CONNOLLY, THE ARCHIVE, AND METHOD

摘要

Over the last two decades, the introduction of postcolonial theory into the context of Irish Studies has led to a prolonged re-examination of a number of thinkers whose works resonate with recent critical understandings of the history of colonization in Ireland and the nationalist drive for independence. This has intensified interest in archival research to reclaim these figures and texts for purposes of contemporary criticism. One of the most significant of these thinkers is the anti-imperialist revolutionary leader James Connolly, perhaps the first theorist to rethink Marxism according to the specificity of colonial history. Connolly's theorization of the impact the violence of imperialism makes upon Marxist understandings of the dialectical category of contradiction contributes to the critical interrogation of modernization in diachronic terms. The degree to which Connolly insisted upon the specificity of the time in which he wrote, however, makes it more difficult to translate his positions into contemporary terms that would enable a critique of the recent moment of Irish neoliberalism known as the Celtic Tiger. This article argues that Connolly's importance to synchronic analysis lies precisely in his own relation to the archive. On the one hand, Connolly's writing provides a vital theoretical rationale for the logic of archival reclamation, often undertheorized or taken for granted in contemporary Irish Studies. On the other hand, his understanding of the archive makes it possible to account for a persistent repertoire of Irish subaltern practices challenging a more conservative or revisionist conception of the archive.