Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

10-2023

Abstract

Ireland – North and South – has sustained significant change in the last 100 years, accelerating at the end of the twentieth century with legalisation of contraception, divorce, gay marriage, the end – or at least reduction – of the ‘Troubles’ in the North, and freedom to choose abortion and reproductive autonomy.

In parallel to this, many instances of societal and ecclesiastical abuse, sexual repression, superstition and cruelty, have come to light through a series of scandals including the use of unmarried mothers as unpaid labour in laundries throughout Ireland until the mid-1990s, the deaths of women in hidden childbirth and babies in mishandled miscarriages, the unhealthy entanglement of Church (Catholic and Protestant) and State (Northern and Southern), and the persistent racism seen in the infamous direct provision accommodation for asylum seekers in the so-called ‘land of a thousand welcomes’.

This presentation tells the stories of cloth and clothing, textiles and materials that have been actually or symbolically stained by blood or other body fluids in Ireland’s last 100 years – since partial independence from Britain. By focusing on the role of these in the range of events and experiences of shame, oppression, morality and repression that have been instrumental in forming Irish culture, it seeks to ‘lance the boil’ of Irish social history, celebrating the movement of the island of Ireland into post-Church, post-conflict, post-nostalgia modernity that, while a painful transition, is a vital part of a country coming to terms with its past and looking to its future.

Comments

This paper was presented as a keynote at the Dress and Textile Specialists (DATS) conference, Ulster Museum, Belfast.

Download

Share

COinS