Behold, The Essays Have Been Soundly Vanquished

I have successfully completed my first two scary essays! They weren’t, in my opinion, very good – as the library is unfamiliar, the internet is erratic, my computer is... um... pick an adjective to describe a mental disease of your choice... and, of course, I’m lazy as a cat on a sunny windowsill.

But the important thing is, they’re finished, multiple copies have been delivered to offices with cover sheets, things have been signed, and I did address the question in the correct number of words, so I should pass.

My first essay was on the varied ways anthropologists, over the years, have defined law and legal systems and how they have argued for (and against) the universal presence of law in human society. No, we didn’t choose our topic. But it was interesting, though difficult – most of it was spent up in trying to summarize a century’s worth of thinkers’ definitions of law. Yes, including dear old Malinowski –

http://www.ask.com/wiki/Bronis%C5%82aw_Malinowski

- and his “body of binding obligations regarded as a right by one party and acknowledged as a duty by the other.”

*twitch twitch*

My second essay was on the extent to which the Irish revolution was a sectarian conflict. This, in my opinion, is an unanswerable question. Of course it was, as much as it was a political one, a historical one, an economic one, etc. etc. etc. That is, which Christian sect was an important element within the defining characteristics of the conflicts’ sides. Does that make sense? Probably not. We’ll see what McGarry says. Maybe he’ll look kindly on me, as I referenced one of his books?

My Professors:

It just occurred to me that I’ve yet to introduce my professors. I have several... I’ll try and describe them, just so you can know what it’s like in class here (except, without all the actual schoolwork, because you 1) don’t want more of that, or 2) you graduated, and you don’t deserve it).

My primary Irish Studies professor is named Dominic Bryan. He’s one of those teachers who wears T-shirts to lectures and waves his arms and jumps around a lot. He’s here, he told us, because he was a bad student. The only university that would accept him was in Northern Ireland, because this was in the Troubles and the schools here were so desperate for students they’d accept anybody.

He, however, is from England. He’s got a strong London accent that sounds fabulously out of place in NI.

Quotes:

“Northern Ireland doesn’t fecking matter! ... but it’s quite an interesting English-speaking case study.”

“It’s fascinating to try and work out when the legitimacy of the state disappears.”

“And they say, can things go back to the way they were? No! No, they can’t! History is not circular! Though Yeats thought it was... but he was better at poetry than history.”

“It doesn’t matter how big the bomb is, or how many people die... to the victims, it still feels the same.”

 “One thing I’ve noticed about Victoria Square – where’s the fecking square? It’s the roundiest* building I’ve ever seen!”

He is occasionally joined by Olwen Purdue, who specializes in most history** and who has a pretty name, and by Gordon Gillespie, who specializes in recent history and who has a funny name.

My tutorial’s TA is a stylish young woman named Mary Katherine Rallings, and she’s from, of all places, North Carolina. This makes tutorials that much more fun when she randomly references the American South for non-Irish conflict examples (like, in a discussion on flying flags associated with discriminatory/violent history, a major problem here).

My Irish Revolution professor is named Fearghal McGarry. He’s the type of very intense academic who uses words like “historiography” and “draconian,”*** and “analysis” and “cyclical,” the same way most people use “and” and “but.” It’s actually very interesting – he makes some good connections between macro and micro studies. His books, which I’m reading, tend to focus on micro studies using primary sources and, through them, to try and understand the huge political and ideological events occurring way up on a national/international scale.

He’s so Irish, he doesn’t pronounce the sound “th.” Read “d” for every “th”... I love listening to his accent.

Quotes [the ones with short words]:

“ ‘History is written by the winners’... and it’s said the losers write the songs.”

 “While they arrested a lot of people, it wasn’t very effective, because they arrested all the wrong people.”

[On the Irish Declaration of Independence and its stance on violent resistance] “There’s wiggle room.”

“They beat up the local police with sticks, which is as good a way as any to prove your manliness.”

“Northern Ireland is like a slot machine to the British government. They keep putting money in hoping it’ll pay off someday.”

“There’s no nice way of showing forty men going into a house and shooting two men in front of their family.”

He sometimes alternates with Marie Coleman, who wrote a book on County Longford and is studying Cumann na mBan.

My Politics, Law and Power professor is named Lissette Josephides, which is one of the best names I’ve ever heard, ever. She is middle-aged (the others are much younger) and she did her fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, where she almost got murdered one night, and also got a kitten. She has multiple degrees in both anthropology and philosophy, and being in class is like being back in Social Theory, except with older books, and more fun.

She wears little silk scarves, and says “as it were” a lot. She is English – extremely English. She talks like the Rather Dotty Yet Brilliantly Observant Aristocratic English Lady in some classic British mystery novel. You know?

Quotes [as it were]:

“So it’s a kind of pre-emptive treachery.”

“Gluckman’s not under ‘Gluckman’? Is Gluckman anywhere?”

“After Wali of Swat became ruler in 1926, the political system ceased to be acephalous. Acephalous? It means ‘headless.’ It doesn’t mean that they’re running around like chickens who’ve had their heads cut off, it means they have no chief.”

“Objectivity isn’t... nothingness. It’s the sum total of all the subjectivities put together.”

*Not a typo.

**Dr. Purdue on the 1798 rebellion: “It wasn’t organized, but it was enough to scare the pants off the British government.”

This is funnier when you know that “pants,” here, mean underwear.

***This is an epic word. You should all try to find an excuse to use it in everyday conversation.