Poor Bugger's Tool: Irish Modernism, Queer Labor, and Postcolonial History - Softcover

Mullen, Patrick R

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0190604263 ISBN 13: 9780190604264

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2016

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

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)

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)

researchers and scholars from a number of disciplines will find this volume, The Poor Buggers Tool: Irish Modernism, Queer Labor, and Postcolonial History, filled with stimulating discussions regarding the convergences of economic forces, queer sexualities and postcolonial identities in Ireland and Irish culture(s). (Robert Finnigan, Irish Studies Review)

With The Poor Buggers Tool, Patrick Mullen makes an important contribution to the still emerging strain of Irish studies informed by both queer theory and postcolonial criticism. It is impossible to do justice to the intricacies of Mullens thesis here, especially given the broad range of his study. (Patrick Bixby, Canadian Journal of Irish Studies)

About the Author:

Patrick R. Mullen is Associate Professor of English at Northeastern University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0190604263
• ISBN 13: 9780190604264
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 222