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This volume embraces the critical turn of new materialism in order to address how creative and social practices allow for the definition of alternative subject positions and to examine how power relations operate at an embodied, relatable level: it proposes to think global but act local. The contributions by scholars and artists offer new ways of engaging and understanding Ireland's contemporary political, activist and artistic landscape. They open up onto epistemological ways of considering not only the inventions of creative and scholarly research and practice, but also invention and experimentation itself. The volume provides a space for conversation and brings out the potential of non-linear thinking by bringing together artists and scholars to consider the materiality of identity and place through the body, migrancy, ecology and digital technologies. The contributors draw new maps, making new connections, diffracting Irish social imaginaries. This multidisciplinary collection proposes strategies and methods to ethically respond to and engage with the complex situations and urgent challenges that preoccupy our contemporary present. There is something in this book for both the specialist and non-specialist alike and it is essential reading for anyone with an interest in new methodologies in Irish studies.
List of contents
Introduction: New Materialist Encounters Anne Goarzin and Maria Parsons
Part I Artistic Intra-actions
Force of Nature: Earth Stories (a Conversation with Lisa FitzGerald) Siobhán McDonald
Diffractive Practice: Supercollisions in Art and Science (a Conversation with Maria Parsons) Sinéad McDonald
CONTAGION Rachel Gallagher, Jack Hogan and Moira Tierney
The Plurality of Existence in the Infinite Expanse of Space and Time Clodagh Emoe
Part II Bodies, Performance, Memory
'Dirty matter': New Material Terrains in Irish Poetry Anne Karhio
Material Bodies: Three Performance-Based Interventions in the Irish Landscape Lisa FitzGerald
'Choreographies of becoming' in Mia Gallagher's Beautiful Pictures of the Lost Homeland (2016) Fiona McCann
Part III Shared Places and Diffracted Voices
Fractured Liminality in Kabosh's Green and Blue and Lives in Translation Eva Urban-Devereux
Narrative 4 Story Exchanges: Fostering Empathy Marie Mianowski
Performing Jazz and Sharing Creative Spaces: An Interview with David Lyttle Fabrice Mourlon
About the author
Maria Parsons is a senior lecturer in the Institute of Art Design and Technology, Dun
Laoghaire. Her research interests are in gender, the body, contemporary critical theory
and popular and digital cultures. She has published in the fields of gothic and horror and
queer studies.
Anne Goarzin is Professor of Irish literature and culture at the University of Rennes 2 France
and a member of the research group CRBC (EA 4451). Her research focuses on Irish literature
and the visual arts and on contemporary critical theory. She is the chair of the French Society
for Irish Studies (SOFEIR) and of GIS E.I.R.E, a research network for Irish studies.
