plays around with men’s gender roles, as Margaret teaches her sons how to sew to be independent of women in her absence. Her son Liam also dresses as a woman to avoid capture after assassinating a British soldier.
In having Margaret occupy the role of an outsider (having returned after spending several years in Australia caring for her sister) Jacob captures several different perspectives of the Irish Civil War. She acknowledges the rapidly evolution of Avant Garde art, including movements like Cubism which often featured androgynous subjects. O’Toole posed that although Jacob’s contributions to the New Woman writing movement and uncovering of Irish counterculture have only recently been rediscovered, her connecting of politics and art and her accounts of gendered spaces in Ireland render it relevant and valuable to contemporary readers. Dr O’Toole’s talk was incredibly engaging and enlightening, covering a topic of which I admittedly do not have much knowledge. Her focus on the various gender perspectives and political views in twentieth century Ireland was fascinating and certainly inspired me to examine such differences in the texts I will focus on in my own research”.
While I encountered difficulty grappling with the blog at first–particularly in finding a balanced tone, engaging subject matter and contributing original content–it has been a refreshing exercise that I hope to maintain even after finishing my course! It has served as a creative outlet of sorts where I have been able to test out new ideas, draw unexpected parallels and write endlessly about the topics I am passionate about. It has also assisted in the challenge of writing consistently, making the task of writing feel far more approachable. I feel that my writing style has developed and my ability to find new perspectives has become more refined since creating it and I hope that is evident in this portfolio of my work over the last few months.