Orality and Agency: Reading an Irish Autobiography from the Great Blasket Island

Abstract

In the discussion that follows, I advance my case for considering the Blasket autobiographies as collaboratively produced texts, with particular emphasis on examining the manner in which they were produced. This examination raises several critical questions that will be addressed in turn. How can we best understand the various collaborators' roles in producing the text, particularly that of the subject-author, or native, of the text? It is of particular importance not to dismiss the native's agency in one's reading. In a consideration of how a particular type of critical reading has tended to suppress or misread the native's agency, I take into account how this error is buttressed by a misunderstanding of the theoretical construct of orality. When the individual's role in orality is suppressed in favor of a view that sees primary oral cultures as producing texts independent of individual authorship or agency, a further misreading of printed texts is encouraged. In the final segment of my discussion, I address how a reader might distinguish between two fundamentally different readings of the same text: the native as a representative type and the native as author.//