Chapter 18 - Transnationalism and Environment in Contemporary Irish Literature

Summary

Christine Cusick argues in this chapter that “an ethics of environmental engagement [often] decenters a sense of nation,” revising our sense of identity honed within discourses of political modernity. She focuses on this crucial aspect of ecological dwelling, countering the rise of nationalist discourses in the twenty-first century. Irish literature, like many other postcolonial literary traditions, is in a bind here: Questions related to borders and border transgressions (central to the discourse of political modernity) need to be rethought in the present. Cusick notes that “Implicit in the question of border mapping is the familiar question about how a critical discourse might approach texts as locally embedded without denigrating global import.” The essay draws on the work of the geographer Nessa Cronin and the polymathic narratives of Tim Robinson but moves beyond them to center contemporary Irish writers.