To Ireland in the end times: figuring the future in contemporary Irish fiction

ABSTRACT

This article examines a new strand of speculative Irish fiction that has emerged in the post-Celtic Tiger era. Focusing on novels by Kevin Barry, Sarah Davis-Goff, Catherine Prasifka and Danny Denton, I analyse how the speculative mode, with its ontological obliquities and temporal distortions, is particularly commensurate to the environmental and socio-economic complexities and predicaments facing Ireland at present. Specifically, these novels centre on problems and crises that have national and regional manifestations, but are ultimately global in scale and extent: ecological degradation, sea-level rise, food scarcity, pandemics, and the social and psychic effects of neoliberalism and surveillance capitalism. In coming to terms with such issues, particularly the hyperobject of climate change, these novels are often at their most effective in moments that de-privilege anthropocentric perspectives by establishing existential intimacies and political affinities with the natural and non-human realms.

KEYWORDS:

• Speculative Irish fiction
• climate change
• Kevin Barry
• late capitalism
• hyperobjects
• contemporary Gothic

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Writers and critics including Paul Murray, Julian Gough, Fintan O’Toole, John Banville, Eugene O’Brien, Eamon Maher, and Joe Cleary have argued for the relative lack of direct literary engagement with Celtic Tiger Ireland. Contrarily, critics such as Claire Bracken, Susan Cahill, Neil Murphy, Eoin Flannery, Adam Kelly, Jason Buchanan, and Marie Mianowski have maintained that Irish fiction did respond to the socio-economic transformations in Irish life at the turn of the new millennium. Sharae Deckard is perhaps the most strident proponent of this latter perspective when she argues that: “While some critics during the Tiger bemoaned the absence of literature reckoning with the excess of the Boom, in retrospect, Irish literature of the period appears saturated with the transformative violence of the neoliberal regime and its subsequent crisis.” “The IFSC as a Way of Organizing Nature,” paragraph 11. For further discussion, see Murphy; Mianowski, 1; and McGlynn, 7–8.

2. Kelly, 196.

3. Murphy, 184.

4. Calvino, qtd. In Murphy, 185.

5. Murphy, 185.

6. Jameson, 288.

7. McGlynn, 24; and Oziewicz, 2.

8. This article deploys the term speculative fiction as indicating a “fuzzy set super category” that demarcates a diverse range of genre that “in one way or another depart from imitating consensus reality,” including: science fiction, dystopia, zombie, vampire and post-apocalyptic fiction, slipstream, steampunk, and weird fiction. Oziewicz, 2.

9. Gough.

10. Keohane and Kuhling, 136.

11. Carroll and McClanahan, 655.

12. Ibid., 659.

13. Cobbe, The Age of Science (1877), Russell, “The Story of a Star” (1894); McCardle, “A Story Without an End (For N.C.)” (1922); Moore, Catholics (1972); Stuart, A Hole in the Head (1977); Ní Dhuibhne, The Bray House (1990). For further information, see Fennel and Prodzik. For examples of Celtic Tiger era fiction that adopts or interweaves speculative themes, plots or aesthetic modes, see: Haverty’s One Day As a Tiger (1997); McCloskey’s Protection (2005); McCormack’s Notes from a Coma (2005); and Gough’s, Jude: Level 1 (2007).

14. Fennel, 214, 3.

15. Londe.

16. As well as receiving positive reviews, Bohane won the European Union Prize for Literature and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. It was also short-listed for the Costa First Novel Award and the Irish Book Award.

17. Though the first academic paper on Bohane did not appear until several years after its publication, the novel has since been the central focus of almost a dozen journal essays or chapters in monographs and edited collections. See, for example: Long, Galvin, Mianowski (97–107);McGlynn (111–131); and Mikowski.

18. McGlynn, 115.

19. Mikowski,12.

20. Mikowski, 1.

21. Barry, 94; 42; 16; 18; 42;89.

22. Ibid., 241; 25.

23. Ibid., 17.

24. Ibid., 17.

25. Ibid., 3.

26. Ibid., 4.

27. Ibid., 142.

28. Estok, 41.

29. Deckard, “Energy Future,” 383.

30. Flynn, 163.

31. O’Leary.

32. Davis-Goff, 19–20.

33. Ibid., 68.

34. Cain and Montgomerie, 4.

35. Heffernan and Hamilton, 10.

36. Davis-Goff, 31–32.

37. Kristeva, 4.

38. Davis-Goff, 218.

39. O’ Grada, 5.

40. Davis-Goff, 193–194.

41. Morash, 185.

42. Farrier. 9.

43. Flynn, 164.

44. Morton, 1.

45. Suvin, 64.

46. Prasifka, 11.

47. Zuboff.

48. Prasifka qtd. In Feenane.

49. Prasifka, 76.

50. Ibid., 219.

51. Ibid., 12.

52. Ibid., 61.

53. Ibid., 68.

54. Morton, 103.

55. Denton, 47; 61.

56. For Fischer, capitalist realism signifies “the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it,” 2.

57. Denton, 61.

58. Ibid., 11.

59. Ibid., 177.

60. Morton, 197.

61. Morton, 184.

62. As Robbins, Torney, and Brereton argue, in Ireland there has been a “weak institutional response to the challenges posed by climate change. Across governance, policy, party politics, local government, and even the media, the issue has been seen as low priority and has had low salience. Policy documents have been unambitious, legislation has been weak, and diplomatic capital has been spent in securing flexibilities for Ireland.” 11.

63. Jameson, 289.

64. Clark, 21.

65. Ibid., 21.

66. Schnedier-Mayerson, 486.