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Postfeminism and Ethical Issues in Four Post-Celtic Tiger Irish Plays by Women

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Abstract

In its introduction, the chapter surveys definitions of post-feminism and references to the contentiousness of the term, quoting from, among others, Sarah Gamble, who summarizes the main lines of the post-feminist debate. Paradoxical as it is in other societies, post-feminism in Ireland has proven to be an intensely ambiguous discourse giving rise to forms, practices and embodiments of both conscious feminism and its opposite: acknowledged, latent or unrecognized anti-feminism or refocused backlash. Regarding the sociocultural changes in people’s increasingly essentializing and conservative outlook and their potential interaction with post-feminism in the years of economic recession, this chapter relies on insights in Diane Negra’s analysis of the Irish situation and on theoretical approaches to theatre and ethics. Drama by Irish women today displays a heightened sensitivity to the contradictions that stem from a biased regendering of earlier achievements in women’s emancipation as well as an amount of courage to address these issues by means of innovative strategies in characterization and dramaturgy. This chapter looks at four post-Tiger Irish plays by female authors: Marina Carr’s Marble (2009); No Romance by Nancy Harris (2011); Shush by Elaine Murphy (2013); and Spinning by Deirdre Kinahan (2014). It considers their dramatization of ethical issues in the context of post-feminism and the problematic changes and processes bearing the mark of austerity politics. The plays stage ethical issues through the characters’ failing relationships with partners, spouses, parents and children or old-time friends. The analysis underscores that there is a distinct concern with the ethical and unethical in contemporary Irish women’s drama inspired by the disturbing new phenomena contiguous to post-feminism and the post-boom problems responsible for the chaotic moral state of present-day Irish society.

The first version of this chapter was delivered as a keynote lecture at the conference “Women Playwrights and Theatre Makers” in Limerick, June 2017.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Fien Adriaens, “Post Feminism in Popular Culture: A Potential for Critical Resistance?”, Politics and Culture 2009, 4, n.p.

  2. 2.

    Sarah Gamble, “Postfeminism” in The Routledge Companion to Feminism and Postfeminism, ed. Sarah Gamble (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 36.

  3. 3.

    Ibid.

  4. 4.

    Ibid., 37.

  5. 5.

    Wanda Balzano and Moynagh Sullivan, “Editorial: The Contemporary Ballroom of Romance.” in The Irish Review, 35 (summer 2007): 1.

  6. 6.

    Ibid.

  7. 7.

    Claire Bracken Irish Feminist Futures (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 85.

  8. 8.

    Diane Negra, “Adjusting Men and Abiding Mammies: Gendering the Recession in Ireland” in Irish Review 46 (2013): 24.

  9. 9.

    Ibid., 31.

  10. 10.

    Cormac O’Brien, “Unblessed Among Women: Performing Patriarchy Without Men in Contemporary Irish Theatre” in Ireland, Memory and Performing the Historical Imagination, ed. Christopher Collins and Mary P. Caulfield (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 200.

  11. 11.

    Eamonn Jordan, “Irish Theatre and Historiography,” in The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Theatre, ed. Nicholas Grene and Chris Morash (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 691.

  12. 12.

    Melissa Sihra, “Shadow and Substance: Women, Feminism, and Irish Theatre,” in The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Theatre, ed. Nicholas Grene, Chris Morash (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 557.

  13. 13.

    Werner Huber, “Introduction.” in Ireland: Representation and Responsibility, ed. Werner Huber, Michael Böss, Catherine Maignant, Hedwig Schwall (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2007), 9.

  14. 14.

    Ibid.

  15. 15.

    Alan Read, Theatre, Intimacy and Engagement (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 69.

  16. 16.

    Nicholas Ridout, Theatre and Ethics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 13, 22.

  17. 17.

    Ibid., 53.

  18. 18.

    Meadhbh McHugh, “The Glass Ceiling and the Gag: Fifth Wave Feminism & Ireland’s National Theatre, 2010–2014,” in For the Sake of Sanity: Doing Things With Humour in Irish Performance, ed. Eric Weitz. (Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2014), 145.

  19. 19.

    Ibid., 145–6.

  20. 20.

    Marina Carr, Marble (Dublin: Gallery Books, 2009), 62.

