Friday, May 05, 2006
Mope, Moping and Mopery…
MOPE is an acronym that derives from the title of an essay written by Professor Liam Kennedy a few years back. It comes with the sub title: THE HISTORICAL SYNDROME OF THE MOST OPPRESSED PEOPLE EVER. As a notional ‘syndrome’, it affects the capacity of otherwise rational individuals to see Northern Ireland’s problems in context with other global (and much more traumatic) events. It is rooted in the feeling that Ireland’s trauma is not like anyone else’s: it is deep and unto itself.
As Kennedy explains in the opening paragraph, it betokens a strong feeling that “Ireland’s past is not a foreign country.”:
For the plain people, unionist as well as nationalist, it is familiar, static and reassuring. It sometimes seems, as Theodore Hoppen says, “as if time itself has lost the power to separate the centuries”. For unionists and protestants, even at the end of the 20th century, images of massacre, of siege, of insecure victory still carry a powerful charge. For catholics and nationalists, there are the 700 years of oppression at the hands of the English and, for some, the unfinished business of the British presence in Ireland. For all the emphasis by historians on complexities and discontinuities, there is a popular sense of deep continuities, of enduring patterns which stand outside of historical time.
Although the essay was written some years ago, the syndrome continues to this day: with each side prone to advertise its own suffering to the exclusion of all others. And indeed that of those in other places, such as Srebrenica, Darfur, East Timor, Congo, Uganda and Rwanda.
And it is prone to affect more than just the extremes. As Kennedy remarks of Parnell:
Reports of the “Bulgarian Atrocities” in the later 1870s had excited and troubled the sensibilities of liberal Britain. Throwing this concern back in the face of Gladstone and his fellow liberals, the emerging leader of the Home Rule movement pronounced that Ireland had suffered much more at the hands of the English than the Bulgarians at the hands of the Turks.
Inevitably is it is a regular feature of discussion on Slugger still, and is likely to remain so until some kind of stable democratic settlement kicks in, and, much as they have in the Republic, our politicians final have license to take decisions of the things that actually matter to people on the ground.
Mick Fealty @ 08:57 AM
Mick, in your last paragraph there are you suggesting that a devolved executive will help alleviate the MOPEry in Northern Ireland and on slugger specifically? Nice to see optimism isn’t dead.
Posted by on May 05, 2006 @ 10:36 AMBoth beano. We can live in hope! But I suppose I mean that, despite it supposedly mythical capacity to transform the world) the blogosphere ain’t going to put to rest what politicians can.
Posted by on May 05, 2006 @ 10:41 AMAs an English observer, sure there is “Mopery” here and in Irish political discourse generally, but I really don’t think that Irish people are unique in that. Wherever there are two ethnic/religious groups in conflict in a small area then these things come out. Look at the Israelis and Palestinians. When you get an Indian and a Pakistani in the same room a competition ensues as to who was hardest done by under the Raj and at Partition.
Mick’s optimism is not wholly unjustified but I think that it is the rapprochement between the two traditions that will bring an end to “Mopery”. The only evidence I can give for this rosy view was my time in India.
In India I taught in a school which had, every October, a parade to honour the members of the school (there were several) who had won VC’s and the like in the Two World Wars, and before, serving with the British Army. One of the MC’s was proudly displayed in a cabinet in the assembly hall together with copies of the VC citations. In January and August however they held similar parades to observe republic day and independence day and there was a small exhibition in the school about some old boys who had fought against the British with the Japanese.
When I discussed history with my Indian friends there was none of the sense of a “history outside time” that Ireland has. I think there were two reasons for this. Firstly, and obviously, the lack of any British presence in India these days. But, equally importantly, there was also a mutual respect for both strands of the nation’s past which I think (in the opinion of an outsider) is something vital going forward in Ireland.
Obviously, not my place to lecture from across the Irish Sea though…
Posted by on May 05, 2006 @ 10:51 AMThere is the difference of course that while many oppressed aspiring nations and peoples throughout the world have sympathised with, identified with and taken inspiration from the struggle for independent Irish nationhood, none but none anywhere ever had the slightest inclination to sympathise or identify with Unionism or to regard it with other than contempt as an oppressive reactionary force. Nor is any fancy PR work or tricky spin-doctoring likely to change that view.
Posted by on May 05, 2006 @ 10:54 AMMick, typo on Srebrenica above.
Posted by on May 05, 2006 @ 11:05 AMRory - what is the point you are trying to make?
I am reading your comment as: “Unionists bad, nationalists good”. Which has little to do with the thread. Or am I mistaken?
Posted by on May 05, 2006 @ 11:06 AMFraggle - Thanks.
Posted by on May 05, 2006 @ 11:09 AMMick
Is the accusation of Mopery itself not a fairly obviously example of whataboutery, except with an unhealthy side order of snide?
