My book Power and Powerlessness in Union Ireland: Life in a Palliative State (OUP, 2024) was just published online. It is ludicrously expensive, so let me explain the basic premise of the book. If interested, please encourage your local/univ library to buy a copy. academic.oup.com/book/58980 🧵 - ThreadSky

ciaranon.bsky.social • 95 days ago

My book Power and Powerlessness in Union Ireland: Life in a Palliative State (OUP, 2024) was just published online. It is ludicrously expensive, so let me explain the basic premise of the book. If interested, please encourage your local/univ library to buy a copy. https://academic.oup.com/book/58980
🧵

Comments

ciaranon.bsky.social•95 days ago

1/ The book is interpretive, not at all trying to be an authoritative survey. It takes the idea of power (or lack of it) and threads it chronologically through the long nineteenth century. The first half is about infrastructure and the state. It also tries to theorise the Irish state.

ciaranon.bsky.social•95 days ago

2/ The second half focuses more on the experience of life in what I call 'a palliative state'; A key concept for the book. By this I mean the ways in which an insecure state held an apparently disloyal population in an insincere union. And how people experienced that.

ciaranon.bsky.social•95 days ago

3/ The book borrows ideas from people as various as Hannah Arendt, Kimberlè Crenshaw, Hannah Pitkin, Antonio Gramsci and Georgio Agamben. It uses Aníbal Quijano's work on the coloniality of power, Sara Ahmed's idea of a 'wilful subject.'

ciaranon.bsky.social•95 days ago

4/ By drawing on these ideas I am trying to see Ireland's long nineteenth century from a new angle, de-centred from the usual matrix of popular politics, the struggle for national self-determination, agrarian conflict, sectarian divisions.

ciaranon.bsky.social•95 days ago

5/ The book opens with the military road, bisecting the Wicklow mountains, and it ends with a bunch of fishermen complaining about the collapsing price of lobsters post-independence. Let me focus on just one story of many: that of Peggy Keating.

ciaranon.bsky.social•95 days ago

6/ On Saturday, January 7, 1843, a tall young woman in a blue cloak appeared at Lambeth Police Court in London, attracting the attention of the court reporters. Peggy Keating, a widow, had been evicted from her four-acre dwelling in Kilkenny by an agent acting for her absentee landlady, Lady Dover.

drciaranmcdonnell.bsky.social•95 days ago

The Military Road is something else, both then and now.

adriankirwan.bsky.social•94 days ago

I'm looking forward to reading this.

shannondevlin.bsky.social•94 days ago

Congrats Ciaran! Looks great, looking forward to reading!

idamilne.bsky.social•95 days ago

Congratulations and you’ve completely sold me! I look forward to reading it.

ciaranon.bsky.social•95 days ago

Thanks Ida, hope all well

democracytalk.bsky.social•94 days ago

Wow this sounds like such a compelling book. Congratulations on its publication - it’s definitely going on my reading list

claireconnolly.bsky.social•89 days ago

Congratulations Ciaran!

irishhistorians.bsky.social•95 days ago

Congratulations!

tortietabby.bsky.social•95 days ago

Looking forward to reading, Ciaran! Love the cover too.

ciaranon.bsky.social•95 days ago

Thanks Laura!

jodcork.bsky.social•92 days ago

Congratulations Ciaran, will have to get hold of a copy, looks like a must read!

matthewkilburn.bsky.social•94 days ago

This looks extraordinary.

laurenarrington.bsky.social•95 days ago

Congratulations!

ciaranon.bsky.social•95 days ago

Thanks!

kevinkosullivan.bsky.social•94 days ago

Super. Sounds great, Ciaran. Congratulations!

ainekeenan.bsky.social•95 days ago

"Drawing on feminist theories of power, the book also explores marginalised groups and their agency within Irish society, debunking the myth of Irish ‘ungovernability.’ ..."

Congratulations, Ciaran, I'm hooked. Hope this has a wide readership and it encourages further reading 'against the grain'.

ciaranon.bsky.social•95 days ago

🙏 great, many thanks Áine.