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Abstract
This essay concerns the aesthetic category of “quaintness.” The quaint is argued here as useable as an aesthetic-political tool with which to construct cultural authenticity or the sense of a preserved past and the maintenance of social order within a hyper-globalised world. The essay makes its argument through consideration of Irish identity aesthetics of the 1960s and 1970s; specifically, the postcards of the John Hinde Studio and the urban design schemes of the Tidy Towns programme. These quaint phenomena contributed to Irish post-war liberal modernisation and its fostering of international tourism, presenting a particular commercialised image of the “pre-modern” and the “traditional.” Confrontation between the tourist economy and Irish Traveller populations is used to highlight the political functions of quaintness.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Daniel Harris, Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic (Boston, MA: Da Capo Press, 2001), 25. Harris analyses quaintness as an aesthetic category within North American consumer culture, alongside concepts such as coolness, zaniness, the futuristic, deliciousness, the natural, the glamorous and cleanliness.
2 Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), 107. In considering political and aesthetic equivalencies it also seems that political concepts of time rely on aesthetic definitions: in contrast to the steady march of empirical time, politics concerns stasis, acceleration, or reversal.
3 For further reading see George M. Kreps, Joseph F. Donnermeyer, Charles Hurst, Robert Blair and Marty Kreps, “The Impact of Tourism on the Amish Subculture: A Case Study,” Community Development Journal 32, no. 4 (1997): 354–67.
4 Grace E. Lavery, Quaint, Exquisite: Victorian Aesthetics and the Idea of Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019), 23.
5 Lavery, Quaint, Exquisite, 23.
6 Lavery, Quaint, Exquisite, 23.
7 Konrad Lorenz, “Die angeborenen formen möglicher Erfahrung,” Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie 5, no. 2 (1943): 235–409; Melanie L. Glocker, et al., “Baby Schema in Infant Faces Induces Cuteness Perception and Motivation for Caretaking in Adults,” Ethology 115, no. 3 (March 2009): 257–63.
8 “Irish Town’s Anti-littering Sign is Going Viral for its Pure Irish-Mammy-Style Scolding of Rubbish Droppers,” Irish Post, September 25, 2019, https://www.irishpost.com/news/irish-towns-anti-littering-sign-going-viral-pure-irish-mammy-style-scolding-rubbish-droppers-171741.
9 Sianne Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 53, 59.
10 Included in Rosmarie Garland-Thompson’s Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body (New York: NYU Press, 1996), Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories, 66.
11 From Clement Greenberg, “Avant Garde and Kitsch,” Partisan Review 6, no. 5 (1939), 11. Susan Stewart, “Proust’s Turn from Nostalgia,” Raritan 19, no. 2 (1999), 77–78. Greenberg’s essay is anthologised in Gillo Dorfles, Kitsch: An Anthology of Bad Taste (New York: Universe Books, 1969), 116–26.
12 Dorfles, Kitsch, 14.
13 Dorfles, Kitsch, 66.
14 “Inside the 'neo-Nazi village' of Jamel,” BBC News, September 6, 2016, https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-37280504.
15 John Macarthur, The Picturesque: Architecture, Disgust and Other Irregularities (Oxon: Routledge, 2007), 110.
16 Hastings quoted in Macarthur, The Picturesque, 1. Architectural debate over the picturesque as a low cultural category vs. a serious aesthetic term is highlighted by Macarthur in a special issue of the Journal of Architecture, on “Townscape Revisited.” Macarthur points out: “Banham wrote that the picturesque represented ‘the most debased English habits of compromise and sentimentality.’ Pevsner’s role at the AR was to show that the picturesque was a sophisticated theory and cultural practice with an honourable history in which Townscape was the next step.” John Macarthur, “‘The Revenge of the Picturesque,’ Redux,” Journal of Architecture 17, no. 5 (2012), 643.
17 See Reyner Banham, The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic? (New York: Reinhold Publishing Corporation, 1966) for Banham’s investigation of ethical (and hence political) and aesthetic interrelations with regards to architecture. Compare Macarthur, The Picturesque, 106.
18 Alois Reigl, “The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Origin,” Oppositions 25 (1982): 21–51.
19 Primarily, Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics: Distribution of the Sensible (London: Continuum, 2004).
