Sally Rooney and Ireland’s post-colonial inferiority complex
Last week saw the debut of Conversations with Friends, the long awaited television adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel and follow up to the smash hit Normal People. This got me thinking about Rooney, what she and her work has come to represent in our culture and how it is a perfect encapsulation of the post-colonial inferiority complex felt by many Irish cosmopolitan types.
First thing’s first, I have not read any of Rooney’s books I have only seen the Normal People television series and read about her other work, but if Žižek can get away with not consuming the media he critiques then so can I; besides I am really critiquing Rooney as a phenomenon rather than as an artist. As a phenomenon and a cultural figure Rooney has become the voice of a generation, but only for a fraction of the population. Middle-class liberal millennial and zoomer women latch onto Rooney and her work like no other. While this can be reduced down her writing schmaltzy romance novels that have always proved popular I think there is something more to it. Rooney, her protagonists and her work all evoke a certain vibe; a psuedo-leftist virtuousness (while being willingfully ignorant to actual lives and struggles of working-class people), a specific type of cosmopolitan intellectualism (Rooney and her protagonists are English literature graduates from Trinity College), and from those points a certain contempt for ordinary working-class Irish culture, which I believe to be rooted in a post-colonial inferiority complex. Due to these points I find the traction Rooney has gained, specifically within Irish leftist and artistic spaces, to be fascinating.
Rooney, like her protagonists, longs to escape the perceived mundanity and anti-intellectualism of little ol’ Ireland. Artists emigrating is nothing new, but unlike James Joyce who’s boundary-pushing avant-garde work was unable to be published in the deeply conservative Ireland of the twentieth century, there is no real cultural reason as to why artists must leave (I’ll address the economic ones later). A closer point of comparison is My Bloody Valentine frontman Kevin Shields claiming the band had to get out of Dublin as they were too out there for their peers (at this point MBV were still a Cure knockoff and it was the height of post-punk and new wave). Shields has made another point about Irish art that I find somewhat relevant, while a fan of Irish traditional music in and of itself he always was put off by the culture surrounding it (drinking, dancing, hooting & hollering, etc.). I think this is how many middle-class artistic types engage with Irish media, capable of understanding its objective quality but unable to reconcile its origins in (largely working-class) Irish culture. They refuse to believe that people below them in the social ladder and who are not as trained to navigate the PMC media landscape as them, could achieve more than them (this is not just an Irish issue). Further foreign (Anglo-American) notions are typically applied to their critique, nationalism, which is central to much of Ireland’s great art, is not seen through an anti-imperialist lens but rather as something vulgar and reactionary for example. [2]
For Rooney and her ilk Ireland (particularly working-class and/or rural communities) is seen as uncultured and inhospitable to artists, if not just wholly inferior to other nations, most prominently the USA and UK. This perception is rooted in both ideas imposed by British colonialism and actual failings in decolonisation. There is a double consciousness of sorts at play, where they are both attempting to explore their lived experiences in Ireland, while also trying to conform to their perception of an idealised version of the UK or USA, which is more cultured and intellectual that Ireland. It is not clear the extent to which artists feel they must renounce their Irishness or if this yuppie sensibilities is just the same everywhere. Sally Rooney, Fontaines DC and the variety of other artists who fit these tropes essentially just create a pastiche of foreign media with the occasional reference to Ireland. Strangely, international critics and press celebrate these artists as heralds of Irish culture; this obviously comes down to ignorance towards the reality of contemporary Ireland, but it does have an impact in that it reduces Ireland down to being almost indistinguishable from the UK culturally, reinforcing Britain’s colonial view of Ireland.
A lasting impact of colonialism is that the Irish collective psyche has developed a sense of inferiority, under a vale of cynicism and sarcasm. By and large Irish culture is a stationary one, with most preferring to stand on the sidelines and consume foreign media, which is assumed to better. Ireland, like most countries, is subject to a bombardment of Anglo-American media; however, unlike most nations we do not have a strong domestic media landscape to combat this. There is still something provincial about Ireland, as though we have never fully broken free from the UK [3]. To be honest this does lend some credence to the view of Ireland being (in specific sectors) inferior to other nations. These facts coupled with how deeply neoliberal culture [4] is engrained in Irish culture means that making a career in music, film, comedy or football [5] is essentially impossible in Ireland, hence the exodus of anyone talented enough to the UK. In football for example only a select few footballers in Ireland’s underdeveloped top flight are able to make a living from it, while England’s nominally amateur fifth tier is home to an ever increasing number of full time professionals. Why would one stay in Ireland when there is so little to gain and the alternative across the water has at minimum the same potential and an infinitely higher ceiling. This logic is applied in pretty much all entertainment industry careers. Practically any famous Irish (non-trad) musician you can name emigrated (typically to London) to build their career, just as one from a small English town would have to. The domestic music landscape is reduced to trad, generic landfill indie and faceless nightclub DJs, while artists like Fontaines DC and Rejjie Snow may as well just be from the UK and USA respectively, their current ties to Ireland are so thin.
