The wild Irish; or, a note on stereotypes

Eagleton’s recent discussion of stereotyping is criticised here. I haven’t read the TE article, but the summary mentions a familiar defence of stereotypes – i.e. that they are often true, or at least broadly accurate. This overlooks a couple of rather obvious points. Every stereotype-net will of course catch something. Hence, the predictable faux-naïve defence ‘but I’ve met people like this’, the ‘I’m just saying, a lot of Irish actually are…’. But even where the net apparently catches its ‘examples’ or can be deemed to have some sort of accuracy, what makes it a stereotype is (as I pointed out in the comments) that it essentialises what are historically contingent features. The English stereotype of the lawless Irish (under colonial rule) overlooked that it was this foreign and imposed law that was being resisted or disavowed, not ‘Law itself’. (Indeed, ‘Irish’ itself might be seen as proto-stereotypical, since a diverse population, having in common the fact being of under colonial rule, is then turned into a positive entity, ‘The Irish’.) Likewise, with stereotypes of ‘lazy’ colonised peoples etc - they don’t want to work for you etc. Stereotyping is de-historicising, edits out context/ relations of power and so on. The other (I think obvious) point about the faux naïve ‘empiricist’ defence is that the particular trait chosen for the stereotype is always eloquent over and above its ‘accuracy’. The point concerns the choice of this particular trait. The trait chosen, far from being some neutral observation, is made to serve as a figure for the whole class of people concerned. Or, it is such a figure in the false guise of an observation.