We have arrived at the beginning of the twenty–first century with two decades of Famine monument–making behind us, and undoubtedly more ahead. Ireland's overstuffed commemorative calendar now includes an annual day of National Famine Commemoration, yet other memorial sites (in both Ireland and the diaspora) have slipped into quiet decay as the commemorative fever subsides. Throughout the 1990s former Irish President Mary Robinson widely promoted the notion of a ‘shared Famine heritage’ between Ireland and its diaspora, but the outcomes of the 150th anniversary suggest such concordance is illusory. In Ireland, the legacy of the Famine remains one of displacement and death, now apprehended by a postcolonial nation whose revived economic fortunes at the time of the anniversary are again in decline, and remains subject to endless instrumentalization across the political spectrum. In the diaspora, the Famine persists as part of the foundation myth of immigrant nations and a vehicle for asserting ethnic difference by a shrinking demographic, even as its memory has formed the basis for renewed bonds of solidarity between commemorative groups. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that however productive the revival of Famine memory has been for some purposes, the recent and ongoing construction of these new lieux de mémoire is not an indicator of an assured mastery of the Famine past, but a signifier of social anxiety, political conflict and crises of identity. Whether the future of Famine representation will remain bound within processes of self–affirmation, political instrumentalization and anachronistic visual practices remains open; what is certain, however, is the stamp our present preoccupations have made on the construction of the Famine past.

Concerns voiced during the anniversary that the commemorations would generate ‘heat rather than light’ have indeed materialized at many new sites of monument and memorial. On the one hand, the plying of Famine memory and history in Ireland to support contemporary agendas of cultural tourism or a ‘working through’ of historical trauma has had uneasy overtones of commodification of experience and expurgation of the darker, conflicted realities of Famine inheritances.