Ireland's Magdalen Laundries and the Nation's Architecture of
Containment connects Ireland's Magdalen laundries and the
nation-state's nativist politics in the post-independence era,
while critically evaluating cultural representations of the
Magdalen laundries that have, over the past fifteen years,
recovered these institutions from the amnesia at the center of
state politics. The first half of the book explores the
relationship between the Magdalen laundries and the nation's
architecture of containment, which rendered invisible segments of
the population (e.g., illegitimate children, single mothers, the
sexually promiscuous, etc.) who contradicted the state's
constitutional vision for a newly independent Ireland. The book
interrogates available archival resources, including government
reports, legislative debates, and court cases, to assert that the
state was always an active agent in the operation and function of
the nation's Magdalen homes. The second half of the book considers
a wide range of creative works that help imagine and give narrative
form to the Magdalen experience: commercial, independent
documentaries, photography and literary representations. Recent
cultural reenactments, Smith argues, contribute to the emergence of
an alternative national narrative that finally incorporates the
women effaced by the nation's containment culture. Ultimately, the
book contends that Ireland's Magdalen institutions chiefly exist in
the public mind at the level of story (cultural representation and
survivor testimony) rather than history (archival history and
documentation). This fascinating study will be invaluable to those
interested in Irish History, Gender History and Social History.
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