<ul><li>Person 1 states - We’re hard done by because of x, y and z.</li>
<li>Person 2 - Oh you’re just a MOPE aren’t you. I’m not interested.</li></ul>
The underlying taunt is that the Jews/Bosnians/Native americans/kurds/fill in as appropriate/ suffer far worse than you (which of course may or may not be true, but is essentially irrelevant), so YOUR suffering, to whatever degree, has no validity, so shut up and stop whinging.
Sometimes the person is even asked to be grateful they aren’t the oppressed group cited, and thank their lucky scars (sic) their community suffered deaths in four figures, rather than seven.
So unless someone is guilty of pretty terrible exaggeration (“the H-Blocks were just like Darfur”), the accusation is actually pretty worthless. No?
Posted by on May 05, 2006 @ 11:16 AMObviously there are plenty of cases on these boards where people exaggerate historical oppression. However I feel a serious problem in discussion is any assertion of grievence is countered with an accusation of MOPEry, which beyond sarcastically bellittling the grievence, actually seeks to use the existence elsewhere of “MOPEry” to deny the grievence ever occurred.
Often you see a comment like “I was stopped at a check point and slapped around, this is what I had to live with because my name had a fada in it” quickly countered with a response like “Oh here we go another classic Irish MOPE fest”. This is quite frustrating to see as it basically stating that a. other people exaggerate, so that never happened to you, or b. other people have suffered worse than you so shut up your complaining.
Accusations of MOPEry against genuine grievences only serve to stifle understanding and the building of sympathy. We could do with a lot more sympathy in this country in general.
Posted by on May 05, 2006 @ 11:22 AMOooh… snap TBT
Posted by on May 05, 2006 @ 11:23 AMI agree that its use as an accusation is usually poor. But as a diagnostic it’s rich. Not least our capacity to edit out “complexities and discontinuities” that don’t fit our own prefered narratives.
They are not based on historical analysis or historical thinking. They are literary or literary-critical notions, which yield diminishing returns. In some ways, too, they are very much post-1922 narratives, shaped by nationalist ideology and cultural stereotype. I think, ideally, we need to unravel (and the process of unravelling has begun) those narratives.
I don’t see this so much as an individual fault, so much as collective failure to take account of the cumulative effect of events.
Posted by on May 05, 2006 @ 11:26 AMI agree beach tree, good point - so many posters band about the term to stifle debate and avoid the questions. Like you said - it can be validly but most people are lazy with it.
Posted by on May 05, 2006 @ 11:27 AMIn the context of Northern Ireland when an individual from one section of the community mockingly accuses the others of being ‘MOPE’s , what they actually mean is that ‘WE are more MOPE’d against than you” - it’s the kettle calling the pot, black.
Posted by on May 05, 2006 @ 11:35 AMMick
It’s probably always a good thing to analyse narrative critically (though some people could do with a primer on the difference between critical and cynical) but to me the use of MOPERY as a charge on slugger is almost universily poor. It challenges the narrator not on his accuracy or his fairness, but his right to speak at all.
It’s the literary equivalent of the sarcastic “Oh, my heart bleeds”. It immediatly brings personal dislike into the intercourse, and turns opposition to animosity, opponents to enemies.
Frankly it’s as bad as bigot as a word in this forum, except a fair number people in Northern Ireland certainly are bigots, and relatively few if any frankly genuinely believe they belong to the most oppressed people ever.
Posted by on May 05, 2006 @ 11:37 AMWhile some associations are ludicrous i.e. suggesting similarities to the Nazi’s, I’d like to offer a quote from Kavanagh’s poem, ‘EPIC’
‘Till Homer’s ghost came whispering to my mind.
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.’Posted by on May 05, 2006 @ 11:47 AMThis is a great discussion, and could only realistically take place on a blog. In many ways, as individuals, we are our memories. See what happened to Pauly last night on The Sopranos when his past was taken away? Ireland is in many ways it’s collective memory. Describe anywhere in it..you have to start with a history lesson. Whether that collective memory is based on facts or not though is very debatable.
Posted by on May 05, 2006 @ 11:48 AMI’ve no time for people who exalt their own sense of victimhood, or try to morbidly glom onto the suffering of others, but I think that the diagnosis of MOPEry is used far too frequently.
On weblogs it’s simply a tactic for forestalling discussion, and not such a big deal. Far worse, however, when it’s applied to an entire community, as it serves to maintain a sense that the group in question is either sick, infantile, or both.
Posted by on May 05, 2006 @ 11:56 AMInteresting:
“Ireland is in many ways it’s collective memory”.
Except what Kennedy is calling out here is the selectivity and ahistoricality of that collective memory.
