Electric Signs and Echo Chambers: the Stupidity of Affect in Modern Irish Literature

Sheils, Barry

doi:10.1017/9781009182881.007

Electric Signs and Echo Chambers: the Stupidity of Affect in Modern Irish Literature

Sheils, Barry

Authors

Professor Barry Sheils barry.a.sheils@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Contributors

Margaret Kelleher
Editor

James O'Sullivan
Editor

Abstract

Ireland was in a rush to embrace electrification in the 1930s and 1940s, as it was digitalisation in the post-Celtic Tiger age of Yahoo and Google. In the face of this state-led dedication to light and currency, Irish literature has consistently found ways to restore stubborn materiality to the semiotic field. This depends on what this chapter calls its tradition of stupidity. Reclaimed as a device within literary texts, ‘stupidity’ is an instructive and often comic mode of emphasising embodiment and drawing attention to a persistent lack of connection. Moving through several literary examples taken from the mid-twentieth century to the present day (Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls, Stewart Parker’s Pentecost, and Mike McCormack’s Solar Bones), this chapter suggests three themes by which this stupidity is registered as a complicating factor within an electric modernity set adrift on the neoliberal current: emigration, constitutional politics, and ecology. The purpose of the examples offered is to show how disconnection functions, thematically and formally, within a networked imaginary, and how it might be repositioned within new discourses oriented around ecological crisis.

Citation

Sheils, B. (2023). Electric Signs and Echo Chambers: the Stupidity of Affect in Modern Irish Literature. In M. Kelleher, & J. O'Sullivan (Eds.), Technology in Irish Literature and Culture (83-98). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009182881.007

Acceptance Date	May 1, 2022
Online Publication Date	Jan 19, 2023
Publication Date	2023-01
Deposit Date	Aug 16, 2022
Publicly Available Date	Jul 19, 2023
Publisher	Cambridge University Press
Pages	83-98
Series Title	Cambridge Themes in Irish Literature and Culture
Book Title	Technology in Irish Literature and Culture
Chapter Number	5
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009182881.007

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Copyright Statement
This material has been published in Technology in Irish Literature and Culture edited by Margaret Kelleher and James O'Sullivan. This version is free to view and download for personal use only. Not for re-distribution, re-sale or use in derivative works. © Cambridge University Press 2023.