Irish nationalism and postcolonial modernity: the ‘minor’ literature and authorial selves of Brian O’Nolan

In the immediate post-independence period, forms of state-sponsored Irish nationalism were pre-occupied with exclusive cultural markers based on the Irish language, mythology and folk traditions. Because of this, a postcolonial examination of how such nationalist forms of identity were fetishised is necessary in order to critique the continuing process of decolonization in Ireland. This dissertation investigates Brian O’Nolan’s engagement with dominant colonial and nationalist literary discourses in his fiction and journalism. Deleuze and Guattari define a ‘minor’ writer’s role as one which deterritorializes major languages in order to negotiate textual spaces which question the assumptions of dominant groups. Considering this concept has been applied to postcolonial studies due to the theorists’ linguistic and political concerns, this dissertation explores the ‘minor’ literary practice of Brian O’Nolan’s authorial personae and writing techniques. Through the employment of Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the deterritorialization of language alongside Walter Benjamin’s models of the flâneur and translation, and Claude Lévi-Strauss’s concept of bricolage, this thesis examines the complex forms of postcolonial narrative agency and discursive political resistance in O’Nolan’s work. While O’Nolan is often read in biographical terms or within the frameworks of literary modernism and postmodernism, this thesis aims to demonstrate the politically ambivalent nature of his writing through his creation of liminal authorial selves and heterogeneous narrative forms. As a bi-lingual author, O’Nolan is linguistically ‘in-between’ languages and, because of this, he deterritorializes both historical and literary associations of the Irish and English languages to produce parodic and comic versions of national and linguistic identity. His satiric novel An Béal Bocht exposes, through his use of an array of materials, how Irish folk and peasant culture have been fetishized within colonial and nationalist frameworks. In order to avoid such restricting forms of identity, O’Nolan positions his own authorial self within a multitude of pseudonyms which refuse a clear, assimilable subjectivity and political position. Because of this, O’Nolan’s authorial voice in his journalism is read as an allusive flâneur figure. Equally, O’Nolan deterritorializes Irish mythology in At Swim-Two-Birds as a form of palimpsestic translation and rhizomatic re-mapping of a number of literary traditions which reflect the Irish nation while in The Third Policeman O’Nolan deconstructs notions of empirical subjectivity and academic and scientific epistemological knowledge. This results in an infinite form of fantastical writing which exposes the limited codes of Irish national culture and identity without reterritorializing such identities. Because O’Nolan’s ‘minor’ literary challenge is reflective of the on-going crisis of Ireland’s incomplete decolonization, this thesis employs the concept of ‘minor’ literature to read Ireland’s historical past and contemporary modernity through O’Nolan’s multi-voiced and layered narratives

Thermal Zoning For HVAC Design

The thermal zoning for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system design, and the factors affecting zoning decisions are discussed. Spaces within buildings have varying thermal loads. To maintain the desired indoor temperature and humidity under transient sensible and latent heat gains and losses, these spaces need HVAC equipment with different capacities and separate control loops. The need for HVAC designers to select the thermal zones before the detailed loads are known is also cited

Mini-Split: Two-Story Houses and Stratification

A common complaint from occupants of low or moderate cost two-story houses and apartments is that their “upstairs” floor is often uncomfortably warm in the summer, while their “main” floor is either comfortable or too cool. The source of this problem can usually be traced to the exclusive use of single-zone all-air HVAC systems, which are the most common type used in much of North America’s housing. This article describes one practical energy-saving solution to this cooling-mode stratification problem in such an existing multistory residence

Tiny Houses, Big HVAC?

Through TV s hows, websites, and other popular media, a relatively new class of affordable residences, “tiny houses,” is attracting home buyers’ interest but so far has not undergone much scrutiny from the engineering community. The author became interested in this topic because when he was young his family “summered” in very small cabins and sometimes vacationed in towed-campers—both share similarities with modern tiny houses that are generally defi ned as being 400 ft2 (37.2 m2) in fl oor area or smaller

Managing patients with complex needs: Evaluation of the City and Hackney Primary Care Psychotherapy Consultation Service

Every day, across England, people are seeking help for distressing and painful conditions with which their family doctors are unable to help and for which no specialist service is available. Many visit their GPs, hospitals and other health services many times, yet their problems remain unresolved, at a high cost to them, to their families and to the NHS. People with medically unexplained symptoms, people with personality disorders and those with complex mental health problems frequently get‘bounced’ around the NHS, passed from one service to another, none able(or willing) to offer them the flexible, personalised and sometimes time- consuming support they require. A group of GPs in the City of London & Hackney decided to tackle this by setting up a new service for those with mental health problems they could not manage through existing primary care services who fell outside the scope of other local mental health services. The ground-breaking Primary Care Psychotherapy Consultation Service (PCPCS), implemented and run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, is the result of that innovation. It offers help for a range of needs, close to home, often in people’s own GP surgeries, rather than in remote clinics. This includes a range of psychological therapies, joint consultations with GPs, and training for primary care staff to enhance their capacity to help. As this report demonstrates, it can change people’s lives and dramatically improve their health and wellbeing

