Table Of Contentlinguistic
diasporas,
narrative
and
performance
The Irish in Argentina
Sarah O’Brien
Linguistic Diasporas, Narrative and Performance
“Based primarily on scores of interviews, this book masterfully blends Irish
migration studies with oral history and social linguistics. The result is a powerful
analysis of changing ethnic identities among members of an Irish diaspora com-
munity which, unlike the Irish in the United States, was unique in its location
in a non-English-speaking country and therefore historically privileged in its lin-
guistic and cultural affinity to the British imperial and capitalist forces that long
dominated Argentina and yet which ironically had first subjugated Ireland and
instigated its mass migrations. O’Brien sensitively explores these and other iro-
nies and contradictions in this very important and often deeply moving book.”
—Kerby A. Miller, Curators’ Professor Emeritus,
University of Missouri, USA
Sarah O'Brien
Linguistic Diasporas,
Narrative and
Performance
The Irish in Argentina
Sarah O’Brien
Trinity College Dublin
Dublin, Ireland
ISBN 978-3-319-51420-8 ISBN 978-3-319-51421-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-51421-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017940990
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Acknowledgments
The research and writing of this book underwent a long period of ges-
tation, during which I was kept afloat by the advice and direction of
many colleagues and friends. I am especially indebted to Kerby Miller,
Edmundo Murray, Juan José Delaney, Laura Izarra, former colleagues in
Mary Immaculate College and Northern New Mexico College, and cur-
rent colleagues in Trinity College Dublin.
Vital points of contact in Argentina provided assistance and orienta-
tion during the investigative phase of this book. These include the Irish
embassy in Buenos Aires, the Society of Saint Joseph, the Irish Catholic
Association, the Federation of Irish Societies, the staff and administration
of Cardinal Newman College and Stella Maris College, Hurling Club
and the Fahy Club.
My parents, Jim and Maria O’Brien, are sources of inspiration and
their provision of that most elusive of concepts, home, gave me the cour-
age to go out into the world and to attempt to fulfill my role in it. Also, I
am grateful for the generosity and support of Gemma and Gerard King,
who granted me reign of their cottage in Liscannor, Co. Clare during the
last months of the editing process, the solitude of which ultimately saw
this project through to fruition.
My time spent interviewing the Irish descendants in Argentina between
2010 and 2012 will be remembered with greatest pleasure. The memories
v
vi Acknowledgments
of these rich experiences remind me of the relevance of this study, and the
gratitude that I owe to these participants cannot be fully expressed. This
book is dedicated to them.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 L anguage, Memory and Diaspora 9
3 D o They Not Know What I Want to Say? 29
4 T o Nowhere, to Any Place 47
5 A n Affected Life 77
6 Getting on with the Neighbors 93
7 E ating Our Words: Food, Language and the
Preservation of Identity 111
8 F estivalizations of Irish Ethnicity 135
9 P ost-Peronism and the Collapse of Community 153
vii
viii Contents
10 Conclusion 173
Glossary 187
Bibliography 189
Index 197
1
Introduction
Why collect stories? After all, stories are based on human memory, and
human memory, in both its collective and individual form, is not only
fallible but is also compromised by its mediation through a physiological
and cultural need to survive.1 Furthermore, human memory does not fol-
low the linear form so valued by conventional scholars of migration and
diaspora, because we do not remember our human experiences chron-
ologically. Claudia, the irritated protagonist of Penelope Lively’s Moon
Tiger narrates her life story on the basis that:
There is no chronology inside my head. I am composed of a myriad
Claudias who spin and mix and part like sparks of sunlight on water. The
1 I found Oona Frawley’s discussions of how our understanding of cognitive memory can be applied
to collective and cultural memory very helpful during my own search for information on the sub-
ject. Illuminating too is the Irish Memory Studies network, hosted by University College Dublin,
particularly their podcasts and seminars that they have developed around Memory Studies in the
Irish historical context. Frawley, O., 2010, Irish Cultural Memory, History and Modernity:
Memory Ireland, v. 2: New York, Syracuse University Press, Frawley, O., 2014, The Famine and the
Troubles: Memory Ireland, v. 3: New York, Syracuse University Press. For the webpage of Irish
memory studies see Pine, E., 2016, Irish Memory Studies Network in I. M. S. Network, ed.,
University College Dublin.
© The Author(s) 2017 1
S. O’Brien, Linguistic Diasporas, Narrative and Performance,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-51421-5_1
2 Linguistic Diasporas, Narrative and Performance
pack of cards I carry around is forever shuffled and reshuffled; there is no
sequence, everything happens at once.2
The incompatibility of the kaleidoscopic nature of memory with the aca-
demic attachment to chronology has led, in large degrees, to the exclusive
application of the written record to explorations of the past, with let-
ters, newspapers and census records confidently cited as though they were
immune to the idealizations and biases of their authors. This literacy-
based history must also be thematic, made to fit under logical subhead-
ings and therefore dismissive of the deviant cases that might challenge its
hypothesis. I first began to struggle with these methodological and sty-
listic norms while completing my doctoral dissertation on Irish migrant
oral narrative in Britain, since its thematic organization necessitated the
piece-mealing of sections of oral narratives among diverse chapters and
the dismantling of what I saw to be holistic narrative performances into
decontextualized segments of quotation. Such compartmentalization not
only disregarded the poetics of the narrative but also commoditized it, by
mining for its facts and subject matter and therein destroying the natural
ecology in which identity, in all its temporality and contradictions, was
contained. When I quoted a piece of conversation as an auxiliary source
to the documents that I had unearthed in Birmingham’s library or reli-
gious archives, I inevitably implied it as finite and ordained it with a sense
of the absolute that in fact does not exist in human experience. Percy
eloquently notes the constantly shifting sands of identity when he states:
I don’t think human relationships are fully comprehensible. They can clar-
ify for small, beautiful moments, but then they change. Unlike a scientific
experiment with rigorous controlled parameters, our lives are boundless
and shifting. And there’s never an end to the story. We need more than sci-
ence – we need storytelling to capture that complexity, that kind of
incomprehensibility.3
Thus, a determination to stay loyal to the full participation of the nar-
rator over the demands of methodological convention partly m otivated
2 Lively, P., 1987, Moon Tiger. Harper & Row, New York
3 Percy, J., 2014, Life Keeps Changing: Why Stories, Not Science, Explain the World, The Atlantic.
