Theory on the Edge: Irish Studies and the Politics of Sexual Difference(Breaking Feminist Waves)

Theory on the Edge brings together some of the foremost specialists working at the interdisciplinary interface between Irish Studies, feminist theory, queer theory, and gender and sexuality studies in order to trace the contemporary development of feminist thinking and activism in Ireland. The collection opens with a contribution from Ailbhe Smyth, the high-profile academic and public activist, whom many of the contributors acknowledge as a formative influence in their own feminist development. Essays utilize theory rooted in material issues, but always ask 'why' rather than just 'how' to draw interesting new conclusions on the depth and variety of Irish feminism.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Emergent Strands or Theory on Edge?; Margrit Shildrick Women's Studies and the Disciplines; Ailbhe Smyth PART I: POLITICS 1. The Politics of Sexual Difference: The Enduring Influence of the Catholic Church; Ivana Bacik 2. Rethinking the Armagh Women's Dirty Protest; Paula Burns 3. The State, Women, and Irish Abortion Policy, 1983-2010; Sandra McAvoy 4. Irish Migration and Irish Sexuality Scholarship: Queering the Connections; Eithne Luibheid 5. Affecting Trans-feminist Solidarity; Breda Gray 6. Wonderful Documents and Male Begrudgery: Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Northern Ireland; Margaret Ward 7. Pride, Politics, and the Right to Perform: Negotiating Civil Partnership in Ireland; Fintan Walsh PART II: CULTURE 8. Race, Sex, and Nation; Gerardine Meaney 9. Outside-In and the Places In-Between: Feminist Community Higher Education; Aideen Quilty 10. "Watch your Language": Speculative Theory and the Poetry of Rita Ann Higgins; Moynagh Sullivan 11. Knowing the Landscape, Navigating the Language: Chinese Women's Experience of Arrival in Ireland; Edith Shillue 12. Enjoying Substance: Psychoanalysis, Literature and Joyce's Writing of Women; Olga Cox Cameron 13. Culture on the Edge: The Postfeminist Challenge; Debbie Ging 14. A Cure for Melancholia? Queer Sons, Dead Mothers, and the Fantasy of Multiculturalism in McCabe and Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto(s); Anne Mulhall 15. Quare Theory; Noreen Giffney Interview with Ailbhe Smyth; Medb Ruane

About the Author :
Noreen Giffney is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in Dublin, Ireland and coordinates research at the Humanities Institute at University College Dublin, Ireland. She is the co-editor of Clinical Encounters: Psychoanalytic Practice and Queer Theory, The Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory, The Lesbian Premodern, Queering the Non/Human, and Twenty-First Century Lesbian Studies. Margrit Shildrick is Professor of Gender and Knowledge Production at the Institute of Thematic Studies at Linkoping University, Sweden and Adjunct Professor of Critical Disability Studies at York University, Canada. Her publications include Leaky Bodies and Boundaries: Feminism, (Bio)ethics and Postmodernism, Embodying the Monster: Encounters with the Vulnerable Self, and Dangerous Discourses of Disability, Sexuality and Subjectivity, as well as several edited collections.