Is Irish history at the dawn of the twenty-first century still, as Stephen Dedalus quipped, a nightmare? With the demise of the Celtic Tiger, the collapse of the housing bubble, and the sex abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church, Ireland is an island looking for a new story. This book argues that queer culture has a vital role to play in the creation of a reinvigorated national image for the Republic and for Northern Ireland. Looking back to the first wave of Irish modernism in the works of Oscar Wilde, John Millington Synge, Roger Casement, and James Joyce, the author reveals how ... More

Is Irish history at the dawn of the twenty-first century still, as Stephen Dedalus quipped, a nightmare? With the demise of the Celtic Tiger, the collapse of the housing bubble, and the sex abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church, Ireland is an island looking for a new story. This book argues that queer culture has a vital role to play in the creation of a reinvigorated national image for the Republic and for Northern Ireland. Looking back to the first wave of Irish modernism in the works of Oscar Wilde, John Millington Synge, Roger Casement, and James Joyce, the author reveals how these writers deployed queer aesthetics to shape inclusive forms of national affiliation as well as to sharpen anti-imperialist critiques. Turning to Ireland’s postmodernist boom in the works of Patrick McCabe, Neil Jordan, and Jamie O’Neill, the book shows that queer sensibilities and style remain key cultural resources for negotiating the political and economic realities of globalization. Irish queer aesthetics operate as both a mode of self-making and a novel form of social labor linked to modern transformations of capitalism. Situating his work in relation to Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality, the author brings together the disparate fields of queer theory and theories of empire to promote Irish culture’s contributions to a more just world order. This book engages an array of sources and media to make an original contribution to Irish and modernist studies, the history of sexuality, and theories of economic and aesthetic value.