  21. 21.

    Ondřej Pilný, “Whose Ethics? Which Genre? – Irish Drama and the Terminal Days of the Celtic Tiger”, in Ethical Debates in Contemporary Theatre and Drama, ed. Mark Berninger, Christoph Henke, and Bernhard Reitz (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2012), 177.

  22. 22.

    Carmen Kuhling and Kieran Keohane, Cosmopolitan Ireland: Globalisation and Quality of Life (London: Pluto, 2007), 127.

  23. 23.

    Ibid., 128.

  24. 24.

    Song of Songs 5: 15 in Holy Bible, New International Version. Biblica Inc., 2011 (1973). https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Song+of+Songs+5%3A15&version=NIV.

  25. 25.

    Carr, Marble, 52.

  26. 26.

    Ibid., 53.

  27. 27.

    Luce Irigaray, “Women on the Market” in Literary Theory: An Anthology. Second ed., ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan (London: Blackwell, 2004), 809.

  28. 28.

    Carr, Marble, 19–20.

  29. 29.

    Ibid., 65.

  30. 30.

    Pilný, “Whose Ethics? Which Genre?”, 179.

  31. 31.

    About the role of the internet in the drama see my essay “Post-Celtic Tiger Crisis Genderized and the Escape to Virtual Realities in Nancy Harris’s No Romance” in Boundaries, Passages, Transitions: Essays in Irish Literature, Culture and Politics in Honour of Werner Huber. Irish Studies in Europe 08, edited by Hedwig Schwall and Chiara Sciarrino. (Trier, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2018), 113–125.

  32. 32.

    O’Brien, “Unblessed Among Women,” 200–1.

  33. 33.

    Ibid., 201.

  34. 34.

    Nancy Harris, No Romance (London: Nick Hern Books, 2011), 37.

  35. 35.

    Ibid., 21.

  36. 36.

    O’Brien, “Unblessed Among Women”, 201.

  37. 37.

    Harris, No Romance, 69.

  38. 38.

    Ibid., 45.

  39. 39.

    Ibid., 62.

  40. 40.

    Negra, “Adjusting Men and Abiding Mammies”, 31.

  41. 41.

    Harris, No Romance, 70.

  42. 42.

    Ibid., 71.

  43. 43.

    Ibid., 74.

  44. 44.

    Ibid., 75.

  45. 45.

    Ibid., 76.

  46. 46.

    Ibid., 89.

  47. 47.

    Ibid., 102.

  48. 48.

    Elaine Murphy, Shush (London: New Hearne Books, 2011), 7.

  49. 49.

    Ridout, Theatre and Ethics, 56.

  50. 50.

    Murphy, Shush, 26.

  51. 51.

    Ibid., 55.

  52. 52.

    Murphy, Shush, 57. About the role of Irene in the play I totally disagree with Peter Crawley, whose review of Shush in the Irish Times writes her off as “supposedly the dimmest member of the group”.

  53. 53.

    Murphy, Shush, 70.

  54. 54.

    Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London/New York: Verso, 2004), 21–22.

  55. 55.

    Deirdre Kinahan, Spinning (Dublin: Fishamble, 2014), 35–36.

  56. 56.

    Kuhling and Keohane , Cosmopolitan Ireland, 12.

  57. 57.

    Kinahan , Spinning, 42.

  58. 58.

    Ibid., 52.

  59. 59.

    Matthew, Roe. “An interview with SPINNING playwright Deirdre Kinahan.”

    https://www.buzzonstage.com/chicago/wicker-park/irish-theatre-of-chicago/articles/an-interview-with-spinning-playwright-deirdre-kinahan.

  60. 60.

    Kinahan , Spinning, 86.

  61. 61.

    Ondřej Pilný, The Grotesque in Contemporary Anglophone Drama (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 13.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary

    Mária Kurdi

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  1. Mária Kurdi
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Correspondence to Mária Kurdi .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of English, Drama and Film, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Eamonn Jordan

  2. School of Creative Arts, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Eric Weitz

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Kurdi, M. (2018). Postfeminism and Ethical Issues in Four Post-Celtic Tiger Irish Plays by Women. In: Jordan, E., Weitz, E. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58588-2_58

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