Publisher's Synopsis
This collection gathers together 12 essays by Irish intellectuals and international postcolonial critics as they engage in the debate over how postcolonial Ireland was and is. The approach in all the essays is theoretical, historical and comparative.;The first two essays by Joe Cleary and David Lloyd focus on debates over how theories developed to explain the emergence of cultures, how colonialism relates to Ireland and how Irish studies has influenced the development of postcolonial critique internationally.;The next six essays apply postcolonial perspectives to Irish cultural history and ask how and why decolonializing criticism emerged in Ireland from the time of the Renaissance. They also look at the context of cross colonial identifications between native Irish and Amerindian cultures that developed during the Enlightenments of the 18th century.;Essays by Kevin Whelan and Seamus Deane explore the afterlife of the famine in its effects upon Irish politics, writing and art, and the final selection of essays is devoted to the comparative study of postcolonial interactions between Ireland and India. Edward Said, the founder of postcolonial studies and one of the major oppositional voices against imperialism, has the last word on these essays. His afterword reflects on the place of Ireland in relation to postcolonial struggles around the world.
