Reflections, Misrecognitions, Messianisms and Identifications: Towards an Epistemology of Irish Nationalism

Authors

  • Eugene O’Brien University of Limerick

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2595-8127.v3i1p101-116

Abstract

This essay attempts to offer a critique of the mode of knowledge through which nationalism exists, and by which it operates. Placing nationalism within Lacan's concept of the imaginary, it traces the dyadic structure of a people and a place through various examples of Irish nationalist discourse. It also analyses the epistemological structure of nationalism in terms of the creation of a specular image of the ethnic which acts as a point of origin, and a telos, of that ethnic.

Author Biography

  • Eugene O’Brien, University of Limerick

    EUGENE O'BRIEN teaches in the University of Limerick and at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. He also works as a tutor for Oscail, the Irish distance learning project. He has published articles in Imprimatur, Minerva, Hermathena, Irish Studies Review, International Review of Modernism. H-Net, the Humanities online book review project, and Event Horizon. He is editor of Mellen's Irish Studies and Studies in Irish Literature series, as well as editor of Oak Tree Press's new Studies on Contemporary Ireland series.

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Published

2001-06-01

Issue

Vol. 3 (2001): ABEI Journal 3

Section

History

License

Copyright (c) 2001 Eugene O’Brien

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

O’Brien, E. (2001). Reflections, Misrecognitions, Messianisms and Identifications: Towards an Epistemology of Irish Nationalism. ABEI Journal, 3(1), 101-116. https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2595-8127.v3i1p101-116