The performance of Irishness for outside approval is finished
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026/05/02/the-performance-of-irishness-for-outside-approval-is-finished/
Posted by Standard_Carrot5151
The performance of Irishness for outside approval is finished
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026/05/02/the-performance-of-irishness-for-outside-approval-is-finished/
Posted by Standard_Carrot5151
14 Comments
That was neat, thanks for sharing.
It does often feel like FFGs main constituents aren’t Irish people, their main constituents are the American multinationals, and I understand they’re important and employ a lot of people, but they seem to get 100% of all political capital.
I don’t understand why we don’t have the best infrastructure in Europe, I don’t understand why we have this housing crisis. We are far richer than basically any other country in Europe **on paper** but in reality most of that wealth is transferred up the food chain.
If all these multinationals leave tomorrow, we’d have nothing to say for it, we didn’t make hay while the weather was good, we didn’t build houses or infrastructure, and we sold ourselves and our soul. Empty office buildings, full emergency accommodation centres, empty town centres beyond the pale, full planes to Australia.
**Selling a pub and cultural scene to Americans that our young people can no longer afford to enjoy themselves,** lying to ourselves that we can’t improve, that it’s impossible to build infrastructure and housing to the same level as our close EU neighbours, who manage to do so without our coveted government surplus.
To be cynical, the cultural aspect is just a result of changing audiences and expectations.
The piece leads with condemning a need for outside approval, but then returns multiple times to Palestine. As if that topic isn’t a huge reason why Kneecap has a global audience. As if that kind of political position isn’t a key part of Irish cultures recent popularity.
It’s better, and surely more moral than what came before, but its popularity is still being driven largely by people and events outside Ireland.
We’re not building infrastructure fast enough largely because we tie ourselves in NIMBY legal knots and are often poor at planning it, but mostly because we have only had serous money since the late 90s and also had a fecking massive financial crisis that collapsed and basically erased the construction sector barely 10 years ago and deleted roughly a decade of activity.
Ireland’s wealthy period isn’t much older than the Luas, the motorway network and the port tunnel basically. We are misremembering that in the 1990s most of the N road upgrade projects and basic rail upgrades were still reliant on EU structural funds and were pretty small by any standards.
We need to be scaling up infrastructure investment to a much faster level of delivery, especially on big ticket items like public transport networks and to actually be ambitious about that, not just drip by drip conservative plans.
I think it’s just us finding out own feet. We are a young country. Only 100 years old. And only now do we feel confident enough that the opinions of outsiders don’t bother us.
While there is much i agree with, especially regarding our shambolic infrastructure record, the artists mentioned couldn’t do what they do to a global audience, without those that came before them – panderers, the paddywhackery et al.
I wonder if an artist went the road of JK Rowling has done, would they feature in this article?
Kneecap are insufferable. Goons
Isn’t this just someone who doesn’t understand traditional Irish music and Sean nós saying that they themselves are representative of the real ™️ Irish culture because they enjoy Kneecap?
Kneecap themselves enjoy trad and Sean nós. Clannad made music for themselves and Gaoth Dobhair before they picked up a wider audience and they were surprised that they did. The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem were just singing songs Tommy Makem’s mum had taught them and someone from home gifted them the jumpers. To say that what we produced up to now was performative for the world audience is to not really understand the people behind that cultural movement.
You could actually argue that Thin Lizzy were performative Irishness actually since they only made whiskey in the jar because their manager overheard them jamming together. But I would say that isn’t either because they were jamming together playing it so it was something they enjoyed and it was part of who they are.
Just because you make money off the thing doesn’t mean you are only doing it for the money.
Absolutely laughable to say being pro Palestine or slagging off Tories is going against the grain
Not making a very compelling point by only naming three examples, including one comedian that most people have never heard of. It’s not hard to name three Irish artists at any point of time that were successful in spite of not seeking external validation.
I’ve much to say about this and feel the need to unload here. Read if you want, or don’t. Go outside and talk to real people face to face instead. You can laugh or roll your eyes at all this as much as you want:-
– I’m deeply suspicious of this Sinead O’Sullivan one. First heard of her when she wrote a weird article in response to the fuel protests, and specifically the suggestion of getting the army to move the protests. She said this proved correct the argument that people had been making against increasing defence funding for years, namely the argument that if we increased defence funding the army would be used against our own people.
– Who the fuck ever said that!?! Who in my 41 year lifetime has ever made that argument?
– I suspect that the only person to ever make that argument previously was probably Sinead O’Sullivan herself, in her capacity as a member of her weird little NGO which advises on defence issues.
– “Her weird little NGO which advises on defence issues” – dodgy as fuck. I dont know if she’s representing the interests of the CIA or the interests of Russia or the interests of the UK but one way or another she’s representing foreign interests. (BTW it’s clearly either Russia or the UK).
– Then the next article she writes is complaining about Irish infrastructure which is a fair enough complaint in some ways.