Jung posits the idea of a ‘collective unconscious’. Whatever you think of Jung and his school of thought, it makes a certain useful fit for this term ‘collective memory’. Useful, because as it implies, much in Ireland’s ‘collective memory’ is functionally inaccessable to those us skating over the surface.
Not simply that but with his concept of the self comes the idea of the shadow:
“The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.”
This seems to parallel (or perhaps was drawn from) a certain line of thought within Marx’s theory of dialectic.
Posted by on May 05, 2006 @ 11:58 AMThere is the difference of course that while many oppressed aspiring nations and peoples throughout the world have sympathised with, identified with and taken inspiration from the struggle for independent Irish nationhood, none but none anywhere ever had the slightest inclination to sympathise or identify with Unionism or to regard it with other than contempt as an oppressive reactionary force.
I take it Rory has travelled the length and breadth of the planet to gauge opinion?
See, this to me is MOPE, since it’s basically arguing that the natonalist experience was of such a level that news of it has spread around the globe eliciting sympathy.
Rory seems oblivious to the fact that just as most people in Northern Ireland know little of, and care even less about Srebrinica, Rwanda or Darfur, to name but a few, most people in thise places have exactly the same ignorance when it comes to Ireland.
Trust me, you only need to travel into mainland Europe to understand how little people know off, or care about Ireland.As for being a unionist, I can state with authority that wherever I go when people ask about my background they are fascinated and universally sympathetic to my position as a unionist, given that it’s usually the first time they have ever heard of unionists.
Except for Sardinia.
I happened to be in a little moutain tavern in Sardinia, I was with a girl from the republic of Ireland and we were talking.
A local picked up that we were from Ireland, one Unionist and one from the Republic.
He turns to me and askes, are you the unionist?
thinking I was about to get an earful I said that yes, I was.
He put his arms around me and gave me a hug, saying “we’re the same, we understand your position”.
Turns out Sardinia has it’s own issues,and they were more undertanding to unionism than many here would like.The point being.
Until you have gone around the world asking people their opinions, don’t presume to speak for them, you will more than likely get it wrong.I use the term MOPE, and I’m going to continue using it, especially since there has been so much of it in recent days.
Posted by on May 05, 2006 @ 11:58 AMit does seem that nationalists are guilty of mopery almost exclusively over the last thirty years and counting.
I am sick sore and tired listening to the whingeing about housing, and the civil rights movement, dont nationalists understand prods were discriminated against too? Were there no prods on the civil rights movement originally?
Oh of course, we should ‘move on’, but only when it suits nationalists…..funny it is never time to move on about bloody sunday, and the formation of NI…etc
At present protestants are being discriminated against in the PSNI recruitment policy, a policy set up because of IRA threats against catholic members of the police force in years gone by, and in the civil service.
Anyway, there I go moping again….ha!
Posted by on May 05, 2006 @ 11:59 AMGiven that militant unionists have sidelined softer voices over the years (think 1920s Belfast pogrom, intimidation of Sinn Fein and Labour candidates in Belfast), the primacy of the religious divide, the presence of the state’s military on one side, MOPE is not at all unreasonable and can be exagerated by both sides. Willie Frazer’s FAIR mob make out htat South Armagh was a happy place until a few foreign Fenians infiltrated it. There has always been an international dimension to this conflict. Certainly the Black and Tan war and the Belfast pogroms were seen as part and parcel of the war against Bolshevism, Prussianism and Papism by the powers that be. Whatever about Parnell’s quip about Bulgaria, a far away country of which they knew nothing and cared less, the writings of James Connolly on “gallant” Belgium and the humanitarian work of Roger Casement would have put paid to any notions that the Irish were the mope. The atrocities against the Boers were also prominently featured in nationalist Ireland and John McBride and others would have aided that process. Because the Belgians were savages and because the Indians were massacred at Amritsar does not mean the B Specials were angels.
Posted by on May 05, 2006 @ 12:07 PMStephen,
Thank you your words are a perfect illustration of the point I was making earlier.
“it does seem that nationalists are guilty of mopery almost exclusively over the last thirty years and counting.
I am sick sore and tired listening to the whingeing about housing, and the civil rights movement, dont nationalists understand prods were discriminated against too? Were there no prods on the civil rights movement originally?”
Posted by on May 05, 2006 @ 12:16 PMTAFKABO
“I use the term MOPE, and I’m going to continue using it…”
That’s entirely your perogative, TAF, but don’t be surprised if people give your views less credence because of it.
TBT
Posted by on May 05, 2006 @ 12:18 PMStephen
I refer you to comments 8 & 9 on this thread.
Posted by on May 05, 2006 @ 12:20 PMTBT.
but don’t be surprised if people give your views less credence because of it.
Would you ever fuck away off and patronise someone else?
Don’t flatter yourself that I come here to garnner approval.Posted by on May 05, 2006 @ 12:26 PM
