Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T21:15:48.694Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 2 - Nation: Reconciliation and the Politics of Friendship in Post-Troubles Literature

from Part One - Legacies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2020

Paige Reynolds
Affiliation:
College of the Holy Cross, Massachusetts
Get access

Summary

This chapter suggests that a discernible trend in post-Troubles Northern Irish fiction and drama is to revisit and revise the “love across the barricades” plot and, in this way, to (re)imagine new forms of political community beyond the communitarian divide. It argues that friendship may offer an alternative model for a political reconciliation than suggested by the peace process and outlined by the 1998 Agreement. Drawing on Andrew Schaap and Hannah Arendt, I propose a distinction between a filiative and an affiliative politics of reconciliation: between one that is predicated on the ideal of a stable community with a common identity and one that foregrounds the establishment of new forms of relationships, presupposing the irreducible plurality of viewpoints as a basis for dialogue about the common world. Focusing on Robert McLiam Wilson’s Eureka Street (1996), Glenn Patterson’s The Rest Just Follows (2014) and Mary O’Donnell’s Where They Lie (2014), this chapter suggests that all three novels consider friendship as a political principle that can give rise to an affiliative reconciliation in invoking a not-yet community beyond ethnonational lines.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×