6 - Class, Culture, and Place

Summary

George’s remarkable popularity among Irish-Americans is used as a lens through which to review the cultural force of ‘Irishness’ as a potent subaltern category. Here, the intersections of class and culture that shaped the distinctive form of Irish-American social radicalism are examined by looking at the enmeshed nationalist, pan-Celticist, anarchist, socialist, agrarian, journalistic, commercial, charitable, and ethno-religious networks that constituted Irish-American associational culture, and the political and poetic discourses they utilised. The political uses and resonances of the American past, and how these mapped on to contemporary political disagreements is examined, particularly the idea of slavery in the politics of land redistribution. The chapter also offers an analysis of the Irish National Land League of America, its support across different regions and among different social groups, and its internal political and ideological tensions. Finally, it considers the use of romantic and poetic imagery in the sustenance of the agrarian political ideals that animated radical agitation and broader conceptions of Irish identity in the United States.