Migration and Performance in Contemporary Ireland

Towards a New Interculturalism

Charlotte McIvor

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781137469724
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137469731
• Topic: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Subtopic: Arti performative

This book investigates Ireland's translation of interculturalism as social policy into aesthetic practice and situates the wider implications of this 'new interculturalism' for theatre and performance studies at large.

Offering the first full-length, post-1990s study of the effect of large-scale immigration and interculturalism as social policy on Irish theatre and performance, McIvor argues that inward-migration changes most of what can be assumed about Irish theatre and performance and its relationship to national identity. By using case studies that include theatre, dance, photography, and activist actions, this book works through major debates over aesthetic interculturalism in theatre and performance studies post-1970s and analyses Irish social interculturalism in a contemporary European social and cultural policy context.  Drawing together the work of professional and community practitioners who frequently identify as both artists and activists, Migration and Performance in Contemporary Ireland proposes a new paradigm for the study of Irish theatre and performance while contributing to the wider investigation of migration and performance.  

© The Author(s) 2016

Charlotte McIvorMigration and Performance in Contemporary IrelandContemporary Performance InterActions10.1057/978-1-137-46973-1_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Towards a New Interculturalism?

Charlotte McIvor¹

(1)

Drama and Theatre Studies, National University of Ireland, Galway, Galway, Ireland

End Abstract

Throughout Europe and in Canada, the term ‘interculturalism’ has recently been deployed as a revamped social and rhetorical policy alternative to ‘multiculturalism’. The European ascendance of interculturalism is reflected in documents and events such as the 2007 European Commission’s Agenda for Culture in a Globalising World, the Council of Europe’s 2008 White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue: ‘Living Together as Equals in Dignity’ and the mounting of the 2008 European Year of Intercultural Dialogue. In Canada, the state of Quebec has embraced an official rhetoric of interculturalism following the 2008 Bouchard Taylor Commission Report. ¹ Statist as well as intra- and supra-national circulations of this newly ascendant social policy term force us to reconsider the theories of aesthetic interculturalism developed in the field of theatre and performance studies in the last several decades.

Theatre and performance studies has primarily considered interculturalism as, in the words of Patrice Pavis, the use of ‘hybrid forms drawing upon a more or less conscious and voluntary mixing of performance traditions traceable to distinct cultural areas.’ ² This book instead investigates how interculturalism performs at the intersection of social policy and aesthetic practice through a case study of Irish theatre and performance post-1990s. In short, this book proposes a new framework for analysing interculturalism in theatre and performance studies, firstly, by theorising the use of interculturalism as a keyword of social policy and not only aesthetic experimentation and, secondly, by examining its role in one historically specific location.

This book’s concern is to analyse Irish interculturalism as a social and aesthetic formation. The Republic of Ireland’s mobilisation of interculturalism as social policy and aesthetic practice since the 1990s serves as its central case study, with Northern Ireland excluded due to scope. In less than 20 years, the Republic of Ireland went from less than 5 % non-Irish born in 1996 to a 12 % non-Irish national population according to the 2011 census. ³ Migrants had been drawn to Ireland by the short-lived but intense prosperity of the Celtic Tiger economic boom as well as the accession of several new member states to the European Union in 2004 and 2007, including Poland and Lithuania who have contributed the most sizable portion of Ireland’s Eastern European minority-ethnic community. The Celtic Tiger was a ‘term taken from the legendary success of the East Asian Tigers in the 1980s and early 1990s.’ ⁴ The ‘new Irish’, as they are named by Bryan Fanning, ⁵ are a diverse group of more than 196 nationalities, with the largest minority-ethnic groups including Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Nigerian and Romanian migrants. ⁶ Following the 2008 economic crash, emigration levels have risen and inward migration has slowed, but increased social diversity will be a lasting legacy of the Celtic Tiger period. In 2014, 25 % of all births were to mothers born outside of Ireland. ⁷

This book examines a range of minority-ethnic subjects in Ireland, ranging from migrants who have travelled to Ireland for work without the intention to stay permanently, individuals seeking asylum, those who have achieved refugee status, those with indigenous minority-ethnic status, including Travellers, and minority-ethnic Irish-born citizens who may, for example, be of mixed-race or ethnicity. I refer to individuals by name rather than immigration status whenever possible except where that legal status is pressing to an understanding of their political situation. I use the term ‘minority-ethnic’ throughout, following Deepa Mann-Kler.

Traditionally the term ethnic minority has and is still being used. However, it creates the impression that ‘ethnic’ is a term applied only to minority groups within a given society. However, all people—Black or white—belong to an ethnic group. The smaller ethnic groups are then denoted to the prefix ‘minority’ and the larger ethnic groups by the term ‘majority.’ ⁸

Using the term ‘minority-ethnic’ in an Irish context ensures that Irishness itself remains visible as an ethnicity constantly under revision and renders explicit the ways in which debates over the ethnicity and race of minority communities have framed debates over national belonging in contemporary Ireland.

