Border Country: Postcolonial Ecocriticism in Ireland

Ecocriticism in Irish studies, and the spatial turn which preceded it, emerged from the field’s concentration on postcolonial discourse and the inequalities inherent in Irish modernity. The focus on place as a means of establishing identity, particularly within the context of colonial and imperialist narratives, led to a dynamic discussion of literary representations of the environment in Irish studies depicting fraught relationships between land and scarcity. And yet, there was resistance to engaging with the key debates in Anglo-American ecocriticism on a systematic level. As Eóin Flannery observed in 2016, “the field of Irish cultural studies has yet to exploit fully the critical and analytical resources of ecological criticism.” So far, the discourse around depictions of space has been principally in the service of Irish cultural studies, asking how the relationship with place has made Ireland what it is today. One of the interesting aspects of the incursion of ecocriticism in the field of Irish studies is how environmental considerations have come to be recognised as a part of the identity discourse. As the title suggests, the island of Ireland is also a border country in that it encompasses a contentious border, and two distinct identities, from both Northern Ireland and the Republic. This essay examines the emergence of ecocritical discourse in Irish studies and explores the ongoing dynamic between postcolonialism and environmental criticism with respect to the Irish canon.