Equity and Fairness in Transport Planning: The State of Play

This paper explores the concept of equity, or fairness, in transport. As a pillar of sustainable development, social equity is an important objective of transport planning. The provision of transport infrastructure can have significant equity impacts on society through the distribution of costs and benefits. In recent years, there has been an increase in research interest in transportation related equity issues. The paper outlines the primary theoretical traditions that relate to equity and transport equity, and how equity concerns are currently addressed and evaluated in academia and in practice. Recent research has attempted to establish stronger principles from which to make sound moral judgements as to the fairness of transport impact distribution. The literature reveals that transport equity analysis is complex due to the numerous types of equity and impacts to consider. The paper concludes with a commentary on the state of play of transport equity and identifies areas for potential future research

Dead Reckoning: A Multiteam System Approach to Commentaries on the Drake-S Equation for Survival

We used a multiteam system approach (MTS) to map the critical and constructive feedback from four invited Commentaries on Rock et al.’s (2023) probabilistic analysis of purported evidence for postmortem survival. The goal was to mine actionable insights to guide future research with the potential for important learnings or breakthroughs about the nature or limits of human consciousness and their relation to transpersonal psychology. The commentators’ input identified only a few measurable variables or empirical tactics that conceivably challenge or refine our latest Drake-S Equation for survival. However, a review of these suggestions using logical and statistical criteria revealed that none immediately upend our previous conclusion that the published effect sizes for various Known Confounds (including hypothetical living agent psi ) do not fully account for the published prevalence rates of Anomalous Experiences traditionally interpretated as survival. However, the commentators proposed several good recommendations for new studies that could eventually alter this calculus. Accordingly, we outline the architecture of a proposed cross-disciplinary research program that extends the present MTS approach and its collected insights and focuses strictly on empiricism over rhetoric in this domain. The results of this coordinated effort should likewise help to clarify a range of psychological and biomedical phenomena that speak to the nature and limits of human consciousness

Irish nationalism and postcolonial modernity : the 'minor' literature and authorial selves of Brian O'Nolan

In the immediate post-independence period, forms of state-sponsored Irish nationalism were pre-occupied with exclusive cultural markers based on the Irish language, mythology and folk traditions. Because of this, a postcolonial examination of how such nationalist forms of identity were fetishised is necessary in order to critique the continuing process of decolonization in Ireland. This dissertation investigates Brian O’Nolan’s engagement with dominant colonial and nationalist literary discourses in his fiction and journalism. Deleuze and Guattari define a ‘minor’ writer’s role as one which deterritorializes major languages in order to negotiate textual spaces which question the assumptions of dominant groups. Considering this concept has been applied to postcolonial studies due to the theorists’ linguistic and political concerns, this dissertation explores the ‘minor’ literary practice of Brian O’Nolan’s authorial personae and writing techniques. Through the employment of Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the deterritorialization of language alongside Walter Benjamin’s models of the flâneur and translation, and Claude Lévi-Strauss’s concept of bricolage, this thesis examines the complex forms of postcolonial narrative agency and discursive political resistance in O’Nolan’s work. While O’Nolan is often read in biographical terms or within the frameworks of literary modernism and postmodernism, this thesis aims to demonstrate the politically ambivalent nature of his writing through his creation of liminal authorial selves and heterogeneous narrative forms. As a bi-lingual author, O’Nolan is linguistically ‘in-between’ languages and, because of this, he deterritorializes both historical and literary associations of the Irish and English languages to produce parodic and comic versions of national and linguistic identity. His satiric novel An Béal Bocht exposes, through his use of an array of materials, how Irish folk and peasant culture have been fetishized within colonial and nationalist frameworks. In order to avoid such restricting forms of identity, O’Nolan positions his own authorial self within a multitude of pseudonyms which refuse a clear, assimilable subjectivity and political position. Because of this, O’Nolan’s authorial voice in his journalism is read as an allusive flâneur figure. Equally, O’Nolan deterritorializes Irish mythology in At Swim-Two-Birds as a form of palimpsestic translation and rhizomatic re-mapping of a number of literary traditions which reflect the Irish nation while in The Third Policeman O’Nolan deconstructs notions of empirical subjectivity and academic and scientific epistemological knowledge. This results in an infinite form of fantastical writing which exposes the limited codes of Irish national culture and identity without reterritorializing such identities. Because O’Nolan’s ‘minor’ literary challenge is reflective of the on-going crisis of Ireland’s incomplete decolonization, this thesis employs the concept of ‘minor’ literature to read Ireland’s historical past and contemporary modernity through O’Nolan’s multi-voiced and layered narratives.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo