 | Irishness on the Margins : Minority and Dissident Identities This collection examines the presence of minority communities and dissident voices in Ireland both historically and in a contemporary framework. Accordingly, the contributions explore different facets of what we term "Irish minority and dissident identities," ranging from political agitators drowned out by mainstream narratives of nationhood, to identities differentiated from the majority in terms of ethnicity, religion, class and health; and sexual minorities that challenge heteronormative perspectives on marriage, contraception, abortion, and divorce. At a moment when transnational democracy and the rights of minorities seem to be at risk, a book of this nature seems more pressing than ever. In different ways, the essays gathered here remind us of the importance of 'rethinking' nationhood, by a process of denaturalisation of the supremacy of white heterosexual structures. Pilar Villar-Argáiz is Senior Lecturer of British and Irish Literatures in the Department of English Philology at the University of Granada, Spain. She has published extensively on contemporary Irish poetry and fiction, in relation to questions of gender, race, migration and interculturality. Her edited collections include Literary Visions of Multicultural Ireland: The Immigrant in Contemporary Irish Literature (2014). |
