Abstract
I should like to begin by confessing that I am not an anthropologist, but a historian. I am not Irish, but Welsh. But as someone whose reaction to the June 2016 Brexit vote in the United Kingdom was to decide to look for jobs beyond its borders, I have, since I first read about it when preparing to be interviewed for my current post as Head of College, felt an essential affinity to UCC’s Marginalised and Endangered Worldviews Study Centre!
When I began to think about what I could possibly say to the assembled delegates that would have any chance of resonating with the theme of “Eco-Cosmology, Sustainability and a Spirit of Resilience,” I recalled reading, many years ago, a brilliant and evocative novel that seemed to capture a sense of “resilience.” Some of you may know Matthew Kneale’s English Passengers, published by Hamish Hamilton, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year award in 2000. If you have not come across it, I can thoroughly recommend it.
English Passengers tells a story of the colonization and eradication of the indigenous culture of Tasmania, through the voices of more than 20 participants. One of them is Peevay, a mixed-race aboriginal who literally “endures” throughout the book, from its opening in the early 1820s to its closing passages set in the late 1850s. One of most striking things about Peevay is his “spirit of resilience.” And although clearly he is a fictional creation, through this character Matthew Kneale captured something, I came to feel as a reader, of the experience of Peevay’s historical people, and perhaps of others like them in different settings at different times. Let me offer you two passages, narrated by Peevay:
Once when I was small and always running hither and thither, and all the world was puzzles to confound, I got myself that little surprise. Even now that bugger does stir tenderest feelings deep inside my breast. Other fellows might lose their way after that ruination, never to find it after, but not me. I did endure. Then again, enduring always was my special skill. [1824] So I am in this place, my place. Sometimes I awake in the night and it is some new puzzle to confuse that I am here, so lucky, just living and going with others hunting seals and catching mutton birds and getting eggs from their holes in the ground. The only time I see white men is when we go to Robson’s dying island to sell things and get more stores. Storekeeper smiles as he desires our trade, but I can see his eyes full of scornings. White scut farmers—they got that island now—are worse, laughing and shouting magic names if they get drunk. Truly, though, this is a useful thing as it makes me remember to be fighting. My new ones don’t know much about the world, you see, or even about themselves, as Father never told them any, so it is my fine purpose to give them teachings. I tell them writing and Laws, white men’s tricks and BIBLE CHEATING and more. They must know everything so they can endure. Who knows, perhaps one day they can fight those heinous pissers back. This is my dream. This is my heartfelt desire deep inside my breast, and I will strive for it every day. [1858]
Incidentally, and I am always intrigued by these connections, Matthew Kneale is the son of the writer and illustrator Judith Kerr (1923–2019), perhaps most famous for her work The Tiger Who Came to Tea (where the eponymous stripy animal commits the heinous sin of drinking “all Daddy’s beer”—Daddy needed to be very resilient then).
What this conference, with its theme of “Eco-cosmology, sustainability and a spirit of resilience” addresses is a matter that should be of profound concern to all of us—how cultures interact and understand each other, how that understanding needs to be governed by respect and empathy, and how a Western-centric perspective has often led to marginal cultures being devalued and eradicated. In pursuing these themes, I am conscious that speakers have come not just from across Ireland but also from the United Kingdom, from France, and from India to be here over the next two days. I would like to record my gratitude to the Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology and the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences for their sponsorship—KIIT and KISS are hosts of the forthcoming International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences World Congress of Anthropology in 2023—and it is a great pleasure to have Vikramaditya of KISS here with us this morning.
I would also like to thank my colleagues at UCC, the research centers the Marginalised and Endangered World Views Study Centre (MEWSC) and the Moral Foundations of Economy and Society Research Centre (MFES) for their initiative in organizing this conference and to congratulate them on the launch of a new and exciting interdisciplinary initiative, the UCC Frontier Programme MA in Anthropology. I know that there are proposals also to develop a BA in Anthropology in the near future. Thank you for listening, I am sure you will not have to “endure” the conference itself, which looks fascinating, but you may have to prove yourself resilient in the context of the Irish weather!
