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‘Casement’s War’ and ‘Casement Wars’

12/09/2023 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

‘Casement’s War’ and ‘Casement Wars’ – responses to Angus Mitchell on the 1st World War and the Black Diaries

Casement's War' and 'Casement Wars

Jeff {Dudgeon MBE] has written a response to Angus Mitchell which is comprehensive and extremely articulate…

 

This edition of the Field Day Review (published by the University of Notre Dame, Indiana) is beautifully presented and exceptionally well produced. On the cover and flyleaf are evocative photographs of Banna Strand where Casement landed in April 1916 and Murlough Bay in the 1890s and 1953 during Eamon
de Valera‘s visit. Murlough Bay was to be Casement‘s final resting place, a mile from his adopted home near Ballycastle but, short of partition ending, cannot be. Despite his efforts, the division of Ireland is nearly a century old, Northern Ireland‘s frontier being one of the longest standing in Europe. The memorial cross to Casement (and others) at Murlough‘s ―green hill was torn down in 1957 during the IRA border campaign which was quite eventful in the area. Little of it remains. The four items under review are two transcriptions from Casement‘s German diaries, introduced and annotated by Angus Mitchell, and two substantive articles by him on the German episode and the diary authenticity debate and its history. Together they run to 125 pages…
 
I have provided the link to the uploaded copy of the response in full at academia.edu/
 
 Casement's War' and 'Casement Wars
 

‘Casement’s War’ and ‘Casement Wars’ – responses to Angus Mitchell on the 1st World War and the Black Diaries

Internal Links:

  • The Carpenter Club
  • Book Review: Edward Carpenter: Sex Vol. 1

Filed Under: History Tagged With: Angus Mitchell, Carpenter, edward carpenter, Field Day Review, Jeff Dudgeon, Jeff Dudgeon MBE

Book Review: Edward Carpenter: Sex Vol. 1

13/04/2015 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

Edward Carpenter
Reprinted from Gay Star Issue No 15 Spring 1985
It is a great pleasure to see th work of Edward Carpenter back in print.  Largely forgotten since his death in 1929, immensely popular as a radical writer whilst alive, Carpenter’s recent revival rests primarily on his attempt to develop a socialism linking the personal and the political.  The fact that the selected writings are published by Gay Men’s Press indicates the importance of gayness in Carpenter’s life and though.
Carpenter both delights and infuriates.  Alongside passages of genuine insight can be found both dotty and dangerous.  A highly individualistic thinker, he drew upon many of the intellectual currents of late Victorian Britain – marxism, anarchism, orientalism, mysticism, secularism, and developed, not surprisingly, a most idiosyncratic world view.  He displays, for example, subtely and sensitivity in analysing many of the forms in which women are oppressed in modern society and yet can state, in full mystical flight on force and nature, “I think every women in her heart wishes to be ravished”: and adds by way of bizarre qualification “but naturally it must be by the right man”.
On matters specifically gay it is necessary to be aware of the climate in which he wrote to read him properly.  In the wake of the Oscar Wilde ‘scandal’ and in the context of the public morality of the time discussion, of homosexuality was taboo and Carpenter was deserted by his publisher when he attempted to go into print.  He writes on gayness in a very positive but distanced manner – oscillating between enthusiastic praise of homosexuality’s contribution to the past, present and future of humanity and a rather defensive mode (gays are “they” not “we”) asking for toleration.
Carpenter was also confronted with, and influenced by a very poorly developed intellectual on homosexuality, much of it ill-conceived and censorious.  To a modern reader his talk of ‘congenital’ homosexuality, of the ‘intermediate sex’, of feminine souls in male bodies and vice-versa, will probably seem very dated and confused.  Also, lacking adequate data, he tends to make wild generalisations, attributing for example a sensitive nature to male gays and a forceful persona to lesbians.  He displays methodological naivety (like A L Rowse) in his Great Homosexuals in History approach, assuming that homosexuality is an unproblematic and unchanging category for historical research.  Nonetheless, a much more flexible conception ultimately emerges from these rigidities.  Gayness is no longer seen as the attribute of a type of person, but is rather seen as a universal element present, if only in potential form, in all people.  It is also more than a matter of sexuality for the gay dimension is part of a more general potential in humanity for a fully human existence.  IN this respect Carpenter’s gays (whom he terms Urnings or Uranians) are a type of socialist vanguard:
“the Uranian spirit may lead to something like a general enthusiasm of HUmanity, and … the Uranian people may be destined to form the advance guard of the great movement which will one day transform the common life by substituting the bond of personal affection and compassion for the monetary, legal and other external ties which now control and confine society.  Such a part of course we cannot expect the Uranians to palyunless the capacity for their kind of attachment also exists – though in a germinal and undeveloped state – in the breast of mankind at large.  And modern thought and investigation are clearly tending that way – to confirm that it does so exist”.
Noel Grieg provides a useful introduction combining important biographical material and his own critical assessment of Carpenter’s output.  In short this is a most welcome and handosmely produced book and it bodes well for the rest of the volumes in the series.
Review by Vincent Geoghegan

 
 
 

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: edward carpenter, gay men's press, homosexuality, Noel Grieg

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