The Ghost Limb: Alternative Protestants and the Spirit of 1798 by Claire Mitchell (review)

Reviewed by: The Ghost Limb: Alternative Protestants and the Spirit of 1798 by Claire Mitchell Kevin Hargaden (bio) Claire Mitchell, The Ghost Limb: Alternative Protestants and the Spirit of 1798 (Belfast: Beyond the Pale Books, 2023). ix + 245 pages. This book sets out to overcome 'disremembering' (p. 7). Different from forgetting, disremembering is a social process where recollections are almost intentionally lost, covered over, or smothered by a more powerful narrative. Written mostly during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Belfast-based sociologist charts her own journey of remembering what was never even forgotten: the hidden seams of what she calls alternative Protestantism that run through Irish history. While I had expected a relatively dry, scholarly investigation into how the ideals of the United Irishmen have and continue to inspire, the opening pages make clear that this is a book with an activist's heart. It takes the form of a range of interviews, thematically grouped into sections. Because of the pandemic, some of these conversations were conducted partially on Zoom or over WhatsApp, but it is clear that many of them took the form of long walks to sites of historical significance from the 1798 and 1803 rebellions. This is a case of form and theme aligning beautifully because Mitchell hopes to take the reader on their own wandering stroll to show them old ideas with fresh relevance. As she writes, in the opening chapter, of the ragtag assembly of 'dissenters, misfits and radicals' whom she associates with 'alternative Protestants', 'We haven't got the society we want yet. And so, we keep going' (p. 4). The first section, 'Beginnings', sets the author's own context and introduces the United Irishmen. Her goal is to sort of capture the historical spirit of the United Irishmen by talking to people who continue to embody the vision of those early Republicans. Mitchell explains that 'while my academic training underpins me in many ways, this book is an act of conversation, curiosity, imagination, identity and story' (p. 17). The bulk of the book consists of four sets of such conversations, exploring respectively 'Hidden Histories', 'Language', 'Faith', and 'Political Activism'. There is a closing section that seeks to summarise findings, draw conclusions, and point to the possibilities open to alternative Protestantism. The conversations Mitchell invites us into add up to a sort of potted map of how alternative Protestantism has sought to enact and embody a just Republicanism on this island over the centuries. In one chapter, she is accompanied by an artist through the Entries neighbourhood of Belfast, which is the home of a new public art installation in the form of street art that End Page 133 commemorates its centrality for the planning of the 1798 uprising. Various local artists were charged with interpreting the contemporary significance of particular sites and their work has been paired with specially commissioned couplets written by the poet, Gail McConnell. Mitchell is clearly taken by this subtle act of undoing disremembering. But the conversation continues after her tour as she shares conversations she subsequently had with others involved in the movement who found the low-key and unobtrusive, almost camouflaged nature of the installation frustrating. Mitchell feels the 'codedness of the art is almost part of our DNA in this place' but her allies baulk at how the official narrative of Protestant and Catholic and Orange and Green and Union Flag and Tricolour and all the stale binaries imposed on Northern Irish politics take precedence over letting artists tell the significant stories of place to those who now inhabit these buildings (p. 65). This gets at something very important that this book does. In an unsystematic way, like a real conversation, Mitchell introduces the reader to figures like Rose Mullan or William Orr, who are somewhat hidden behind the McCrackens and the Wolfe Tones. Her eye for detail displays how insightful attention to local history can be for contemporary politics (there's a wonderful example of this on p. 174, as she discusses a place called Bald's Yard). She also continues to trace how that seam of radical, non-sectarian, egalitarian, Republican Protestantism did not die away but was embodied in new ways by figures...