Presence of the Past

This book provides a scholarly investigation of multiple temporalities in Irish cultural life. It brings together fifteen essays written by historians, visual art and literary and cultural critics, the purpose of which is to stimulate forms of reading and approaches that are more accommodating both to Ireland’s colonial history and to a contemporary present dominated, among other issues, by immigration, economic precariousness, and the spectre of racism. Upsetting teleological chronology, the contributions in this book explore through a variety of prisms the ways in which the geological and colonial past, the unstable present and an uncertain future fold into each other in Irish arts, culture and society, thus enabling new vistas and innovative reappraisals to come to the fore. A wide-ranging, rich volume that examines the way in which the past continues to exert force on the present in Irish culture, from the representation of racial and ethnic minorities in Irish film to narrations of trauma in contemporary literature from across the island. Foregrounding the work of both established and up-and-coming scholars, The Presence of the Past offers insight into knotty questions concerning time, memory, history and trauma in Ireland." — Dr. Oona Frawley is Associate Professor at Maynooth University