‘corporeal, raging’: Body Work in New Writing from the North of Ireland

Magennis, Caroline

Abstract

Each academic year, I begin a seminar on my final year module, Alternative Ulster, with a broad prompt to get us talking – tell me what comes to mind when you think about the body in Northern Ireland/The North of Ireland. They begin to respond after a few minutes. The body is a contested territory. The body in pain. The body as a symbol. The body as currency. The aggressive body. The bodies in mural art. The body as spectacle. The dancing in Derry Girls (2018) and Good Vibrations (2012). Lovers. Families. Adolescence. Even as we push further around the topic, it is hard to untether these bodies from the representation of the conflict, which is understandable given that most of them have come to these texts for the first time through this module, where the historical context is the organising principle. This is the first act of interpretive work – of texts together, writing module specifications, contextualising the appropriate historical background, offering dominant narratives for students to re-write. But in the discussion of the body, we negotiate both this cultural context and also our individual responses, which can range from a wry smile of recognition to a visceral remembrance of lived experience. Thinking through the body, to my mind, implores us to be flexible – it is culturally and socially variable, of course, as well as endlessly changing on an individual and cellular level. So, to write about the body from the North necessitates a double kind of challenge, or potential. To attend to the body with this flexibility re-orientates the way we consider the North and invites the possibility of a more creative criticism. I will first establish how I’m using the term body work, then consider a recent turn to the body in criticism North and South before focusing on some recent texts. In the novels under consideration, Jan Carson’s The Raptures (2022) and Aimée Walsh’s Exile (2024), we see women writers from the North actively using the body to challenge established authority and claim long-withheld autonomy.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 27, 2024
• Deposit Date: Nov 27, 2024
• Journal: Études Anglaises
• Electronic ISSN: 1965-0159
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Publisher URL: https://shs.cairn.info/journal-etudes-anglaises?lang=en