Name change reveals a nostalgia for empire
It was either a spoof or laden with irony. Then again Mr Kidney might not have been joking.
But help is at hand. I can assure him that he is suffering from what the late and much lamented Edward Said diagnosed as the syndrome known as ‘post colonialism.’
Our Irish post-colonial identity is becoming overladen with nostalgia for the former empire/master and we seek vainly to remember only the best of the imperial exercise.
The Irish revisionist historians have sought to inculcate such longings. As Said wrote: “A crucial tactic of this revisionism” is to present the British empire as “enlightened and altruistic” with a concomitant to “security and order.”
But it is all a fallacy because the foregoing came with our dispossession via land theft, and appalling political suppression. Poor Mr. Kidney should work on his history and acknowledge the real source of his discontent.
Seamus Lantry,
3, Father Mathew Street,
Cork.
