Developing Irish Diaspora Studies: A Personal View

Abstract

Many interests and preoccupations shape my interest in development of Irish Diaspora Studies.1 One of those background interests is my study of nature of academic disciplines, and problems that arise when we try to develop an interdisciplinary approach to a specific area of research or concern. I can well understand why it might be necessary to chop up the human con dition into bite-size chunks so that each academic discipline can apply its own ground rules, use its own methods, and respond to its own preoccupations. But why, when time comes to put patient back together, are there no longer any ground rules? Those of us who engage in these debates often find ourselves quoting Thomas Kuhn?without having to agree wholeheartedly with him?and in turn echoing Kuhn's own quotation of description given by Copernicus of field of astronomy before his own breakthrough: .., it is as though an artist were to gather hands, feet, head and other members for his images from diverse models, each part excellently drawn, but not related to a single body, and since they in no way match each other result would be more monster than man.2 We enter, of course, immediately huge debates about nature of knowledge, how some kinds of knowledge seem to be able to click together, to be genuinely cumulative, while others seem to need to go over same ground again and again. Irish Diaspora Studies forces us to interrogate much that has passed for science in past, or still passes for science, and much that passes for