Mobilising Classics

Reading radical writing in Ireland

Fiona Dukelow, Orla O'Donovan, Fiona Dukelow

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780719080180
  9780719080173
• eBook ISBN:
  9781847794987
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Irish History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The terms patriarchy, institutional racism, sustainable development and alienation may be familiar but this familiarity is often removed from the analytical contexts in which these ideas emerged. This book provides a series of rich reflections on the interaction between the radical ideas associated with these and other authors, and political action in Ireland.

The classic texts that comprise the focal point for each chapter were selected by the contributors, many of whom straddle the boundaries of academia and activism. Each essay provides an account of the contributor's personal encounters with the text, opens up the key mobilising ideas and considers how the text has the potential invigorate the political imagination of contemporary oppositional politics.

This book will be of interest to students in the social sciences, especially sociology and Irish studies and will appeal to those interested or involved in political activism of any variety.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man
• 2 William Thompson’s Practical Education for the South of Ireland
• 3 James Connolly’s Labour in Irish History
• 4 Robert Tressel’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
• 5 Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex
• 6 Thomas Szasz’s The Myth of Mental Illness
• 7 Kwame Ture and Charles Hamilton’s Black Power: The Politics of Liberation
• 8 Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed
• 9 Ivan Illich’s Tools for Conviviality
• 10 Adrienne Rich’s On Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence
• 11 The Brundtland Committee’s Our Common Future
• Concluding remarks
• Bibliography
• Index