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10 - Irish Cockney Rebels

from Part III - The Second Generation

Tony Murray
Affiliation:
London Metropolitan University
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Summary

The authors of the three memoirs I analyse in this chapter are all second-generation Irish men who grew up in working-class neighbourhoods of post-war London and explore this experience from the perspective of middle age. In the course of writing about their backgrounds, they regenerate themes and tropes familiar from texts in the previous two parts of this study. These occur in relation to narratives of nationality and gender, and also with regard to religion, class and sexuality. The conflicts and disjunctions of belonging that ensue are in part common experiences of childhood and adolescence, but in other ways they are specific to the way in which these different narratives of identity intersect for subjects of Irish descent. They are apparent in both the public and private domains but also at locations such as church and school, which are neither wholly public nor wholly private but contain elements of both. The ‘confluence of narrativity’ between personal and collective notions of identity is often most pronounced in such intermediate zones, graphically illustrating a crisis of belonging for the subject concerned. Where the accounts differ from each other is in the extent to which the individuals concerned overcome such disjunctions, something which, in turn, influences the attitude of each author to his own memories and the nature of the identities configured in each text. These are not just personal testimonies, therefore, but interventions in a much broader spectrum of narrative diaspora space.

Type
Chapter
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London Irish Fictions
Narrative, Diaspora and Identity
, pp. 154 - 171
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Print publication year: 2012

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  • Irish Cockney Rebels
  • Tony Murray, London Metropolitan University
  • Book: London Irish Fictions
  • Online publication: 05 April 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.5949/9781846317897.013
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  • Irish Cockney Rebels
  • Tony Murray, London Metropolitan University
  • Book: London Irish Fictions
  • Online publication: 05 April 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.5949/9781846317897.013
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Irish Cockney Rebels
  • Tony Murray, London Metropolitan University
  • Book: London Irish Fictions
  • Online publication: 05 April 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.5949/9781846317897.013
Available formats
×