Landslide from Ben Bulben

Abstract

In the days leading up to the Republic of Ireland's 2018 abortion referendum, activists from an organization called Sligo for Life erected a 100-metre-tall 'NO' sign made of plastic sheeting high on Ben Bulben in the Dartry Mountains. Over a 24-hour period, reactions played out in the temporary performance space of social media as a spontaneous, improvised performance of satirical images and comments, circulated predominantly on Twitter and Instagram. In this ecofeminist scramble through the limestone and mudstone slopes of Ben Bulben, I propose that at a crucial moment during high-stakes campaigning the performativity of the protest and its aftermath came to stand in for a material and metaphorical peak in what was subsequently widely pronounced as a 'landslide' victory for the 'yes' campaign when the referendum outcome was announced on 26 May. The initial performance on the mountain and its mediatized extension signalled an affective juncture in campaigning that belonged on but also went far beyond Ben Bulben's actual summit, contesting the gendered mountain space in the process. By reasserting Ben Bulben's apparently immovable historical, cultural and ecological significance, the responding community ultimately temporarily communicated the mountainside as an unstable and precipitous -- if not entirely feminist - space.