ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT ROBINSON AT THE CONFERENCE: GENDERED NARRATIVES ASPECTS OF CULTURAL IDENTITIES
ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT ROBINSON AT THE CONFERENCE ON GENDERED NARRATIVES ASPECTS OF CULTURAL IDENTITIES IN IRELAND, MAGEE COLLEGE
It is entirely appropriate that Magee College here in Derry should be the venue for this very challenging and thought provoking conference on gendered narratives aspects of cultural identities in Ireland.
When I was inaugurated I said that I wanted to make Áras an Uachtaráin a house of stories. Even then I had a sense of the power of narrative, but if I had it at that time then I have a hundred times stronger sense of it today. Now I can look back at those stories I have had the privilege of hearing and recognise in them real energies and real treasures. And so often those gifts come to us looking like an ordinary anecdote or a simple account of an experience, which in fact provides us with an important and powerful clue to the identity and purpose of a whole community.
So it gives me great pleasure to come here today and see the multi-faceted way the idea of narrative is approached on this occasion, and see how these discussions open up the whole exciting debate on the place that story telling has had and continues to have in the lives of women. This conference allows the important question to be asked as to why women have been so drawn to narrative and story telling.
In every culture, no matter what the differences, the woman telling a story and subtly passing on the reality of a people, a history, a purpose within the framework of that story, is an enduring feature. I think that women have made a narrative of their experiences in a direct and poignant relation to their other silences. When public office was denied them, when university education was unavailable, when a role at the centre of a society was not open to them, this narrative of their lives became an important and dignified counterpoint to silence. And in that, it became a deeply sophisticated social and political statement. A statement about powerlessness and vulnerability. About communication and audience. It also became a metaphor, not just for the inequality of gender, but also for the injustice of all silences, all inequities.
I have been aware of all this in the most practical and rewarding sense. The Áras has indeed become a place of stories - and stories from all parts of this island. When I have had groups of women from communities in both the North and South, and indeed from East and West, I have seen how conscious they are - through the very existence of these stories - that stories show how much people have in common, rather than how much divides them. On this island now we need to hear each other's stories. We need to cultivate what stories teach us - the art of listening. But we also want to keep inscribing the hard and difficult realities, the unacceptable truths, the adventurous realities, so that those narratives remain bright and challenging, so that they extend our understanding and keep us listening.
I am the proud owner of a whole range of booklets and anthologies of women's voices from throughout this island. I have opened exhibitions with names such as Unspoken Truths, and I have witnessed the way in which working together on a quilt can represent many of the themes which are harnessing the energies of women today. They find eloquent expression in these lines from Eavan Boland's wonderful poem "Anna Liffey":
In the end
It will not matter
That I was a woman. I am sure of it.
The body is a source. Nothing more.
There is a time for it. There is a certainty
About the way it seeks its own dissolution.
Consider rivers.
They are always en route to
Their own nothingness. From the first moment
They are going home. And so
when language cannot do it for us,
cannot make us know love will not diminish us,
there are these phrases
of the ocean
to console us.
Particular and unafraid of their completion.
In the end
everything that burdened and distinguished me
will be lost in this:
I was a voice.
The work of artists whether men or women transcends the traditional divisions in our land. It demonstrates to us all that we are first and foremost human beings sharing the same small planet. It demonstrates to us that, irrespective of the sometimes superficial qualities which divide us such as geography or political background, we all share the same problems and challenges as we go through life. Literature and the Arts uniquely demonstrate the universality of the human condition. The greatest artists are those who have shown us that real life has more to do with the interaction between all of us as human beings and very little to do with the shouting of slogans the raising of flags or the creation of artificial divisions.
Over the next three days this conference will examine and consider some very interesting aspects of gendered narratives and the questions of cultural identities in Ireland. I very much welcome such an examination. It is my belief that consideration of the issues covered by this conference will lead to greater understanding between the different traditions in this country and more particularly will serve to remind us that there is far more that unites us, particularly as Irish Women, then divides us.
Your programme for the next three days is one of the most interesting I have come across in any conference. My only regret is that my schedule prevents me from staying on here at Magee and listening to your excellent line-up of speakers. I certainly hope I will have the opportunity of reading the various contributions in due course.
I would like to wish the University of Ulster and it's Department of Sociology every success with this Conference. Dr. Honor Fagan is to be congratulated on her initiative in putting this very impressive conference together. I wish it every possible success.