The Poor Bugger's Tool
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With the weakening moral authority of the Catholic Church, the boom ushered in by the Celtic Tiger, and the slow but steady diminishment of the Troubles in the North, Ireland has finally stepped out from the shadows of colonial oppression onto the world stage as a major cosmopolitan country. Taking its title from a veiled reference to Roger Casement-the humanitarian and Irish patriot hanged for treason-in James Joyce's Ulysses, The Poor Bugger's Tool demonstrates how the affective labor of Irish queer culture might contribute to a progressive new national image for the Republic and Northern Ireland.Looking back to the first wave of Irish modernism in the works of Wilde, Synge, Casement, and Joyce, Patrick Mullen reveals how these authors deployed queer aesthetics to shape inclusive forms of national affiliation as well as to sharpen anti-imperialist critiques. In its second half, the monograph turns its attention to Ireland's postmodernist boom in the works of Patrick McCabe, Neil Jordan, and Jamie O'Neill. With readings of The Butcher Boy, Breakfast on Pluto, and At Swim Two Boys, Mullen shows that queer sensibilities and style remain key cultural resources for negotiating the political and economic realities of globalization at the turn of the twenty-first century.
Buttressed by writings of theorists like Marx, Foucault, and Antonio Negri, The Poor Bugger's Tool brings Irish literature into a fruitful dialog with queer theory, postcolonial studies, the history of sexuality, and modernist aesthetics.
Features
- Advances an original argument on the relevance of homosexuality and queer aesthetics in Irish literature
- Reads a wide range of seminal Irish literary works, beginning with Oscar Wilde's "The Portrait of Mr. W.H." and ending with Jamie O'Neill's award-winning At Swim Two Boys
- Incorporates many theoretical frameworks: historicism, affect theory, queer theory, and postcolonial studies are all brought to bear in the study
Reviews
"This book is original, intelligent, and persuasively argued. Mullen is a wonderful close reader of literary language and textual moments. The Poor Bugger's Tool contributes substantially to recent work in queer studies, Irish studies, modernism, and postcolonial studies." --Marjorie Howes, author of Colonial Crossings: Figures in Irish Literary History
"A beautiful, assured exploration of the production of queer value in twentieth-century Irish literature and culture. Drawing on postcolonial theory, the history of sexuality, and Marxism, Mullen argues persuasively for the power of affect and aesthetics in the remaking of capitalist social relations." --Heather Love, author of Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History
"Patrick Mullen's new book succeeds in performing several important moves at once. It forces the first volume of Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality to engage more directly with theorizations of late captalism. It also brings out the sexuality latent in Michael Hardt's concept of 'affective labor.' And it achieves both moves--essential to thinking beyond the sexuality/economy divide that stubbornly persists within critical theory--by showing how Irish writers queered the hegemony of British colonial aesthetics." --Nancy Armstrong, author of How Novels Think: The Limits of Individualism from 1719-1900
"The Poor Bugger's Tool brings varied and sophisticated literary and cultural theory to bear upon the project of Irish Studies, without forsaking the attention to historical detail that has dominated the field over the last 20 years. Mullen elaborates how the response that certain signature specimens of Irish modernism pose to the distinctive historical pressures animating them at once demand and reward a new theoretical synthesis, one that combines the insights of contemporary queer and affect theory with the structural implications of Marxist axiology." --Joseph Valente, author of The Myth of Manliness in Irish National Culture, 1880-1922
