Ireland in Theory: the Influence of French Theory on Irish Cultural and Societal Development

Abstract

This essay argues that the advent of French literary and cultural theory, specifically the work of Barthes, Foucault, Derrida and Lacan, has been responsible for some of the accelerated social changes that Ireland has undergone in the last twenty years or so. It argues that the radicalism of the generation of 1968 has had a belated effect on the Ireland of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.