Political Community in Minority Language Writing: Claiming Difference, Seeking Commonality

✍ Scribed by Patrick Carlin

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2024
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 280
• Series: Palgrave Studies in Minority Languages and Communities
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book offers case studies and a comparative analysis of three authors writing in different European minority languages, exploring how they link national and context-marked political community with universal human requirements. The author examines their left-wing positions and how their writing speaks to the acceptance of difference as a necessary condition of such universal values. He presents, for the first time in English, an in-depth treatment of the writing of the Basque poet, novelist and essayist Joseba Sarrionandia (1958–) and the Catalan priest and civil disobedience author and activist Lluís Maria Xirinacs (1932–2007), whilst linking their understanding of a 'foundational universalism' with the work of Irish novelist, short-story writer and language activist Máirtín Ó Cadhain (1906–1970). The book is by its nature interdisciplinary in order to engage in a thoroughgoing comparative analysis of European language minorities, and responds empirically and theoretically to calls made recently in this regard from within critical Iberian Studies. It will therefore be of interest to students and scholars of fields such as Iberian and Celtic studies, International Relations theory, literary criticism, nationalism studies, political philosophy, as well as socio-legal and critical terrorism studies.

✦ Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Figures
1: Introduction: Universal Values in a Partisan Key
References
2: The World Is a Prison: Political Community in the Work of Joseba Sarrionandia
Introduction
Conceiving the Political
Political Violence
Joseba Sarrionandia: Imagery and Reception
Conclusion
References
3: Lluís Maria Xirinacs: The Inside and Outside of a Political Ontology
Introduction
The Early Years
The Activist Years: Civil Disobedience and Hunger Strikes
Xirinacs as Senator: The Civil Disobedient Within Institutions
Xirinacs: The Final Years
Conclusion
References
4: Máirtín Ó Cadhain: Bordering Complexity
Introduction
When I Did Read It, I Knew Exactly What It Was
Locating Local, Organic Community
The Civil Service and Borders: The Excavation of a Political Ontology
Conclusion
References
5: Conclusions: If We Cannot Move From ‘Here’ to ‘There’, Why Not Find a Better Starting Point?
Introduction
The Reaffirmation of Political Community: Incarceration and ‘Nowhere Places’
Another Nowhere: Utopia, Dystopia and Alterity
Enjoyment of the Particular
Conclusion
References
References
Index