What happens when the cultural memory of poverty, oppression and colonialism is, ostensibly, at variance with lived experience? What forces does the past exert on the present, and how do writers navigate and express those relationships? This course explores the influence of postcolonial memory on the cultural imaginary (that shifting set of ideas and imaginings of place, people and cultural identity).
Irish literature and the Irish cultural imaginary (mid 1990s to late 2000s: a period of accelerated social and economic change) form our case study for an exploration of globally significant issues of cultural memory, identity and postcolonial inheritance.
Through selected novels, plays, poetry and short stories, we explore Ireland’s relationship with postcolonial frameworks. We interrogate issues of authenticity and hybridity, ethical memory, postcolonial haunting and indigenous language, and explore the treatment of women as agents of postcolonial experience. We close with considerations of the relationship between multiculturalism and postcoloniality.