One of two views on the role of education in the novel: perhaps novel is advocating for education so that native Irish can stand on equal (or somewhat equal) footing with their colonial administrators and engage in mutually beneficial conversation as a result. Or, as this article says, raise the Irish to be good members of a colonized class. Maybe a little of both. Maybe the two are inextricable?

I've always seen this ending as being a bit more subversive than Owenson's Glorvina Solution because the latter more or less takes the remnants of a Brehon Law-run society and incorporates it into an English system while the former seemed to sneak some native Irishness into an existing English system of ownership. The fact that the novel ends in two members of the Ascendancy taking over the estate does suggest otherwise.

And yet, that past still account for how characters in Edgeworth interact with one another. I don't know if I agree with the extent to which the article thinks she affects a "wall of amnesia." While I agree that she does this to an extent, insomuch as she favours the rights of landowners over native Irish claims to ownership, she still shows the ways in which the past continues to exert a hold on the present and will well into the future. Is she advocating for more forgetting or is she showing its limits.

And yet, if we must accept whomever owns what at the present, surely when a rebellion happens, one must disagree with the rebellion until it succeeds and then proceed as though it's legitimate, unless this theory proposes we mark territories as they exist in the early 19th century and consider those final. In trying to forget history, does Edgeworth maybe also want to forget a future that is fated to be always shifting?

Of course, this failed historically. And yet, even if she brings up history to strategically forget it, she has still recalled it for her reader, moreover for her English reader who might not be as well acquainted with this history. Perhaps she is, in a way, keeping history alive even as she makes efforts to show the value of forgetting it.

Is this maybe an extension of the conversational model I mentioned above? A writer's construction of Irish history affects how a character converses, but an author has knowledge of the future of the universe in which their story takes place. Geraldine's conversation is inflected by a future of Union which Edgeworth has already imagined for her characters. Conversations as subordinate to a wider narrative/moral goals (often inseparable for Edgeworth) even though one such moral goal seems to be the facilitation of inter-community conversation.

Her somewhat-nationalistic speech in the novel is then like a sword forged by a history that has given shape to the words of the present. The rebellion evoked in her name is a factor in how she converses with others. Morever, it's how Edgeworth herself chooses to construct her own remembrance of Irish history that inflects Lady Geraldine's conversations.

Seems a bit like the paralysis of Joyce, of history that constricts.

History into aesthetics. Perhaps points to the utility of rendering difficult history (and maybe difficult historical conversations too) in fiction. And yet, that Ennui seems to be advocating for an erasure of historical remembrance (and especially considering the abject failure of that project) might this utitlity be brought into question?

So, Edgeworth is rendering these issues of historical violence, then paving over them as a way to show how to start over in Ennui.

More of her illusiveness. Hopes for an amicable future for all in Ireland, yet seemingly multifaceted approach. Connects back to my issues looking at Andrew Gibson's article, determining whether Edgeworth was a part of the totalising impulse (conversation-killing) of colonialism or whether she was trying to undo this (or both. Probably both.)

Connects to Deane's ideas about Irish speech, how the native Irish speak English in a less stable, more degenerate way than Anglo-Irish landlords.

Something that ultimitely failed to happen. Her attempt at amnesia replaced by a nationalist remembrance of history.

Connects to Terry Eagleton who talks about the realist novel's difficulty and failure in representing Ireland.

Language of mastery: does Edgeworth's language, in its attempt to render the native Irish for a specific moral purpose perform this very act of mastery or does her attention to advocating conversation in her novels fight the attempt to reduce a colonized other?

Don't think I agree with this: isn't his lie a part of his totalising women as a whole. Maybe an action directed as this woman in particular, but also seems a part of his imperitive to keep all women separate from his experiences.

Also, necessitates listening? Speaking must give way in order to aknowledge the other? Silence seems to be a necessary complement to the act of speaking TO the other.

Much like Hardcastle in Ennui who seems to be unable to bring himself to converse with native Irish.

Unsure about "possibility unsaying what is said". Lecture (rhetoric) as set in stone vs. conversation that is being constantly revised between two people? Still, conversation as engagement with another, necessitating a lack of totalising impuslse. Relevant to Edgeworth's worlds of vampiric absentee landlords vs. benevolent landlords who converse with tenants.

More history as manifesting in present speech. Kurtz lecture as opposed to converses because of how he is made in Europe, or maybe because he constructs his own history as being made by all Europe as Marlowe does?

Pay attention to this in Edgeworth's novels, watch out for influence of main character on depiction of proceedings. Think Castle Rackrent: story filtered through Thady Quirk and an unknown editor- how might we deal with conversation when mediated through this sort of partial, biased perspective.

A little unsure about this- "existence over existents." Maybe about prioritising essentials and essentialism over individuals? Seems to line up with Levinas' philosophy as presented here. Keep examining this concept.

Think, "Can the Subaltern Speak" - With rhetoric and "speaking for" an other, the other cannot speak as they are made subordinate to monolithic whole

Rhetoric as opposite of conversation (explicit attempt to influence or control other)

Think history of Irish colonialism from Gerald of Wales one. Even Edgeworth with her benevolent generalizations.

Maybe, a bit too much certainty about another, maybe contradicts spirit of article-Watch for this when writing dissertation.

A guide to colonial conversation maybe? Think in Edgeworth- does her virtuous characters' drives towards understanding native Irish work in this way? Or do these conversations, as rendered in a finite work of fiction, always fall short since Edgeworth ultimately seek to encompass?

What can novelist do then? Edgeworth obviously commits this kind of "violence", but was there any possibility of not doing this if cognition and representation are always violence?

Maybe also through denying the other's culture (language, art, religion etc) seek not only to encompass, but then to attempt forced change as well- force into denial of self? of validity of community?

Tactic of imperialism. Make the other person less a person than you are. Eliminates possibility of open conversation (at least for Levinas)

Heart of Darkness' ethical power is located in what it doesn't say which one can see from looking at the work of Levinas whose ethics lie in engagement with an other (connects to dissertation topic of conversation)

So, Leavis is saying that a firm system of ethics must be applied to a text. Even if it deals with morally ambiguous material, it is dealing with that from an established schema of ethical thought.

How might we employ an ethical reading of Heart of Darkness if so much of Heart of Darkness is centred on the idea of unrepresentability?