The Poor Bugger's Tool: Irish Modernism, Queer Labor, and Postcolonial History

The Poor Bugger's Tool(the title taking its name from the veiled but unmistakable reference in the 'Cyclops' episode in Ulysses to Roger Casement, the homosexual humanitarian and Irish patriot hanged for treason in 1916), argues that queer culture has a vital role to play in the creation of a reinvigorated national image, for the Republic and 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, Patrick R. Mullen 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, Mullen shows that queer sensibilities and style remain key cultural resources for negotiating the political and economic realities of globalization.