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Beehives on the Border: Liminal Humans and Other Animals at Skellig Michael

Wrenn, Corey (2020) Beehives on the Border: Liminal Humans and Other Animals at Skellig Michael. Irish Journal of Sociology, 29 (2). pp. 137-159. ISSN 0791-6035. E-ISSN 2050-5280. (doi:10.1177/0791603521999957) (KAR id:86657)

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Abstract

In the early middle ages, a community of Irish monks constructed a monastery outpost on the lonely Skellig Michael just offshore of County Kerry. These skelligs served as a mysterious boundary land where the known met the unknown, the worldly wrangled with the spiritual, and the very parameters of humanity itself were brought into question. Amid a period of great transition in Irish society, the monks willfully abandoned the luxuries of developing Western civilization on the mainland (and on the continent more broadly) to test their endurance through religious asceticism on a craggy island more suitable to birds than bipeds. This article reimagines the Skellig Michael experiment as a liminal space, one that troubles premodern efforts to disassociate from animality in an era when “human” and “animal” were malleable concepts. As Western society transitioned from animist paganism to anthropocentric Christianity and Norman colonial control, the Skellig Michael outpost (which survived into the 1300s) offered a point of permeability that invites a critical rethinking of early Irish custom. This article applies theories of liminality and Critical Animal studies to address the making of “human” and “animal” in the march to “civilization,” arguing that species demarcation and the establishment of anthroparchy has been central to the process.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1177/0791603521999957
Uncontrolled keywords: Borders, Irish Studies, Human-Animal Studies, Liminality, Vegan studies
Subjects: H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
Divisions: Divisions > Division for the Study of Law, Society and Social Justice > School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research
Funders: University of Kent (https://ror.org/00xkeyj56)
Depositing User: Corey Wrenn
Date Deposited: 18 Feb 2021 13:52 UTC
Last Modified: 04 Jul 2023 12:40 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/86657 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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