Over the last couple of decades the concept of "space" has emerged as a keyword in the lexicon of critical and cultural studies. Whereas older cultural theory emphasised the centrality of time in human affairs, recent theory has identified space as a key analytical category. This so-called "spatial turn", which occurred largely under the aegis of postmodernism, has generated a plethora of writings about the complex and contested nature of geographic, linguistic and cultural space about the globe. Taking their cue from Michel Foucault's declaration that "the present epoch will perhaps above all be the epoch of space", scholars from several disciplines have made productive use of this protean concept to inquire into various cultural practices from medieval cartography to 20th-century tourism. In the process, spatial metaphors have become central to cultural discourse as theorists deploy an idiom of maps, borders and margins to explain the forces that structure our lives.
Given the highly contested nature of space on this island from colonial to contemporary times, Irish culture is particularly amenable to spatial analysis. Space and place are crucial determinants of identity in terms of both national historical experience (colonisation, partition, European integration) and internal social divisions (urban/rural, settled/Traveller, native/immigrant).
Gerry Smyth's Space and the Irish Cultural Imagination represents the first systematic attempt to analyse the complex spatial practices and motifs that permeate Irish culture and identify their ideological affiliations. Starting from the premise that "issues of space bear visibly upon Irish people's lives to a greater extent than at any point in the past", he proceeds to examine the role of actual and imagined spaces in the construction and articulation of Irish identities across a range of cultural products from ninth-century Gaelic poetry to contemporary rock music.
Smyth approaches his subject from an interdisciplinary perspective, drawing on different constituencies of knowledge and making use of disparate methodological tools. After outlining the theoretical and philosophical contexts for his study in the first part of the opening chapter, he turns his attention to the paradoxical relationship between time and space at the heart of Irish cultural discourse. This paradox lies in the fact that although the central unifying theme of Irish history has been the spatial relationship between place and identity, the methodology used to analyse this theme has been a temporal one, driven by "the talismanic properties of dates, names and events from the past".
In other words, issues of history have traditionally taken precedence over issues of geography in Irish scholarship.
Smyth seeks to redress this historicist bias by rethinking Irish culture in terms of its spatial dimensions. This does not mean that he is advocating an end to historicism, however. Rather, he envisages an Irish cultural studies built upon the dialectical interaction of the discourses of history and geography, where space is acknowledged as a valuable analytical category rather than as "time's politically vacant 'other'". Thus, the book is working towards a spatial analysis of Irish cultural history using insights drawn from disciplines such as cultural geography and etymology on the one hand, and a "spatial deconstruction" of cultural theory on the other.
In the book's "centrepiece" chapter Smyth unveils the most radical aspect of his critical methodology. Having earlier advocated a form of Irish cultural studies which would enable people to construct "cognitive maps" of the local and global networks of power that determine their identities, he proceeds to plot his own spatial history as a Dubliner. This takes the form of a detailed explication of the history, topography and toponymy of the Firhouse area where he grew up. The emphasis throughout is on "the story of human modification and natural resistance" inscribed by the landscape, and how this story interweaves with other narratives, primarily the author's own.
This act of auto-criticism is at once a response to the "new confessionalism" of modern Irish culture, a challenge to received forms of empirical criticism and a search for a vanished home. As such it represents a bold attempt to rewrite the rules of critical engagement by placing "the critical voice inside rather than outside the methodological framework". However, while a scholar's work is often rooted in personal history and sometimes contains traces of self-portraiture, the overt use of autobiography as a critical resource raises particular problems. Here it leads to an overemphasis on geographical issues at the expense of other, material determinants of identity such as economics and emigration, both of which the author alludes to in his introductory resumΘ but subsequently ignores. There is also the risk (which Smyth anticipates and so avoids) that such academic confessionalism could become a pretext for intellectual narcissism, leading to the "Oprahfication" of academia.
In the final section of the book, however, the real value of Smyth's spatially engaged criticism emerges through his close readings of Seamus Deane's Reading in the Dark and U2's The Joshua Tree, to each of which he devotes a chapter. His analysis of Deane's celebrated novel, widely hailed as an exquisite meditation on history, memory and identity, brilliantly illuminates the text's geographical imagination by elucidating the political significance of its topography of borders, bridges, forts and houses.
His discussion of the ambivalent spatial affiliations of U2's aural landscapes is equally insightful and provocative, informed by an empathetic appreciation of both the music's technical sophistication and its lyrical depth. Reading these chapters leaves one in no doubt about the radical potential of spatial analysis to reinvigorate both the methodology and subject matter of Irish cultural criticism. Space and the Irish Cultural Imagination should be welcomed as a pioneering contribution to that process.
Liam Harte is co-director of the Centre for Irish Studies at St Mary's College in London