Counter-revolutionary masculinities: gender, social control and revising the chronologies of Irish nationalist politics

Abstract

ABSTRACT The period from 1912 to 1923 is the most heavily privileged period in modern Irish historiography and it has become commonplace to describe this period as “The Irish Revolution.” Moreover, a number of Irish historians have built on this to see the post-1922 period as the “Irish Counter-Revolution,” when more radical political impulses were suppressed in favour of the Free State’s vision of conservative law and order. This paper challenges these paradigms by arguing that the themes commonly associated with the “Revolution” – meritocracy, violence, the excitement about acquiring national power – had currency within Irish nationalism long before 1912. Similarly, the defining features of the “Counter-Revolution” – coercion, fear of socialism and feminism, a desire to force Irish citizens to live up to certain prescribed social roles – were already implicit in the politics and culture of the “Revolution.” Viewing Irish nationalism through the lens of masculinity shows how there was much continuity here: the Irish nationalist project of creating politically reliable, implicitly male citizens can be traced from the period of the cultural revival, through the “Revolution” and into the post-1922 “Counter-Revolution.” Moreover, “Masculinity” was a key means of supressing more radical political currents in the years after 1916.