How stands the Irish nation today? As society adjusts to the pressures of the 1980s, the time has come to ask the question: what happened our sense of identity? In this hard-hitting, thoughtful book, Desmond Fennell provides a searching analysis of the values of an independent Ireland, and the steady process of cultural denationalisation that has sapped our vitality over the past sixty years. This book casts a cold eye on the mishmash of undigested consumerist liberal influences that have permeated Irish thinking since the 1960s, and throws down a challenge to the cultural life of the nation. Provocative, personal and intensely readable, The State of the Nation demands immediate attention.
How stands the Irish nation today? As society adjusts to the pressures of the 1980s, the time has come to ask the question: what happened our sense of identity? In this hard-hitting, thoughtful book, Desmond Fennell provides a searching analysis of the values of an independent Ireland, and the steady process of cultural denationalisation that has sapped our vitality over the past sixty years. This book casts a cold eye on the mishmash of undigested consumerist liberal influences that have permeated Irish thinking since the 1960s, and throws down a challenge to the cultural life of the nation. Provocative, personal and intensely readable, The State of the Nation demands immediate attention.