Becoming a father of a child with an intellectual disability- a narrative inquiry of Irish fathers’ stories

Background: This thesis explored men’s experiences of becoming a father of a child with an intellectual disability in the early years. In Ireland, it is estimated that there are almost 97% (n= 9,914) children with intellectual disabilities living at home in the care of parents, siblings, relatives or foster parents. While mothers and fathers are the primary caregivers, mothers’ experiences are well documented in comparison to the dearth of reports on fathers’ experiences. This descriptive narrative study aims to redress this gap in knowledge and understanding of men’s experiences of becoming a father of a child with an intellectual disability in the early years. Method: Narrative inquiry was employed for this study as it allows stories told by fathers to be collected as a means of exploring men’s transition to becoming a father of a child with an intellectual disability. A sample of 10 fathers of children with intellectual disabilities aged between thirteen months and five years of age were recruited from a large intellectual disability Health Service Provider (HSP) in the South of Ireland. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews which were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analysed using a narrative thematic approach. Findings: Findings are presented in four themes: i) ‘becoming a father’, ii) ‘something wrong with my child’, iii) ‘entering the world of disability’ and iv) ‘living a different life’. For all 10 fathers the time of being told that their child had an intellectual disability was laden with negative emotional responses irrespective of whether the diagnosis was at birth or more gradual over the child’s early developmental period. When fathers found out that ‘something was wrong’ they spoke of ‘moving on’ and entering the world of disability. In their narratives, becoming the father of a child with an intellectual disability had changed their lives and would inevitably change their futures. Fathers’ positivity was clearly evident with many fathers identifying that the diagnosis of their child with an intellectual disability was not a life ending event but rather a life changing event. Conclusions: Healthcare professionals have a critical role in supporting fathers during the transition to becoming a father of a child with an intellectual disability. Factors which require consideration include recognising that each father’s experience is unique; that fathers require support; and that fathers achieve personal growth because of their experiences of their transition to becoming a father of a child with an intellectual disability in the early years.

A river of memory: landscape, narrative and identity in the Lee Valley, Co. Cork, Ireland

In moments of rapid social changes, as has been witnessed in Ireland in the last decade, the conditions through which people engage with their localities though memory, individually and collectively, remains an important cultural issue with key implications for questions of heritage, preservation and civic identity. In recent decades, cultural geographers have argued that landscape is more than just a view or a static text of something symbolic. The emphasis seems to be on landscape as a dynamic cultural process – an ever-evolving process being constructed and re-constructed. Hence, landscape seems to be a highly complex term that carries many different meanings. Material, form, relationships or actions have different meanings in different settings. Drawing upon recent and continuing scholarly debates in cultural landscapes and collective memory, this thesis sets out to examine the generation of collective memory and how it is employed as a cultural tool in the production of memory in the landscape. More specifically, the research considers the relationships between landscape and memory, investigating the ways in which places are produced, appropriated, experienced, sensed, acknowledged, imagined, yearned for, appropriated, re-appropriated, contested and identified with. A polyvocal-bricoleur approach aims to get below the surface of a cultural landscape, inject historical research and temporal depth into cultural landscape studies and instil a genuine sense of inclusivity of a wide variety of voices (role of monuments and rituals and voices of people) from the past and present. The polyvocal-bricoleur approach inspires a mixed method methodology approach to fieldsites through archival research, fieldwork and filmed interviews. Using a mixture of mini-vignettes of place narratives in the River Lee valley in the south of Ireland, the thesis explores a number of questions on the fluid nature of narrative in representing the story and role of the landscape in memory-making. The case studies in the Lee Valley are harnessed to investigate the role of the above questions/ themes/ debates in the act of memory making at sites ranging from an Irish War of Independence memorial to the River Lee’s hydroelectric scheme to the valley’s key religious pilgrimage site. The thesis investigates the idea that that the process of landscape extends not only across space but also across time – that the concept of historical continuity and the individual and collective human engagement and experience of this continuity are central to the processes of remembering on the landscape. In addition the thesis debates the idea that the production of landscape is conditioned by several social frames of memory – that individuals remember according to several social frames that give emphasis to different aspects of the reality of human experience. The thesis also reflects on how the process of landscape is represented by those who re-produce its narratives in various media.

From the demise of theory to its resurgence. A retrospective on the postmodern turn to rethink the 'desire for narrative' and the sublime untimeliness of emancipation

Cultural Marxist Theory, commonly known as theory, enjoyed a moment of extraordinary success in the 1970s, when the works of leading post-war French philosophers were published in English. After relocating to Anglophone academia, however, theory disavowed its original concerns and lost its ambition to understand the world as a whole, becoming the play of heterogeneities associated with postcolonialism, multiculturalism and identity politics, commonly referred to as postmodern theory. This turn, which took place during a period that seemed to have spelt the death of Marxism, the 1990s, induced many of its supporters to engage in an ongoing funeral wake designating the merits of theory and dreaming its resurgence. According to them, had theory been resurrected in historical circumstances completely different from those which had led to its rise, it would have never reacquired the significance that had originally connoted it. This thesis demonstrates how theory has survived its demise and entirely regained its prominence in our socio-political context marked by the effects of the latest crisis of capitalism and by the global threat of terrorisms rooted in messianic eschatologies. In its current form theory does no longer need to show allegiance to certain intellectual stances or political groupings in order to produce important reformulations of the projects it once gave life to. Though less overtly radical and epistemologically bounded, theory remains a necessary form of enquiry justified by the political commitment which originated it in the first place. Its voice continues to speak to us about justice ‘where it is not yet, not yet there, where it is no longer’ (Derrida, 1993, XVIII).