Ian Nolan ~ Thinking Roads, Straying Songs: On Infrastructure, Inheriting Damaged Landscapes and Improvisational Twists

Thesis Supervisor: Hypatia Vourloumis

Thesis: Thinking Roads, Straying Songs: On Infrastructure, Inheriting Damaged Landscapes and Improvisational Twists

July 2024

Abstract 

"Thinking Roads, Straying Songs: Infrastructure and Inheriting Damaged Landscapes," critically examines the pervasive influence of colonial and capitalist infrastructures on contemporary life. By delving into the histories of colonialism in Ireland, it interrogates how infrastructures arrive with us, in the present, holding life in specific forms and establishing the limit-conditions for all we can do and think. Calling for a refusal of inherited frameworks, this thesis advocates for a recognition of the latent potential within shattered worlds. Performing this critique through the lens of disorientation and language, the thesis explores the author's flawed knowledge of the Irish language, dwelling in the gaps as creative moments of potential, questioning what it means to refuse "native language" as inheritance. Given that every refusal implies a turn towards something else, this critique necessarily meanders and strays; intertwining theoretical reflections with folklore, personal history, and cultural practices. The final chapter delves into the relationship between the author and his deceased father, performing a queer reading of the garden created by the father, in the final years of his life, from the perspective of improvisational dance. Situated within a discussion around non-locality, this thesis ultimately posits that manifest grief and reorientation towards loss can foster solidarities and alternative ways of being that are at once relational and antagonistic, resisting the finality of historical narratives.

Author: Ian Nolan