Landslide from Ben Bulben

Abstract

In the days leading up to the Republic of Ireland's 2018 abortion referendum, activists from an organization called Sligo for Life erected a 100-metre-tall 'NO' sign made of plastic sheeting high on Ben Bulben in the Dartry Mountains. Over a 24-hour period, reactions played out in the temporary performance space of social media as a spontaneous, improvised performance of satirical images and comments, circulated predominantly on Twitter and Instagram. In this ecofeminist scramble through the limestone and mudstone slopes of Ben Bulben, I propose that at a crucial moment during high-stakes campaigning the performativity of the protest and its aftermath came to stand in for a material and metaphorical peak in what was subsequently widely pronounced as a 'landslide' victory for the 'yes' campaign when the referendum outcome was announced on 26 May. The initial performance on the mountain and its mediatized extension signalled an affective juncture in campaigning that belonged on but also went far beyond Ben Bulben's actual summit, contesting the gendered mountain space in the process. By reasserting Ben Bulben's apparently immovable historical, cultural and ecological significance, the responding community ultimately temporarily communicated the mountainside as an unstable and precipitous -- if not entirely feminist - space.

Notes

1 The referendum offered a choice on whether to keep or repeal the 8th amendment of the constitution in the Republic of Ireland, which gives equal right to life to the mother and the unborn child.

2 All major newspapers referred to the results of the referendum as a landslide, including The Irish Times, The Irish Mirror and The Independent.

3 Retrospectively, relistening to Banks’ interview in the wake of the referendum outcome, there was something uncomfortable about hearing rural Irish masculinity ridiculed from the UK. Some reporting on the powerful ‘Home to Vote’ movement – where Irish citizens abroad travelled back to Ireland to vote ‘yes’ so that others wouldn’t be forced to travel – was likewise uncomfortable from the UK (the quietly patronizing suggestion that backward Catholic Ireland needed its enlightened cosmopolitan emigrants to vote for fundamental women’s rights), souring the feeling for those Irish people moved to return.