"What is the agenda of postcolonial theory? Is there a peculiarly Irish postcolonial theory? If so, how does it relate to decolonizing projects elsewhere in the world, contemporary or historical? What does Irish postcolonial theory learn from other sites and what, in turn, does it contribute to the understanding of colonialism as a world-wide phenomenon? Is an Irish postcolonialism merely a stalking horse for nationalism?

Or does it take up the critique of identity and the nation state in the attempt to find an alternative understanding of state formation and decolonization and of the historical processes that bring these movements into conflict? What are the historical myths that have governed modernity - colonial, nationalist and capitalist? Do they limit and obscure the heterogeneity of Irish culture and its apparently oblique relation to modernisation?

Are there other methods and theoretical approaches that might open up the field of Irish Studies to alternative perspectives and narratives?" "These are some of the questions addressed in the linked essays collected in Ireland After History, essays that draw on a range of theoretical resources, from Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt School to subaltern historiography and Marxist critiques of ideology."--BOOK JACKET.