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Revealing Ireland's “Proper” Heart: Apology, Shame, Nation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Clara Fischer
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Abstract

This article contributes to feminist expositions of emotion and “matters of the heart” by highlighting the gendered nature of the mobilization of shame. It focuses on the role shame plays in state apology and the desire to recover pride. Specifically, it analyzes the state apology offered to the survivors of Magdalen Laundries by Enda Kenny, the Taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland. By drawing out how the state apology recreates the Irish nation, it traces the deployment of a potentially productive variety of the politics of shame, which comes to be subverted in the service of keeping the virtuous, feeling “heart” of Ireland—the nation's very core—intact across a temporal, moral continuum.

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Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , Fall 2017 , pp. 751 - 767
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 by Hypatia, Inc.

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