"Everything / we husband is always shedding": intimacy, distance, and the politics of migration in Ailbhe Darcy's Insistence. Issue 3 (3rd July 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Obert, Julia
• Is Part Of: Irish studies review. Volume 30:Issue 3(2022)
• Page Start: 280
• Page End: 297
• Publication Date: 2022-07-03
• Subjects: Ailbhe Darcy -- Irish poetry -- motherhood -- migration -- environmentalism; Ireland -- Periodicals; English literature -- Irish authors -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Irish literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Irish periodicals; 941.5
• DOI: 10.1080/09670882.2022.2098672
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0967-0882

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Ailbhe Darcy's Insistence observes both the importance of intimacy and the fundamental irreducibility at the heart of intimacy. The collection highlights family ties, but it also concedes that there remains a strangeness at the core of those ties: sometimes "kin insists, " sometimes the child feels less "son" than uncanny "monster." Darcy then inverts this point: if there is something foreign about our kin, we might also find kinship with beings whom we would otherwise consider foreign. Darcy's primary concerns here are refugeeism (especially the European migrant crisis) and ecological devastation. On the former point, Insistence imagines transnational community, asking us to move beyond pity and towards motivating empathy for displaced peoples. On the latter, Darcy illuminates our interspecies interrelationships, reminding us that even our planet's most seemingly alien creatures (cockroaches; silverfish) are the cohabitants of our shared biosphere. Ultimately, Insistence develops a deep ethic of care for all living beings.