Archipelagic Ireland: The Pogues and Celtic Errantry

Caribbean thinker Edouard Glissant has, across numerous works, developed a notion of the ‘archipelagic’ global community which honours the particularity, localism, and ‘opaqueness’ of specific places yet extends them into open relation with the world. In this vision, the archipelago replaces the nation as the primary vehicle through which to conceive of identity, and a cross cultural ‘poetics of relation’ connects the particular with the world in a non-homogenising or universalising manner. Key to Glissant's vision is the notion of ‘errantry’, a creative, wandering (or ‘rambling’) style of thinking which embraces movement, multiplicity, and connection within the world. Drawing from Glissant's approach, this essay argues for an archipelagic reading of the notion(s) of Irishness, community, and identity put forth by The Pogues. By engaging selected material from the band's collection, one can grasp a well-defined, affectively grounded, and unmistakably Celtic sense of Ireland. However, this sense of particularity crucially faces outward to connect with other communities, histories, and identities in an open and, as this essay argues, archipelagic manner. The traps of insular nationalism are deftly avoided by The Pogues’ performance of Irish identity and, sonically, the band opens innovative and interesting connections with other global archipelagos. Ultimately, this text offers The Pogues as an archipelagic force which productively muddled static notions of national community, musical genre, and identity in an embrace of creative errantry.