Violence, Politics and Textual Interventions in Northern Ireland

by P. Mahon

Overview

Using the work of René Girard and Jacques Lacan, Mahon develops a new theoretical framework for reading the dynamic interplay of textuality, sexuality, violence, politics, reciprocity and the body in key literary and cinematic texts that engage with the period of political and social unrest in Northern Ireland known as the 'Troubles' (1968-1998).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780230576438
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	02/10/2010
Edition description:	2010
Pages:	259
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

PETER MAHON teaches in the Department of English at the University of British Columbia, Canada. He is the author of Imagining Joyce and Derrida: Between Finnegans Wake and Glas and Joyce: A Guide for the Perplexed. He has published essays in ELH, James Joyce Quarterly, Irish University Review and Partial Answers and is currently compiling a collection called PostHuman Joyce: Machines, Informatics, Technology.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements viii

Introduction 1

1 Blood, Shit and Tears: The Textual Reinscription of Sacrifice, Ritual and Victimhood in Bernard MacLaverty's Col 18

2 The Law's Terrifying Double: “Legal Panic” in Glenn Patterson's That Which Was 47

3 Family Matters: Jim Sheridan's In the Name of the Father and Terry George's Some Mother's Son 87

4 States of Desire in Patrick McCabe's Breakfast on Pluto 126

5 “Something like God”: Shit, Orifices, and Bodily Signifiers in Louise Dean's This Human Season 177

Conclusion: Contaminated Christs 212

Notes 228

Index 255

Editorial Reviews

'Peter Mahon's book is both timely and original, with a good sense of the vital significance of literature in Irish history. It is a trenchant scholarly intervention but will also interest a wide range of readers in both Ireland and Britain. I expect the book to become a model of the analysis of the cultural effects of political violence.' - Luke Thurston, Department of English& Creative Writing, Aberystwyth University, UK

From the Publisher