From the 'Troubles' to Trumpism: Ireland and America, 1960-2023

by Stephen Watt

Overview

In Shakespeare Our Contemporary (1964), Polish critic Jan Kott defines one purpose of scholarship in the humanities that summarises the chief aim of this project: ‘The writing of history and, above all, literary criticism can, and must, always be understood as an attempt to find in the past aspects of human experience that can shed light on the meaning of our own times’. That is precisely what From the ‘Troubles’ to Trumpism: Ireland and America, 1960–2023 attempts to do. Aided by the insights of Irish and Northern Irish playwrights, poets and novelists, this book uses America’s historical relationship with Ireland and Northern Ireland as a means of understanding the rise of Trumpism and assessing its potential to incite a new American ‘Troubles’. Three related aims are to demonstrate the interdependence of Ireland and the United States since the Famine in Ireland and the American Civil War in the nineteenth century; to delineate the political and economic obstacles in the latter decades of the last century that prevented this relationship from evolving into a more consequential partnership; and to identify the underappreciated leaders who played crucial roles in both the brokering of the Good Friday Agreement and the inception of a revised foreign policy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781839992650
Publisher:	Anthem Press
Publication date:	09/10/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	246
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Stephen Watt is Provost Professor of English Emeritus and Former Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments; Preface: Dreams, Books and Overdetermination; Chapter 1: “No Irish Need Apply”: From the Tenement to the White House; Provocation 1: Trumpism and Troubles: Climatic Censorship, Authoritarian Populism and the Religious Right; Chapter 2: The Long Road to Good Friday, I: From JFK to Jimmy Carter; Provocation 2: A “Careening Circus of Pratfall Embarrassments”: Donald Trump in Ireland; Chapter 3: The Long Road to Good Friday, II: From Reagan to Clinton; Provocation 3: Imagined Communities and Historical Memory, Troubles Time and “Trump Time”; Chapter 4: Reading Our Troubles: Seamus Heaney and the Biden Presidency; Provocation 4: Dangerous Demagogues, Fictional and Otherwise; Conclusion: Victims and Martyrs, Troubles and Civil Wars; References; Index

Editorial Reviews

To comprehend Trumpism, we need to understand theatre and history. There is no better guide than Stephen Watt, long renowned as a brilliant reader of the dramas of Irish and American history. Ireland once looked to America as the future; Watt shows that America’s future is rapidly resembling Ireland’s past.” —John Brannigan, UniversityCollege Dublin, Ireland.

“Watt interweaves an incisive account of bipartisan American political engagement with Ireland since 1960, epitomized by efforts to help end the Troubles, with provocative interchapters drawing parallels between the recent Northern Irish past and an increasingly polarized American future to suggest that the United States may be in for some ‘Troubles’ of its own.” —Marilynn Richtarik, Georgia State University, USA.

 “Deeply researched and written in an incisive, witty style, this is an important book, cutting a swathe through the past fifty years of Irish and North American history. Its brilliance and originality lie in the meaningful connections it makes between the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the rise of Donald Trump.” —Anthony Roche, Professor Emeritus, School of English, Drama and Film, UniversityCollege Dublin, Ireland.

“President Kennedy famously said that the United States and Ireland were ‘divided by distance, but united by history.’ Professor Watt effectively argues that the countries are united primarily by a history of tribal division. In his scrupulously researched study, the devastating violence of Ireland’s internecine past serves as a likely portent of America’s future. An important thesis and a compelling read.” —Joseph Valente, Distinguished Professor, University of Buffalo, USA.

“Stephen Watt’s new book is an original and elegant exploration of the shifting relationship between Ireland and America in the years from JFK to Donald Trump. Blending political and cultural analyses, Watt considers how these two countries influence and explain each other—showing how Ireland’s troubled past might offer important lessons about America’s future.” —Patrick Lonergan, University of Galway, Ireland.

From the Publisher