On the Margins of Memory

This volume is, in part, an attempt to give a voice or a platform to communities who have frequently found themselves on the margins of the so-called mainstream community - the hidden Irish, the hidden European, the nomad and the migrant who reflects the changing face of the new and immigrant Europe. The essays in this collection explore the image of the nomad, migrant and the outsider/Other Traveller/Gypsy, within the frame of articulation that is European representational and visual culture. One of the remarkable coherences which exists between the figure of the traditional nomadic Traveller or Gypsy in the public imaginary -whether this be in the form of imagistic or literary production - is its strangely symbiotic relationship with current ongoing developments in visual culture and the global flows of cultural diaspora that are the norm in the modern world. These essays display the representational function of the Traveller/Gypsy or migrant as an exemplar of that which overcomes spatial/temporal distance and separation, thereby creating innovative opportunities for the exploration of issues relating to cross-cultural and identity representation. The artists and academics writing in this volume are exploring a new energy in modern culture, one which seeks an innovative and exciting re-positioning of the panorama that is dominance and resistance within the postcolonial cultural discourse of the present-day