Strange Country: Ireland’s Politics and Culture, 1998-2021

The first two decades of the 21st century were a time of rapid change, with Ireland becoming an island of cosmopolitan global adaptation, from which the pall of clerical authority had lifted; a society of enlightened debate and constitutional renewal, whose Europhile integration contrasted with its neighbour’s Brexit Europhobia and xenophobia. Yet as always, the country is stranger than we might imagine : the unanticipated surge in support for Sinn Féin in February 2020 is evidence that the present and the future of Ireland are indeed surprising and strange. Today’s unpredictability is not unique to Ireland, but this book aims to draw out the specificities of the Irish present and its relationship to past history, memory and identity. Ireland can be examined as the spectacular manifestation of an enduring singularity. Strange and also illuminating, because it is a small and peripheral territory, a “readable” site for the exploration of the political and cultural condition of our common world, two decades into the 21st century. Several issues are examined through the prism of political and economic discourse, along with the practices of 21st century Irish literary and artistic creation.