Abstract
‘Nations are forever haunted by their various definitional others’.¹
If national identity is a differential operation, determined by what it is not, and nations are haunted by their ‘definitional others’, these others are not spectres but agents and authors of their own representations, while they may also be reduced to stereotypical depictions in art. This essay is a selective survey of the body in figurative art to do with Ireland, north and south, in the century or so since Irish independence. It looks at the body’s relation to gender, race and sexuality, formations which are linked, intimately or distantly, to...
If national identity is a differential operation, determined by what it is not, and nations are haunted by their ‘definitional others’, these others are not spectres but agents and authors of their own representations, while they may also be reduced to stereotypical depictions in art. This essay is a selective survey of the body in figurative art to do with Ireland, north and south, in the century or so since Irish independence. It looks at the body’s relation to gender, race and sexuality, formations which are linked, intimately or distantly, to...
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Irish Art 1920-2020: Perspectives on Change |
| Editors | Catherine Marshall, Yvonne Scott |
| Place of Publication | Dublin |
| Publisher | Royal Irish Academy |
| Chapter | 5 |
| Pages | 138– 165 |
| Number of pages | 27 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781911479826 |
| Publication status | Published (in print/issue) - 1 Sept 2022 |