Crossroads: Performance Studies and Irish Culture

The highly performative categories of 'Irish culture' and 'Irishness' are in need of critical address, prompted by recent changes in Irish society, the arts industry and modes of critical inquiry. This book broaches this task by considering Irish expressive culture through some of the paradigms and vocabularies offered by performance studies.

In the expansive and expanding field of Irish studies, performance has typically featured as drama, theatre, dance and music. Yet the categories of ''Irish culture'' and ''Irishness'' are highly performative, effected through a wide range of social practices, cultural formations, discursive utterances, and in timely need of critical address. As social and political change continue to have enormous effects on Ireland and its diaspora, it has become more important than ever to engage with performances in and of Irish culture.

This new paperback edition of Crossroads: Performance Studies and Irish Culture examines Irish culture through some of the paradigms and vocabularies offered by performance studies. As the title of the book makes clear, Brady and Walsh return to the evocative metaphor of crossroads to signal the intersection of disciplines. The roads mapped here are metaphorical and real, multiple and mobile. Practices, epistemologies, temporalities, geographies, and identities splinter in their wake, clearing the ground for the emergence of nuanced understandings of performance and cultural politics.