Mo Throp

Skibbereen, Ireland:Bread Matters 17^thSeptember 2005

28,000 people died and 8,000people emigrated from Skibbereen in the Great Famine of 1845 -50. One in threeinhabitants of Skibbereen

28,000 from Skibbereen,dying from hunger and disease.

Our Father, Give us this dayour daily bread

Dying from hunger; dying inneed, dying as a result of a failure to provide.

Give us this day our dailybread; The Law provides for our needs; we demand our rights.

The Irish population fellfrom 8 million to 4 in the Great Hunger; in the 5 years when the potato cropfailed and during the years that followed; when the blight decimated this land;when the British government failed to respond and feed its citizens.

Our Father, give us thisday.

The Law fails to distributejustice.

The father fails to meet ourdesires; our desire to be.

Give us this day our dailybread.

Give us our rights.

Such is the principle ofdemocracy: that all may be equally distributed; the principles of anegalitarian state.

They said it was an act ofGod; a natural disaster.

No justice for Skibbereen;

A failure to provide.

Half of Ireland’s populationdead or emigrated. 4 million. 60%of the population living in abject poverty; owning no land.

We think we have rights.

Give us this day.

The Law fails to meet theneeds of the people during the Great Hunger; in fear that the social structurewould collapse if they intervened. This long troubled history of Ireland andBritain; this embittered relation between.

‘Revenge for Skibbereen’they sang, ‘Revenge for Skibbereen’, to demand the displacement of a repressiveform of power by one that seeks to provide for the welfare of its subjects. Thedeath of the Father so that the Brothers may distribute fairly. A Feniandemand; ‘Our fair share of Ireland; our fair share of the earth’. (Lalor)

Ownership of the land; aprinciple of justice. The fundamental basis: to have; to have enough.

Desire seeks satisfaction.The Law distributes what it thinks its citizens should have; the distributionof equality mistakenly an act of repression.

Give us this day.

Soup kitchens, where theycame with their rusty tin and iron vessels, some on all fours – these famishedbeasts. A soup so poor it ran straight through them – no nourishment - thoughthey came to Stream Hill, 9,000 each day. Too little too late. And still theykept taking from this plentiful land; with nothing in return; the ships stilltook away from those who had produced it. They put the cross on the barrel. Oats,barley, cattle and sheep; boatload after boatload still sailed out of Cork.Only soup in return; too little, too late. A bitter relation; a repressiveregime. Land, religion, languageall taken. Now lives. An enforcedDiaspora, unprecedented in Western Europe.

A natural calamity, an actof God.

Four years of famine;inadequate relief; no justice.

28,000 died here inSkibbereen; a form of Genocide

Our Father,

Give us this day.

Too poor to pay the rent fortheir Cabins; too weak to cut turf to make a fire; all tools and vesselspawned; seaweed from the shores all boiled and eaten, nothing left. Ravished bycholera, typhus, smallpox, dropsy and consumption too weak to bury their dead.Evicted from their rented land, the coffin ships took even more than those whodied of hunger and disease.

2,800 in the Work House atthe height of the Famine, built to hold 800; two square feet each; 110childbearing aged orphaned Skibbereen girls sent to Australia to populate theBritish colonies.

‘Revenge for Skibbereen’ they sang, ‘Revenge for Skibbereen’

The non-violent call tobreak the repressive Union of Ireland and Britain, the ‘monster meetings’attempt a peaceful demand for the repeal the Act of Union of 1800. To breakdown repression; to disrupt the hierarchies of domination and control thatsuppress difference in the false proposition that we might all be the same.

A need to confrontideologies that make such disasters possible; this is all our responsibility.

Our Father,

Give us this day our dailybread

To be in a relation one withthe other, undoing hierarchies, injustices. Folding and enfolding; one with theother. Like the daily act of making bread. A negotiation; a giving andreceiving. Reciprocal. In this act of enfolding, each one affects another, eachenters into a composition with each other – something comes between the two –not the same – not a reduction to the same.

Folding.

So multiplicities are made.

The baker folds the bread. Aloving act. A gift. Constantly between.

Everyday we repeat thegestures.

Our Father, Give us thisday.

We never complete the task;the task of our own identities; the task of making and re-making ourselves. Thetask of being artists – a constant negotiation – a doing and an undoing ofdifference, of repressive power structures, a possibility of being. It is anethical task which is never complete.

Ever day we attempt tore-negotiate our positions as subjects for which there are no pre-ordainedpatterns. As artists we attempt to re-negotiate this problematic relation tothe self; to attempt strategies and practices of subversive repetition thatconstitute identity and explore possibilities of contesting them.

Each day we perform ourvarious identities.

Each day we fold togetherour complexities, our desires.