20 Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics, 12.
21 Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics, 13.
22 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments (Amsterdam: Querido Verlag, 1947), 97.
23 Though it should be noted that Rancière argues for a more fundamental interrelation of aesthetics and politics than the historically specific focus of Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt School, as noted in The Politics of Aesthetics, “There is thus an ‘aesthetics’ at the core of politics that has nothing to do with Benjamin’s discussion of the ‘aestheticization of politics’ specific to the age of the masses” (13).
24 “Meaning of Quaint in English,” Cambridge Dictionary, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/quaint; “Quaint (adjective),” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quaint; “Quaint,” Dictionary.com, https://www.dictionary.com/browse/quaint; “Quaint,” Britannica Dictionary, https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/quaint.
25 AMO, Rem Koolhaas and Samir Bantal, Countryside: The Future, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, February 20–March 12, 2020; October 3, 2020–February 14, 2021.
26 Edwin Heathcote, “Rem Koolhaas’s Countryside at the Guggenheim Remakes Rural Life,” Financial Times, February 22, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/fc136dba-530b-11ea-90ad-25e377c0ee1f.
27 (Then) Prince Charles invoked a populist quaintness in opposition to the perceived elitism of 1980s high-tech architecture in his famous “monstrous carbuncle” speech of 1984 at the 150th anniversary dinner of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA): “What I believe is important about community architecture is that it has shown ‘ordinary’ people that their views are worth having; that architects and planners do not necessarily have the monopoly of knowing best about taste, style and planning.” A speech by HRH The Prince of Wales at the 150th anniversary of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Royal Gala Evening at Hampton Court Palace, May 29, 1984.
28 Sarah Burns, “Artist behind Garda Eviction Image Believes ‘People are Missing the Point’,” Irish Times, April 3, 2023, https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/housing-planning/2023/04/02/artist-behind-garda-eviction-image-believes-people-are-missing-the-point/. As noted in this article, much of the controversy around spicebag.exe’s image came after its resharing by Sinn Féin’s housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin.
29 For further reading on the complex conditions between buildings, national identity and history in Ireland, see Ellen Rowley, “1966: The Binary Conditions of Irish Architectural Modernism,” in A History of Irish Modernism, eds. Gregory Castle and Patrick Bixby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 394–418. For an interdisciplinary aesthetic exploration of the politico-temporal tensions of twentieth-century Irish modernity, see also: Linda King and Elaine Sisson, eds., Ireland, Design and Visual Culture: Negotiating Modernity, 1922–1992 (Cork: Cork University Press, 2011).
30 “Mission and History,” Keep America Beautiful, https://kab.org/about/approach/mission-history/.
31 “Our History,” Keep Britain Tidy, https://www.keepbritaintidy.org/our-history.
32 “About,” Keep Australia Beautiful, https://www.sustainablecommunities.com.au/about/.
33 “Beautiful Awards,” Keep New Zealand Beautiful, https://www.knzb.org.nz/programmes/rewards-and-recognition/beautiful-awards/.
34 “The History of the Wiltshire Best Kept Village Competition,” Countryside Charity Wiltshire, https://www.cprewiltshire.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2021/03/BKVC-History-Mar-2021.pdf.
35 Indeed, Sean Lemass was Minister for Industry and Commerce during the Trade War (1932–38).
36 Sean Lemass had a role in the formation of Aer Lingus (April 15, 1936) and many other “semi-state” companies when he was the Minister for Industry and Commerce for the Free State of Ireland.
37 AnCo/Bord Failte, A Report on Bord Failte’s Tidy Towns Competition 1958–1982 (Dublin: Failte Ireland, 1982), 8.
38 AnCo/Bord Failte, A report on Bord Failte’s Tidy Towns Competition, 8.
39 Eric G. E. Zuelow, Making Ireland Irish: Tourism and National identity Since the Irish Civil War (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2009), 118.
40 Zuelow, Making Ireland Irish, 118.
41 AnCo/Bord Failte, A Report on Bord Failte’s Tidy Towns Competition, 1982 (reproduced 2017), 17–20. https://www.tidytowns.ie/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/History-of-Tidy-Towns-1958-1982.pdf.