Perhaps the great irony of all this is that it is the middle-class artists who see themselves as above Ireland are the reason the nation so rarely produces quality art. Art in Ireland is the domain of rich kids (not to say that isn’t the case pretty much everywhere), their self-defeating “woe is me, no one understands me, I’m so smart” act only appeals to each other and lacks any substance relating to the real world, despite the nominally political veneer some like Rooney apply. The working-class have been locked out of art not only materially, but also culturally as the “scene” becomes more and more in looking and self-indulgent. Ireland is interesting as the decades immediately post-independence saw the emergence of great successful working-class artists like Brendan Behan, Seán O’Casey and Peadar O’Donnell, due in large part to the cultural reset that allowed them to be on par with the bourgeoisie counterparts. Alas this balance has been lost with time and power has returned to the hands of the wealthy and middle-class like in pre-independence times.
While I have beat around and downplayed the politics of Rooney and her ilk so far it is key to remember the majority of these people self-identify as left-wing, probably moreso than the average worker. How can these people reconcile their supposed ideology with their contempt for the working-class and their culture, and reinforce the structures that exclude working-class voices from art and media. While this article has honed in on a narrow issue, the arts, we must broaden our sights; how do these supposed left-wing allies actually want to change the world for the better, because it certainly is not through breaking down class barriers and working-class emancipation. Perhaps their “radical” politics are just a veneer to add an illusion of depth and intellectualism to their boring lives, just like the politics of Rooney’s books adds an illusion of depth and intellectualism to her boring stories.
[1] I wrote a big summary of Normal People’s plot to try and better explore Rooney’s worldview, but it got over-long and ruined the flow of the piece. I figured it was still good (enough), so read it here; a bonus piece to make up for this one’s delay.
[2] Irish republicanism/nationalism is seen by some middle-class liberals as being analogous to reactionary anti-immigrant nationalism elsewhere. I think this is both indicative of how many of these supposed liberals are still trapped within their parents’ conservative (typically Fine Gael) worldview and how their political knowledge is moreso borrowed from Anglo-American culture than the actual material conditions of Ireland.
[3] I see this as an example of how the revolution for independence was never quite completed. The Pro-Treaty side who emerged victorious from the Civil War continued to function as a vassal of the UK, and during the conservative de Valera era art existed as a very conservative homogenised institution. In the decades following the liberal artistic resistance look to the UK (as previously discussed) and the Irish economy still did not have the capability to support much of an “alternative” art scene until it was to late in the Celtic Tiger and capitalist realism had reached hegemony.
[4] Neoliberal culture is best (but still not great) term I could come up with for the phenomenon at play. While neoliberalism holds hegemonic power in most of the west, Ireland’s relationship is different. Neoliberalism and tax haven status are seen as the saviors of Ireland; in the same way the British colonisers attempted to portray themselves as bringing civilisation and modernity to Gaelic Ireland, American corporations have succeeded in doing so in contemporary Ireland. Due to this Ireland has a much stronger and personal connection to gloabalised capitalism and consumerism, with it being above critique (akin to the Catholic Church historically) for many.
[5] Reading back this comes across as a bit dismissive of the League of Ireland and portraying it as inferior to even lower-league football in England. I’m actually a very big fan, and here is a piece I have written about it. Honestly, Ireland’s obsession with the Premier League (and to a lesser extent the rest of English football) is one of the most interesting elements of our post-colonial inferiority complex.
All good things must come to and end, and so must me being on schedule. This piece took a week longer than I had hoped in no small part to me pondering if it was just pointless moaning (boo-hoo I didn’t like a TV show and hipsters are pretentious. Get over it, who am I moaning like this, Sally Rooney?). I promise I will get back on schedule and have a new piece for you next week; in the meantime please read my back catalogue, it is very good.
