Academic literature on the topic 'Postcolonialism – Northern Ireland'

This article offers a comprehensive, research-informed reflection on the contents of the Special Double Issue of Scene, ‘Performance and Ireland’, conceptualized within a sense of looped temporalities (now, then, now), a concept borrowed from Irish multidisciplinary performance company, ANU Productions. From the perspectives of performance studies and visual culture, we connect and contextualize for an international readership articles concerning such topics as: Ireland’s colonial history; race, ethnicity and racism in relation to Ireland; performing the Irish diaspora; feminist activism; performing LGBTQ+ identities; the Troubles and the border in Northern Ireland; Ireland as a global brand; the Gaelic Athletics Association (GAA); and artistic engagements with hidden histories. This introductory article provides an overview of the discourses on performance studies and Ireland to date, and draws on theories of performance as they intersect with Irish studies, postcolonialism, commemoration and gender and sexuality, to situate the volume within pertinent contemporary and historical contexts from the Irish Famine (1845–49) to Covid-19. ‘Performing Ireland’ in the context of the current pandemic is considered specifically towards the end of the article.

Audrey Horning has a lot to say about the abuses of overarching theory in archaeology. Her most cogent critiques, directed at the rather careless application of postcolonial theory to the archaeology of Northern Ireland and the failure of that theoretical model to deal effectively with the complex and fragmented identities of this continually embattled society, spoke powerfully to my own experience. The intellectual currency of colonialism and postcolonialism is becoming as rapidly devalued as that of domination and resistance. This is not to say these concepts have no merit – only that they suffer from overuse and a persistent lack of nuanced examination.

Focusing on Seamus Heaney’s poetry, this chapter explores the limitations of Irish postcolonial criticism. Acknowledging the invigorating influence of Said on Irish critics, it nevertheless argues that an overemphasis on Ireland’s colonial and “postcolonial” status has restricted attention to the nation and its political history. The collapse of the Celtic Tiger permits a global reframing of Irish culture that emphasizes transnational flows of money, people, culture, and literature. While Heaney’s poetry may seem archaic (rather than avant-garde), this chapter finds it creatively engages with transimperial affiliations. Rather than reading Heaney as a provincial northern Irish poet rooted in the native soil, the chapter emphasizes the poet’s embrace of mobility, fluidity, and non-Irish sites. Underscoring Heaney’s indebtedness to Yeats, Joyce, and Beckett—whose works represented the circulations of seafaring cultural exchange—the chapter discovers in Heaney’s meditations on oceanic networks a corrective to the narrow critical focus on decolonization and nationhood.