42 AnCo/Bord Failte, A Report on Bord Failte’s Tidy Towns Competition, 23.
43 “Virginia County Cavan is Tidiest Town in Ireland 1964,” Raidió Teilifís Éireann archives, https://www.rte.ie/archives/2015/0831/724722-virginia-is-tidiest-town/
44 Joseph Flynn, “Beautiful Aughrim—Tidy Town of County Wicklow,” YouTube video, 2:40, August 16, 2008, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogTAIuMXbYY.
45 Michael Cronin and Barbara O’Connor, eds., Irish Tourism: Image, Culture and Identity (Clevendon: Channel View Publications, 2003), 2–3.
46 Mark Fischer, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (Winchester: Zero Books, 2012), 6.
47 See, for example, the National Museum of Ireland’s collection of twentieth-century Irish Travel Posters: https://www.museum.ie/en-ie/collections-research/collection/irish-travel-posters?page=2.
48 Hinde’s images captured perfectly the imagery described by Éamon de Valera on his Easter Sunday broadcast in 1943 (see footnote 54).
49 These included the work of many other photographers who worked or trained with Hinde.
50 The photograph was taken by David Noble, another member of Hinde’s studio.
51 Stewart, “Proust’s Turn from Nostalgia,” 77–78.
52 Irish Travellers are a historically nomadic ethnic minority. See, for instance, Jane Helleiner, Irish Travellers: Racism and the Politics of Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001); Jim Mac Laughlin, “Nation-Building, Social Closure and Anti-Traveller Racism in Ireland,” Sociology 33, no. 1 (1999): 129–51; Bryan Fanning, “New Rules of Belonging: How Travellers Came to be Depicted as Enemies of Progress,” An Irish Quarterly Review 104, no. 415 (2015): 302–12.
53 Commission on Itinerancy, Report of the Commission on Itinerancy, August 1963.
54 Commission on Itinerancy, Report of the Commission on Itinerancy, un-paginated insert between 40–41.
55 Commission on Itinerancy, Report of the Commission on Itinerancy, un-paginated insert between 42–43.
56 Fanning, “New Rules of Belonging,” 302–12.
57 Mac Laughlin, “Nation-Building, Social Closure and Anti-Traveller Racism in Ireland,” 129.
58 Mac Laughlin, “Nation-Building, Social Closure and Anti-Traveller Racism in Ireland,” 129.
59 An event which was hardly surprising. In “‘Menace to the Social Order’: Anti-Traveller Discourse in the Irish Parliament 1939–59,” Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 24, no. 1 (1998): 75–91, Jane Helleiner examines the long history of rarely challenged attacks on Travellers in the Dáil, which preceded the Report of the Commission on Itinerancy, and the ideological processing of Traveller discrimination through the modernisation project of the 1960s.
60 Commission on Itinerancy, Report of the Commission on Itinerancy, 11.
61 Una Crowley, “Liberal Rule through Non-liberal Means: The attempted settlement of Irish Travellers (1955–1975),” Irish Geography 38, no. 2 (2005): 128–150.
62 Crowley also notes the correlation of the Traveller “question” to the development of the tourism industry through debate in the Dáil Éireann dating from April 15, 1958. Crowley, “Liberal Rule through Non-liberal Means,” 131.
63 Commission on Itinerancy, Report of the Commission on Itinerancy, 90.
64 “Halting Site Bonfires Disgrace,” Kilkenny People, August 22, 2014, https://www.kilkennypeople.ie/news/kilkenny-news/58853/Halting-site-bonfires-disgrace-.html; Lynda Kiernan, “Traveller Halting Site has Portarlington Community ‘Inflamed’ on Laois Offaly Border,” Leinster Express, February 21, 2018, https://www.leinsterexpress.ie/news/portarlington-/298409/traveller-halting-site-has-portarlington-community-inflamed-on-laois-offaly-border.html; Southern Star Team, “Local Fury over ‘Unofficial’ Halting Site with Animals at Scenic Spot in Bantry,” Southern Star, January 14, 2020, https://www.southernstar.ie/news/local-fury-over-unofficial-halting-site-with-animals-at-scenic-spot-in-bantry-4198938.
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Felix McNamara
Felix McNamara writes about aesthetics, ideology and history. He currently teaches at the University of Sydney.