Dublin, modernity and the postcolonial spatial fix

Abstract

This book makes an impressive postcolonial and geographical contribution to Irish Studies, and one which raises, as I shall explore below, important questions about the relations between cities and modernity. Postcolonial perspectives on Ireland rest upon three main claims1. First, that for much of its history, Ireland was a British colony. Secondly, that colonial subjects have constricted agency and hybrid identities; what they can do is limited by the colonial power and what they aspire to is formed in part by that same power. Finally, to adopt a postcolonial perspective is to search for the ways post-Independence Ireland was shaped by the legacies of colonialism. Revisionist scholars, argues Kincaid, ignore 'the legacy of Ireland's long history of underdevelopment and the difficult circumstances out of which the new nation was born' and blame Ireland's problems instead upon the persistence of nationalist ideologies.