Adam Coleman is a doctoral researcher in intellectual history at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Political centrists love to quote Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming” as they face a world where “things fall apart” and “the center cannot hold.” But the great Irish poet was a radical conservative whose hostility to democracy led him to sympathize with fascism.
Cold War liberals presented James Joyce as a universal writer and ignored the clear political undercurrents running through his work. A new generation of critics have restored the vital link between his novels and Ireland’s uncompleted revolution.
British prime minister Rishi Sunak has launched a crackdown on what he calls “rip-off university degrees.” It’s really a push to discourage working-class students from choosing subjects that will help develop their critical understanding of the world.
The Irish critic Seamus Deane grew up in Derry as a second-class citizen of a sectarian state. Taking inspiration from writers like Edward Said, Deane’s critical work exposed the legacies of colonialism and the failings of capitalist modernity in Ireland.