Dis-orienting Orientalism in contemporary Irish writing: Yan Ge’s Irish short stories

ABSTRACT

This article examines representations of Asia and Asian characters in contemporary Irish writing, drawing on the discourse on Orientalism and other postcolonial theories. Orientalism in Irish studies has undergone multiple phases: from the Celtic-Oriental ties that stressed cross-colonial identification with Eastern countries as a way to bolster nationalist narratives during the Celtic Revival, to the comparison with new and futuristic, late capitalist East Asian “Tiger” societies from the 1990s to the present day. Irish Orientalism thus stands uneasily between traditional Anglo-European Orientalism, which continues to reproduce certain stereotypes of the Other, and anti-imperial agendas that challenge established colonial discourses. While differing from its British counterpart, Irish literature has often been complicit in producing and sustaining Orientalist images, especially in its representations of migrants. By analysing Yan Ge’s short stories set in Ireland, this article offers a rare perspective from the Other side. Yan Ge’s thematic and formal consideration of her status as an Asian outsider aims to dis-orient and re-orient Irish readers. By looking steadily back at the Orientalist gaze, the portrayals of cross-cultural encounters in Yan Ge’s works help to create more fruitful and equitable conversations regarding Ireland’s role in the global order and its changing relationship with Asia.

KEYWORDS:

• Irish Orientalism
• contemporary Irish writing
• Irish short fiction
• Yan Ge
• cross-cultural criticism

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. See, for instance, Villar-Argáiz, Literary Visions of Multicultural Ireland.

2. Delaney, “Immigration and Irish Short Fiction,” 85.

3. Cleary, The Irish Expatriate Novel, 88.

4. Ibid., 87–91.

5. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak critiques the tendency of Western thinkers and writers to assume (even if unconsciously) the West as the normative and universal Self: “the intellectual is complicit in the persistent constitution of Other as the Self’s shadow.” Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” 75.

6. Lennon, Irish Orientalism, xxi.

7. Cleary refers this phase as pertaining to the first category, where Asia featured in Irish writing in terms heavily influenced by Euro-American Orientalism and Celticism. Identification with Asia and the East’s ancient civilisations as an alternative to Western modernity were stressed, as seen in the works of W. B. Yeats and Lafcadio Hearn. Cleary, The Irish Expatriate Novel, 92–107.

8. Lennon, Irish Orientalism, xxvi.

9. On a related note, Paul Muldoon has been subject to much debate for his use of “Native American material” in his poetry. For Muldoon, the Irish and Native Americans are politically and culturally comparable in their colonial experience. Many Native intellectuals have pointed out that no matter how well-intentioned the non-Natives are in representing Native cultures, they are “embroiled in a deeply problematic history of appropriation and manipulation. Such representations risk serving to make of Native experience not an original site out of which Natives themselves might speak, but a discursive device freely adaptable to Euro-American poetic projects.” Fox, “Transnational Displacement,” 55–73; 56).

10. Dolan, Exciting Times, 8.

11. Nevertheless, Joe Cleary argues that Exciting Times is “less about Hong Kong, which like Edith remains thinly realized, than a novel about the condition of the Irish novel in the changing late capitalist system.” He adds: “New forms of engagement on new terms with a new Asia are still possible, but […] any such engagement would require more commitment, and commitment of a different quality, than Ava has the courage to make.” Cleary, The Irish Expatriate Novel, 127; 129.

12. Leerssen, “Irish Studies and Orientalism,” 173.

13. Lennon, Irish Orientalism, xxix.

14. Said, Orientalism, 222–29.

15. Herr, “The Erotics of Irishness,” 6.

16. Lennon, Irish Orientalism, xxviii.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid., xxix.

19. Fogarty, “Representations of the Immigrant,” 127.

20. Ibid.

21. Pollak, “The Chinese Literary Sensation.” Yan Ge currently lives in Norwich, UK.

22. Zhong, “Writing from In-Between.”

23. Ibid.

24. Ge, “Suitcase.”

25. See note 22 above.

26. Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo.

27. See note 24 above.

28. Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 28.

29. See note 24 above.

30. Ibid.

31. Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 27.

32. See note 24 above.

33. “Essex Lorry Deaths.”

34. Reynolds and Kearney, “Irish Company Confirms.”

35. “Morecambe Bay Cockling Disaster.”

36. “World Directory of Minorities.”

37. See note 24 above.

38. Ibid.

39. Ge, “Looking for the Japanese.”

40. Ibid.

41. DeLillo, White Noise, 228.

42. Ibid., 375.

43. See note 22 above.

44. See note 39 above.

45. Ibid.

46. Ibid.

47. Ibid.

48. See note 22 above.

49. Said, Orientalism, 4–15.

50. Hall, “The West and the Rest.”

51. See note 22 above.

52. Ge, “How I Fell in Love.”

53. Ibid., 17.

54. Ibid, 18; 19.

55. DeLillo, White Noise, 232.

56. Ge, “How I Fell in Love,” 21.

57. Ibid., 8.

58. Ibid., 16.

59. Ibid., 26.

60. For further reading, see Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White; Brannigan, Race in Modern Irish Literature; Asava, The Black Irish Onscreen; Dabiri, Don’t Touch My Hair; and Joseph, Critical Race Theory.