"Binary identity"

Speaking in the context of Britishness, former leader of the Ulster Unionists, Mike Nesbitt, says he does not believe it is helpful to think in terms of 'binary identities', that is, thinking of people as being either British or Irish, or British or European. He cites poet John Hewitt's hierarchy of identity; Ulster, Irish, British, European. One can be all four.

He further adds that he does not believe that it is honest to think in this way on the basis that there are not many "pure gaels" or "pure Brits". He points to the fact that many Irish Catholics fought in the first world war, i.e. they were Gaelic yet British.

Fintan O'Toole, Irish Times columnist, agrees with him saying that around the year 2011/12 Irish and British people (probably meaning such people on the island of Ireland) were moving away from the "neurotic" approach of defining themselves on the basis of who they were not and in fact started to define themselves "by the actuality of their real existence which is quite complex and ambiguous rather than through these binaries." He then makes the point that Brexit has upset this and that the push for a hard Brexit is forcing people back into these binaries.

It is undoubtedly the case that one can have multiple identities, or at least that there can be multiple levels to one's identity. What is not the case, though, is that a person can have more than one political identity. A political identity is a very particular type of thing and one can ultimately only owe one's allegiance to one political order. Otherwise what would happen if two or more of the political orders one subscribes to came into conflict with each other? Implicit in the idea of order is the idea of  singularity. If you had multiple orders, this would lead to potential chaos which is clearly a contradiction. 

A person could certainly be politically British and only culturally Irish, or vice versa, and this would not cause a problem per se. Ian Paisley Sr. was an example of a man who considered himself Irish, though in a cultural/provincial sense that was subordinate to his political Britishness. Crucially, this did not mean Paisley was in any doubt as to Westminster's ultimate right to govern Ireland. That was the order of things. His Irishness only went so far.

Both Nesbitt and O'Toole seem to miss this important distinction between political identity and other types of identities. In speaking of people having complex and ambiguous identities, O'Toole appears to say that this means your political identity becomes equally complex and ambiguous, i.e. because the Irish are now so ambiguous and complex, so is their politics. I believe this to be rubbish. Our political identities are just as binary as they ever have been and ever will be; it's just that the politics we identity with have changed profoundly. We don't think in terms of a Holy Messianic struggle of National Liberation from Monarcho-Imperial oppression anymore. We now think in terms of being the model citizens of a global liberal democratic order. The binary is still there, it has simply moved.

What really copper-fastened the peace process in the North was not belligerents overcoming their differences but the divisions between them being rendered utterly trivial in an age of globalisation. Like a tidal wave, it washed away the importance and significance of their enmity. New enmities and divisions replaced the old, defined according to notions like the War on Terror. Irish and British cultural identities, along with many others, were subsumed into a new bigger narrative. But the binary distinctions that mark the political in any society at any point in history remain.

Thus, at the heart of Nesbitt and O'Toole's account is a delusion, if not a deceit, that the end of old school nationalism and unionism marks the end of binary identities.

Blasphemy

In a previous post, I suggested that the designation of the enemy in Ireland's politics had changed fundamentally. Rather than seeing our enemy as the British or British imperialism, our politics now increasingly sees Catholicism as the enemy.

As discussed in that post, the political is that part of discourse that is concerned with distinguishing friends from enemies in a somewhat black and white fashion. In a democratic republic, the process of enemy designation is a public process determined by as wide a range of the population as possible. In a more elitist system, the process is largely privatised and monopolised by the few.

In the Ireland of 1918, British imperialism was the enemy of a newly emerged and broad-based provincial middle class.  Some culturally influential was this class that it spilled over into Dublin in a rare example of reverse colonisation. This class was the effective ruling class in its day and so its politics reigned supreme. In the Ireland of 2018, Catholicism is the enemy of the current ruling class, which in contrast to the ruling class of a century earlier, is geographically concentrated around Dublin and oriented around international capital interests.

The politics of any given society is in a constant state of flux. The enemy is always being re-defined to suit the needs of that society's ruling class. No society has the moral high ground when it comes to this ugly business. However, I think it is fair to say that a politics which tracks a broader range of interests is superior to one which tracks a narrower range. On this basis, I believe that the politics of the present is inferior to the politics of the past.

The Blasphemy referendum is very much the politics of the present, let us call it Varadkarism, asserting itself. To a naive person, it would seem like confused priorities; why are we focussing on a defunct provision that isn't even enforced when we should be focussing on real issues like housing? But there is no confusion here.

To the people who determine what the political priorities are in this country (by definition the ruling class) blasphemy and the removal of any notion that Christianity is sacred in this land is more important and urgent that the fact that some people don't have houses or can't get houses. The support base of Varadkarism sees Ireland as some sort of beacon of liberal democracy for the whole world. It values that image very dearly, to the point of obsession. Because this base is well off - and it doesn't even include young professional couples looking to get on the housing ladder - it has the luxury of putting a premium on such an image.

Marriage equality, abortion, blasphemy - these are all premised on the idea that Catholicism, at least in a public sense, is the enemy. Under Varadkarism, ordinary people are mobilised around this phantom enemy. In this way, it is largely a politics of mass distraction.

I will not vote no in this referendum. Nor will I vote yes. I object to this referendum taking place at all. But I don't want to abstain as that would be akin to political apathy when I am in fact fully politically engaged. Therefore, I will spoil my vote. By spoiling my vote, I will be declaring my rejection of Varadkarism.

Some people say that if we objected to referenda because they are not urgent then we would never have referenda because there will always be something more pressing than a constitutional provision. This argument is not convincing. We vote on important constitution provisions all the time and quite legitimately in relation to EU treaties or even matters like creating a Court of Appeal or reforming the Seanad. Of course there are times when reforming the constitution is an important issue. Also, inserting a constitutional provision to the effect that water as a resource shall never be privatised is something that would have alleviated the concerns of reasonable people in relation to water charges.  Why was there no clamour for this?

Only in the most ideologically anti-Catholic sense could a toothless blasphemy law be considered a priority. But ideological anti-Catholicism is the key plank of Varadkarism.