Comments on: MODERN IRELAND: SHRIVELED DRAGONS, HYSTERICAL ENERGY

By: WorldbyStorm

WorldbyStorm — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 20:08:25 +0000

Too much hard work…

By: Conor McCabe

Conor McCabe — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 07:46:22 +0000

Get into science, man, they give you nose money there.

By: WorldbyStorm

WorldbyStorm — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 07:44:09 +0000

Going back a little way, and slightly off the point, the idea Hitchens got ‘Stalinism’ wrong is highly unlikely. Hitchens was a Trotskyite from the off, was never a Stalinist, and indeed was a member of the International Socialists - a group known for their vociferous condemnation of Stalin and indeed ‘actually existing socialism’ i.e. the USSR. Amis’s preoccupation with Koba struck me as the preoccupation of a man who actually couldn’t distinguish between different currents of thought on the left, had come to the subject relatively late in life and used broad brush strokes to describe something he wasn’t really comfortable with.

On the main thrust of the comments, it is remarkable how poorly funded post-grad research is. The IRCHSS goes some way, but even still… And this at a time when 3rd level is repositioning itself explicitly to expand post-grad…

By: Conor McCabe

Conor McCabe — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 07:31:16 +0000

Oh. By the way. (This is a cross-comment from the other post). The parents of my friend who’s the teacher, they own their own home and both kids went to college - the father’s a carpenter, the mother worked in an office - and they have no problem with being reminded they are working class. They also know that FF are fucking us.

By: Conor McCabe

Conor McCabe — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 07:18:35 +0000

Oh yeah. I mean, it’s by no means the norm. Having said that, two of my closest friends, both from working class families, had the complete support of their families in their endeavours (as did I). One’s now a teacher, the other a social worker. It’s changing, but it’ll take time.

Cleary’s point, I stress again, is the situation now. It is an analysis of the current state of play, and where Irish cultural studies needs to go, in his opinion.

Oh. with the post-grad thing, though, that’s when the “waster” kicks in. They’re probably right as well.

By: sonofstan

sonofstan — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 06:59:42 +0000

Got IRCHSS money in the end so it wasn’t that tragic….
To get away from the personal and back to the political though; working class kids going to college are still going to find it harder to justify to their parents and peer group the deferral of earning any money into their early 20s - later if they go on to postgrad work, and will be competing with middle class kids where it is now fairly much the norm to live at home (at least among students from Dublin) and receive generous parental support. We’re still, in a way, in the situation here that Richard Hoggart described in the memoir bit of the Uses of Literacy where the working- class ‘Grammar School Boy’ finds himself alienated from both his roots and his eventual class situation; the advantage is i guess, that this position gives a clear eyed understanding of the ‘hidden injuries of class’ as Sennett puts it, and the incentive to do something about it for the next generation.

By: Conor McCabe

Conor McCabe — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 05:24:47 +0000

i got funding off them from the start of my BA, so when it came to the PhD I was already “on the books”. you’re right about funding, though. The corpo grant was around €4,500 a year, while the internal university of ulster grant (for which I was turned down, leading me to fall back on Dublin corporation), was around €22,000 a year. Having said that, the corpo grant (along with summer work) made it all possible. I don’t envy your situation , sonofstan, it’s tough enough even with the corpo grant.

By: sonofstan

sonofstan — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 22:28:05 +0000

A side issue Conor - and probably me blaming ‘my personal career failings on some shadowy conspiracy’ but I deeply envious of your ability to get the corpo to pay for your PhD - on three occasions (start of MA, first and second year PhD) I’ve been turned down by them on separate technicalities (nothing to do with being secretly loaded) - and filling out those epic forms is harder than most academic work I’ve ever had to do………I still grumble to myself every time i pass those bunkers.

Access to whatever meagre funding there is for research in this country isn’t easy - although, interestingly, the research councils here fund a marginally higher percentage of all PhDs here than do the equivalent bodies in England and Wales (I think - I’ll have to dig up the figures again to check); problem is, they fund them at a much lower level in a more expensive country.

By: Conor McCabe

Conor McCabe — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 19:34:41 +0000

I dunno. I think Joe Cleary’s done alright for himself, no?

By: Average Irish Blogger

Average Irish Blogger — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 18:40:24 +0000

It must be somewhat comforting to think that your personal career failings are not your own fault but due to some shadowy conspiracy by middle class academics.