Funferal

The long-awaited random compendium

I’ve been rather quiet recently, as I vowed to myself not to post here until I’d finished my dissertation proposal. As always, that took longer than hoped, but I’m finally waiting for feedback on what should be the final version.
In the meantime….
The Twelfth Grassroots Radio Conference is taking place this June 21-24 in Lowell, Massachusetts.
The taskforce on ‘active citizenship’ created by the Irish government has concluded its deliberations, and is due to release its recommendations, aimed at encouraging activities such as voting and volunteerism.
Irish politics have, of course, gained worldwide coverage in the past week, as the complex negotiations around the re-establishment of the devolved institutions in the North came to yet another climax. Seeing Adams and Paisley sit beside each other – albeit with a table corner between them – was indeed historic, but in some senses just another turn in the complex dance. Talking with friends here, I know they’ve found it difficult to follow the intricate, almost baroque, details of point, counterpoint, and fugue. And yet, it always seems to me that it is that complexity, that messiness, that is important to communicate; that simplistic explanations tend towards essentialisms and demonisation.
On an almost totally different note – other than the nod towards essentialisms – I endured my fifth ‘Unofficial St Patrick’s Day’ on 2 March. At least this time I was busy with the UICC conference and travelling to the IFT convention in Chicago, so saw little of the actual day, other than when I had to head to class to teach.
I had, in advance, sent a brief commentary to the STOP coalition list, which resulted an interesting meeting with the Dean of Students, and the publication by the university of my anti-Unofficial comments as part of their campaign to dampen down the day. Yes, this was in part co-option by an administration more concerned with demonising alcohol consumption by undergrads (and, to be fair, safety concerns) than with the stereotyping and cultural appropriation represented by the “Drink Until You’re Irish” theme.
However, it also meant bringing attention to the notion of cultural appropriation more generally – and I gave a nod towards the general concept in my piece, as well as in some of the 6 talks I gave that week to classes and campus units. A friend of mine drew together the issues quite well in a piece he wrote on the Daily Kos.