Overview

Long considered as ""outsiders"" or ""strangers"" in their own country, the Travellers depicted in this book were essential agents in their own depiction; they were the drivers for these cultural representations of their own community. Paul Harrison's photos are beautiful because they are arresting. They show us a ""hidden Ireland"", one that is often relegated to the societal margins. They haunt the viewer. They interrogate the notion of what it means to be human. The late-twentieth century has witnessed a particular prominence assigned to the discourses of ""difference"" and ""Otherness"", discourses which subvert hegemonically-defined representations and demystify what was once simple domination and reification. Representations of cultural minorities, whether literary or visual, play a profound role in how groups such as Irish Travellers are defined and treated by the non-Traveller community. Essentialist notions of migrants and other traditionally-nomadic peoples have a long and complex history. The history of Irish Traveller is no different. For hundreds of years they have en-numerated the projective function of the ""Othering"" process, a form of rejection and marginalisation that was the institutionalization of ideas and images.

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9781443812573

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Dr. Mícheál Ó hAodha works at the University of Limerick where he lectures on two BA and MA (Memory and Belonging: Oral History Methodology and Rationale) and Traveller/Roma and Migration History) courses in the Department of History. He has published more than thirty books on many aspects of Irish migration and on the history of the Irish Diaspora - including Irish Travellers: Representations and Realities (2006). He has also written fiction and poetry. Between 2006 and 2008 he was an AHRC scholar in the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures, University of Manchester.Paul Harrison, independent film maker and author, was born in England in 1950. He studied Film and Photography at Harrow College of Art and has filmed in many places including Somalia, Iraq, Yemen and the Ethiopian famine for BBC, CNN, Channel 4, RTE, French TV and Concern. His first book News Out Of Africa was published in 1986. Paul has lived in Ireland since 2001 and was responsible for the first Traveller Exhibition in Tipperary County Museum in 2005. He lives in Co. Tipperary and is writing a book on the history of the people of Ireland.

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