– At the start of the article she says “We’re told that Ireland is the second richest country in Europe” and I’m like “who the fuck ever told us that? What government politician since the credit crunch has ever told the public that they’re living in the 2nd richest country in Europe!? I’ve never hear this before!”
– So I look into it and it seems that this is just something that Sinead O’Sullivan has told us herself and she’s talking about GDP. So SOS has picked this random statistic and said “We’re told that Ireland is the 2nd richest country in Europe” when really she’s the one saying that and her overall intention is to try and piss people off make people unhappy.
– She’s a deeply manipulative person. To my mind, it’s possible to take an argument that might be mostly correct and make it in a manipulative and immoral fashion.
– I conclude thar SOS is a foreign agent for wither the Brits or Russians. Or possibly a tech billionaire who just wants to see the world burn like Elon. Laugh at that if you want.
– I haven’t gotten this same sense of dodginess off an Irish commentator since that ScoobyDoo girl on twitter who wanted to insert her own name into the centre of every SA/rape news story and I was proven right about her.
– As regards this particular article which OP has linked, again she makes some good points but she also talks some complete nonsense.
– Ireland Inc. is obviously unbelievably annoying. I dont live in a brand, etc.
– Basically every single Irish artist in every medium you can think of is annoyed by Ireland Inc. This includes many artists who have been very successful abroad. The idea that Irish artists only moved away from Ireland Inc. in the past few years is obviously just complete bullshit.
– Ireland Inc. was founded on guys like Joyce, Beckett and Kavanagh, everyone of whom gave deeply cynical portrayals of Ireland and Irish nationalism in their work. The sensibility of all those guys was strongly “anti romantic-nationalism”.
– Similarly, there have been plenty of Irish musicians in the past 30 years who were more focused on the internal market (The Frames Damien Rice, the whole Whelans scene). But even that was a kind of marketing – they were deliberately focused on a niche market (I.e. the internal Irish market). And eventually they were forced to focus on bigger markets (the rest of the world) just because their niche market wasn’t big enough to provide them with a proper living.
– SOS is talking about stand-up comedians and Vittorio Angelone in that article. Who does she think Tommy Tiernan made his art for? What happened to Tommy Tiernan anytime he tried to perform outside the country or break America?
– It’s quicker and easier to list off the artists who actually supported romantic nationalism than the opposite. The artists who were “pro-Ireland Inc.” and wanted to use it for “marketing” purposes were: WB Yeats, JM Synge (English born)… a few old painters like Henry (English born)… I guess the “Celtic Woman” scene line Maura Brennan, Sharon Shannon etc. Maybe technically The Dubliners and the Wolfe Tones although they weren’t doing it for marketing or the benefit of any foreigners… that’s kind of just it.
– I should say I have absolutely nothing against any or those artists in that list.
– The government takes artists like Joyce or Beckett who were completely opposite to romantic Irish nationalism and use them to sell Ireland. Slightly annoying but whatever. In time, they will do the exact same to the current crop also. To suggest that the current crop are radically different or that this hasn’t happened before is just false.
– some literary novels written in Ireland by Irish people have had an eye on foreign readership, I’d agree. But like…. Brooklyn by Colm Toibin is dismmised by a lot of Irish people as schmaltzy but it definitely isn’t designed to make the yanks feel good about themselves. The ultimate moral is “I wish I hadn’t emigrated to the US, should have stayed home.”
– there’s a line in one of the early Anne Enright novels (forget which one), where she refers to the Leaving Cert as the “Final Exam”. That’s a very annoying line, it’s inauthentic. I wouldn’t exactly say that Anne Enright is “performing Irishness” for a foreign market though and she couldn’t give a fuck about Ireland Inc. She wants foreign readers because she wants to get paid.
– She makes reference in that article to “prestige dramas made for a foreign audience” – what the fuck is she talking about!? What fucking orestige drama has ever come out of Ireland and been successful abroad!? The only thing I can think of is that Aisling Bea thing, Bad Sisters (which I presume was foreign-produced). Was that a “prestige-drama”? Was that “performative Irishness”? I never watched it but it seems odd that she’d write a whole article in the Irish Times about it.
– Final Point: no artist in the modern world is “explaining” anything. They’re performing and curating a profile in a world of profilicity. Us and them are locked into validation feedback loops via social media. It’s about identity-creation. It was about creating an identity for WB Yeats 100 years ago, it’s about creating an identity for Kneecap today. Kneecap are doing this in the modern environment of profilicity. My point is that it just so happens that these artists are curating their profiles with domestic feedback loops – getting their validation from their domestic peers. This is a consequence of the nature of the current technology (social media) but it’s also a consequence if Ireland being a proper country.
Why the fuck did you read all that? What is wrong with you!? Go outside.
Of the three examples she chooses, two are from the North. Which is a different state.
It’s weird that she defines a core feature of Irishness as taking a stance on Gaza, an issue that obviously appeals to global audiences.
Sally Rooney and Kneecap have made international headlines and clearly have a global audience, it’s silly to pretend they only appeal to Irish people.
Dunno why vittorio specifically got skewered as bad as he did, you could apply the same logic to kneecap after all