As early as 1998, Ireland officially adopted interculturalism over multiculturalism through the formation of the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism (NCCRI), an ‘independent expert body’ composed of governmental and non-governmental authorities ‘focusing on racism and interculturalism’ ⁹ that was in existence up until its funding-related demise in 2008. The NCCRI defined interculturalism as being ‘essentially about interaction between majority and minority cultures to foster understanding and respect. It is about ensuring that cultural diversity is acknowledged and catered for.’ ¹⁰ The fluidity and flexibility of this broad (and vague) definition will be a major focus of this book’s critique, but it is my major contention that the nuances of social interculturalism as policy renovation cannot be understood without the methodological tools and analytical sites offered by the discipline of theatre and performance studies. I am ultimately less concerned with whether social interculturalism works as a policy renovation but more interested in investigating what its theoretical foundations imply about power, race, ethnicity, gender, nation and citizenship as made visible through the crucible of performance.

Ireland’s early adoption of interculturalism over multiculturalism and relatively rapid experience of inward migration positions it as a paradigmatic test case of the tension between these two terms in relationship to the contemporary management of migration throughout Europe. My Irish focus also recognizes the especially pronounced relationship between Irish national identity, the state and performance over time; this is a precedent solidified by the establishment of the Irish National Theatre Society Ltd at the Abbey Theatre in 1904 and its rise to status as the first state-subsidized theatre in the English-speaking world in 1925. Such an interdependency continues in new and even intensified forms post-Celtic Tiger as Irish interculturalism leans repeatedly on the arts as metaphor, rehearsal and case study for the practical application of its goals and policies. This book investigates the nature of this co-dependency, while arguing that inward migration changes most of what can be assumed about Irish theatre and performance and its relationship to national identity. Following Leo Cabranes-Grant’s study of interculturalism and theatre in Colonial Mexico, this book investigates ‘how intercultural exchanges modify and make history, how certain performances contribute to the management and reevaluation of social identities.’ ¹¹ It does so by analysing the intersection of social policy and aesthetic practice that occurs under the sign of ‘interculturalism’ in Ireland today. By using case studies that include theatre, dance, photography and activist actions, this book works through major debates over aesthetic interculturalism in theatre and performance studies post-1970s and analyses Irish social interculturalism in a contemporary European social and cultural policy context. Drawing together the work of professional and community practitioners who frequently identify as both artists and activists, Migration and Contemporary Irish Performance proposes a new paradigm for the study of Irish theatre and performance while contributing to the wider investigation of migration and performance.

Interculturalism as Social Policy/Interculturalism as Aesthetic Practice

Interculturalism as a proposed social policy solution in European countries such as Ireland, Belgium, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and the UK among others ¹² emerged in response to issues of migration primarily. It is often offered as a restorative alternative to critiques of multiculturalism. The Council of Europe’s 2008 White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue was ‘approved by the Council of Ministers representing all member states of the Council of Europe, and the Paper itself is derived from consultations with policymakers in the member states.’ ¹³ According to Will Kymlicka, ‘we have here an official statement by a pan-European organisation stating that it is the consensus of member states that multiculturalism has failed.’ ¹⁴ These critiques habitually allege multiculturalism to be a set of statist and non-statist policies and practices that result in division between minority and majority ethnic groups. This includes charges that multiculturalism facilitates ‘social fragmentation and entrenched social divisions’, distracts ‘attention away from socio-economic disparities’, encourages ‘a moral hesitancy amongst “native” populations’ or even contributes to ‘international terrorism’ among other failings. ¹⁵ If multiculturalism is stereotypically charged with striation and division, interculturalism promises to alleviate this condition through emphasis instead on ‘participation,’ ¹⁶ ‘mutual understanding,’ and fostering an ‘active sense of European’ (as opposed to other) ‘citizenship’, ¹⁷ as well as pursuing ‘dialogue.’ ¹⁸

Interculturalism’s rise as a keyword of early twenty-first century social policy was matched by a renewed interrogation of aesthetic interculturalism in performance. This reinvigorated inquiry particularly drew attention to the use of intercultural aesthetic approaches by diasporic, migrant and/or otherwise globalised (usually minority) networks as in Julie Holledge and Joanne Tompkins’s landmark 2000 study, Women’s Intercultural Performance. In 2002, Una Chaudhuri celebrated a ‘new interculturalism’ in the work of theatre and performance scholars including Julie Holledge, Joanne Tompkins, Rustom Bharucha and Johannes Birringer. This work challenged the paradigm of taxonomic intercultural theatre, defined by Holledge and Tompkins as ‘simplistically demarcating the boundaries between cultures.’ ¹⁹ This book continues the investigation of this ‘new interculturalism’ extended even more recently in the work of Ric Knowles, Daphne Lei, Leo Cabranes-Grant, Hae-kyung Um, Marcus Cheng Chye Tan, Christopher Balme and Diana Looser among others. Their work includes studies of the oppositional possibilities of Asian interculturalisms (Um, Tan and Lei), alternative genealogies of interculturalism within colonial and indigenous histories (Balme, Grant and Looser) and the resignification of interculturalism as a tool to critique white hegemony through coalitional minority-ethnic theatre practice in Toronto (Knowles). Ric Knowles forcefully argues:

[i]nterculturalism is an urgent topic in the twenty-first century. As cities and nations move beyond the monochromatic, as human traffic between nations and cultures (both willing and unwilling) incre...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction: Towards a New Interculturalism?
• 1. Intercultural Production Infrastructures
• 2. Producing the Intercultural Subject
• 3. Intercultural Publics
• Backmatter