CULTURAL STUDIES:INTELLECTUALS ARE seldom lionised in the anglophone world as they are in Europe, writes DÁIRE KEOGH.A familiar cliche defines an "Irish intellectual" as an oxymoron, but the same is said of Britain, where Stefan Collini's acclaimed Absent Minds(2006) has challenged the perception that "intellectuals begin at Calais". His conclusion is that notions of the English as an un-intellectual people are a conscious misdescription, propagated by intellectuals since Burke to bolster the concept of British exceptionalism. Bryan Fanning's Quest for Modern Irelandarrives at similar conclusions.
It is a self-conscious study which is predicated on an implicit repudiation of Ireland's most public intellectuals, the historians whose accentuation of the isolationism and sterility of the de Valera years has perpetuated the "absent minds" thesis. Fanning seeks to "break free" from this "magisterial tendency", and offers instead a dynamic portrait of the period based upon a reading of five influential periodicals.
Fanning's discussion of what he calls "the software of influential ideas" from the Home Rule crisis (1912) to the genesis of the Celtic Tiger shatters simple depictions of a battle between conservatives and liberals, seculars and religious. He offers a nuanced analysis, including illustrative reflections on the shared preoccupation of the Belland the clerical Christus Rex, both of which assailed the problems of poverty, emigration and rural decline. The Jesuit journal, Studies, too, offered a forum for economic liberals and anticipated the debates of Administration(1953-58), published by the mandarins of the Civil Service. Significantly, the first three issues of Administrationcarried a secrecy notice, a warning which illustrates the narrow "market" of the periodicals and the sense in which they were intended for the like-minded. Indeed, the journals are a telling reflection of the self-perception of clerical, academic and administrative elites in an essentially uneducated society.
The Bellwas an exception, and from his first editorial Sean O'Faolain promoted an inclusive credo: "Whoever you are, Gentile or Jew, Protestant or Catholic, priest or layman, Big House or Small House - the Bell is yours."
The greater part of The Questis focused on Studies(founded 1912), intended initially as a review for University College Dublin. As a member of its editorial board, Fanning has an evident sympathy for the quarterly, which he describes as "the most important intellectual journal in post-independence Ireland". Its success is attributed to an "elastic" editorial policy which "allowed it to bend rather than break". He is less sanguine about the Crane Bag(1977-84), which, although characterised as elitist, had an impressive circulation of 2,000 copies per issue. While acknowledging the avant-garde character of the journal, citing Seamus Deane's deference to Brecht's dictum, "not to build on the good old days, but on the bad new ones", Fanning relegates the Crane Bagto the first of the chronological chapters on account of its "old-fashioned" nation-building project.
Fanning's study is informed largely by the journals themselves. This may allow the "original voices to breathe", but their import might have been amplified by a discussion of the extent to which their discourse filtered down. Greater cognisance could have been made of recent scholarship and the insights of Terence Brown, Nicholas Allen or Frank Shovlin. Engagement with current historiography, too, might have added contextualisation. Neither is the rationale for the choice of journals articulated. The exclusion of Atlantisis surprising, while the Dublin Magazinemight have provided an instructive counterpoint to the prevailing voices of the UCD intelligentsia.
Tom Garvin's blurb hails this as "an instant classic". Time will tell. The Quest,however, represents a valuable contribution to the growing scholarship on the role of the literary magazine and the more general history of the book in Ireland.
• Dáire Keogh lectures in the history department of St Patrick's College, Drumcondra, Dublin. His recent publications include The Irish College, Rome, and its World (2008), which he edited with Albert McDonnell