In the name of the Father,in the name of the Law which names and divides us hierarchically, in a relationto having and not having; our divided identities. In the name of the Father,divided as green or orange; one against the other. And then the white stripebetween; a middle term through which difference might be negotiated. The whiteground which might allow for new beginnings, other possibilities. A working ofthe one and the other; the oppositions that divide us, the one and the other. Aworking of the bakers logic, a folding in of the middle term; neither this northat; an inclusive logic – the AND. Like the baker, fold it in: the one AND theother; the one with the other. Fold and enfold.

Needs can be met by thespecific object and so be satisfied by it. Demands, though they may be aimed atan object, are essentially a demand for love.

Our Father. Give us thisday.

The gift of bread is aloving act; it acknowledges a demand; it satisfies a need. It is also more thanfair exchange; it acknowledges that the logic of exchange can be exceeded andthat a new becoming is possible. A loving act, the act of giving is anacknowledgement of the other, the needs of the other, and a promise of newpossibilities between.

A loving encounter is wheredifferences (between the you and the me) are negotiated; it is an enquiry ofthe world from the point of view of the two, not the one against the other,your needs against my needs.

A loving encounter exposesthe self to the infinite alterity of the other

A loving encounter iscontingent and temporary

A loving encounter with theother is not about gain and satisfaction

The encounter with the otheris a gift; it goes against the capitalist logic based on calculations of gainsand losses, with sameness as its goal. It is an exchange that does not reduceus to the same. An ethical encounter not marked by gain and satisfaction, butan exchange of response which confirms our precarious status; it remains opento new responsibilities. This gift is not a form of exchange – it refuses to beconsumed by the humanist project and is beyond patriarchal reciprocity. Thisloving exchange is not for gain, but is a gift which disrupts traditionaleconomies of gains and endebtedness. It demands no repayment. This gift isincalculable and is open to infinite otherness.

To receive this gift is thento open oneself to an endless relation and transformation. To be in such asystem of exchange is to acknowledge that it is temporary and has to beendlessly repeated; there can be no completion; only continuous generousnegotiation; it is an ongoing relationship between the one and the other. Togive and to receive; desire and satisfaction; between the one and the other.Always in flow – from one to the other.

A repetitive generousencounter.

The baker folds in time

Difference and time

Folds them in

So the past is alwayspresent; it is not something to be overcome.

Injustice was done here inSkibbereen; it cannot be forgotten. A traumatic past.

Folding in the past with thepresent. A movement; a repetitive flow of duration remade in the now; to makesomething new – ongoing and productive.

Air enters the dough. Thebaker folds it in

Kneads it in – the logic ofbinary opposition.

The baker lovingly folds thebread – works in the past with the present to produce the gift of bread. It isa repetitive act; a daily necessity.

Can we still believe in theauthoritative object any more than we can believe in the Law?

Let us continuously fold andenfold, our differences, our pasts in order to produce new futures. Acollaborative act of making and receiving

A ritual of inclusion likethe consuming of the daily bread

This inclusion, this foldingand enfolding breaks down the repressive demands of the Law to be this or bethat. It seeks to undo the binarylogic which the Law is founded upon, a hierarchical binary of domination andcontrol of the one over the other. The orange and the green. Then the whitestripe between.

28,000 gone from Skibbereen,from Skibbereen

How to be in a relation tosuch loss which doesn’t return again and a gain to such sites of trauma? How tobe in a continuous remaking; a one with the other? A crossing over of the onewith the other; the green and the orange. A generous relation between a one ANDan other, a non-hierarchical relation which respects difference, not seekingthe eradication of the other. It is a creative proposal demanding anon-oppositional relation between,productive of new becomings.

The encounter with theartwork can also open the spectator to this relation to loss; to propose anencounter which might produce new possibilities. To propose other possibilitiesthan those laid down by the Law; that which tells us how to be. The artworkproposes questions not answers; it can put us in a new relation to desire. Theartwork is a process and is never resolved; it is always in negotiation.Difference is never resolved; it works against the notion that desire can befulfilled.

To receive one’s daily breadis not necessarily to receive satisfaction. A false belief that we may have itall; that we can be satisfied. A false belief in our own identity; a falsebelief that we can be whole, that we can know who we are, that our desires canbe fulfilled.

To open up to a newunderstanding of desire that proposes other possibilities for a re-thinking ofloss and repression. To mobilize desire and create new investments open to thepolitical and to the future – a site of new intensities. A site which allows acrossing of the one and the other as productive.

Now, here in Skibbereen weproduce new possibilities; this site of trauma enables new becomings. It nowyields true gifts which propose new possibilities for what it might be possibleto become. This is a site of creative generosity; it can never be reduced to asystem of exchange but is productive of possible transformations.

‘Remember Skibbereen’.