Literature, Partition and the Nation-State
Culture and Conflict in Ireland, Israel and Palestine

A study of the social and cultural legacies of state division in Ireland and Palestine.

Joe Cleary (Author)

9780521651509, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 December 2001

272 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.6 cm, 0.46 kg

'… cleary balances the possibility of post-imperial partition being a shared experience in Ireland, Israel and Palestine … The second part of Cleary's book has an admirably acute reading of how partition is not only represented in, but structurally determines, narrative in (Northern) Irish culture and discusses in particular the novels for teenagers … [he] concludes this chapter with a brief but illuminating move into discussing the Peace Process and its effect on literary fiction … [this] is one of the most significant books in Irish studies in recent years; significant for its critical and conceptual intelligence, but also for its willingness to shift the agenda of Irish postcolonial critique into truly challenging arenas, where the curiously under-researched phenomenon of Partition means that Neil Jordan can be read in the same matrix as Amos Oz.' Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory

The history of partition in the twentieth century is one steeped in controversy and violence. Literature, Partition and the Nation State offers an extended study of the social and cultural legacies of state division in Ireland and Palestine, two regions where the trauma of partition continues to shape political events to this day. Focusing on the period since the 1960s, when the original partition settlements in each region were challenged by Irish and Palestinian nationalists, Joe Cleary's book contains individual chapters on nationalism and self-determination; on the construction of national literatures in the wake of state division; and on influential Irish, Israeli and Palestinian writers, film-makers and public intellectuals. Cleary's book is a radical and enthralling intervention into contemporary scholarship from a range of disciplines on nations and nationalism. It will be of interest to scholars in Cultural and Post-Colonial Studies, Nations and Nationalism, Irish Literature, Middle East Studies and Modern History.

Acknowledgments
Preface
Part I: 1. Ireland, Palestine and the antinomies of self-determination in the 'Badlands of Modernity'
2. Estranged states: national literatures, modernity and tradition, and the elaboration of partitionist identities
Part II: 3. 'Forked-Tongued on the Border Pitt': partition and the politics of form in contemporary narratives of the Northern Irish conflict
4. Agonies of the potentates: journeys to the frontier in the novels of Amos Oz
5. The meaning of disaster: the novel and the stateless nation in Ghassan Kanafani's Men in the Sun.

Subject Areas: National liberation & independence, post-colonialism [HBTR], Colonialism & imperialism [HBTQ], Asian history [HBJF], British & Irish history [HBJD1], Literary theory [DSA]