Re-examining and re-appraising...

It's not very often to read and fully  understand one book I'd need to have read seven other books previously.It looks like it is the case with Peter Mahon's Violence, Politics and Textual Interventions in Northern Ireland. Starting with Joe Cleary's Literature, Partition and the Nation-State: Culture and Conflict in Ireland, Israel and Palestine (Cultural Margins) and Richard Bourke's Peace in Ireland: The War of Ideas would probably need to have been read to understand Peter Mahon's suggestions on the characterizations of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.


The blurb for Violence, Politics and Textual Interventions in Northern Ireland reads...

Drawing on the literary-anthropological work of René Girard and the psychoanalytical work of Jacques Lacan, Mahon's analysis of key Troubles texts seeks to move away from the all-too-common belief that the Troubles were the result of the repeated clashes of atavistic and instinctual tribal nationalisms. Using the work of both theorists, Mahon re-examines and re-appraises the complex deployment of recurrent motifs—such as language, violence, ritual, psycho-sexual dynamics, history, the law—in key Troubles texts. He then goes on to explore how the interaction between these texts and theorists makes it possible to theorize a new, flexible framework for reading and engaging with the dynamic interplay of violence, sexuality, politics and textuality that opens up alternate political and sexual possibilities.

Texts examined in the book include Jim Sheridan's In the Name of the Father, Terry George's Some Mother's Son, Neil Jordan's The Crying Game, Bernard MacLaverty’s Cal, Louise Dean’s This Human Season, Glenn Patterson’s That Which Was and Pat McCabe's Breakfast on Pluto The book looks like a very interesting read which evovled out of Peter's classes on Northern Irish literature and film at the University of British Columbia, where he lectures.