Travellers and Communal Identity: Memory, Trauma and the Trope of Cultural Disappearance

Abstract

Until now many representations of Travellers and their history have been “written out” of the unitary version of Irish history which was promulgated during the early 1900s and upon Irish independence. This essay explores the manner whereby Irish Travellers, a long-ostracised cultural minority within Ireland have initiated a counter-hegemonic challenge to the “Othering” discourses and tropes which have categorized them previous to this. Once viewed as the quintessential “outsider” this marginalizing discourse encompassed a received body of “lore” and a range of stereotypes with respect to Travellers and other migrants. Recent years have seen a challenge to this history of representation however. An essential element in this counter-hegemonic challenge is the emergence of a small, but vibrant, canon of literature from within the Irish Traveller community itself, a literature the core impulse of which counters the representational traditions of the past. This literature brings Travellers in from the margins of public discourse and counters the trauma induced by generations of “Othering”, the long-established reification of image as produced culturally, politically and ideologically.