THE INTERNATIONALIST REVIEW OF IRISH CULTURE
Aims and means:
The Internationalist Review of Irish Culture is an international peer-reviewed journal which deals with Irish Studies from a variety of perspectives and disciplines such as Literature, Translation Studies, Cultural Studies, Linguistics, History, Politics and Social Studies. As a review, its aim is to provide a forum for scholars and students which is intended to bring together diverse experiences, to stimulate discussions and to elaborate proposals regarding the state of Irish arts and culture. The Internationalist Review of Irish Culture is thus meant to become an open and yet rigorous instrument of research and critical/theoretical debate, particularly among young scholars, as well as an effective means for the transmission and circulation of knowledge. In order to elucidate the project it may prove fruitful to provide an individual explication of each element of its title.
Why a review?
A review is a an economically sustainable enterprise. By the same token, it responds to a cultural sensitivity which envisages the possibility of study and research to thrive also in the absence of major funding. We believe that in today's multimedial and globalized scenario, a printed review provides no doubt the best means for the promotion and improvement of èquipe research work. Intellectual exchange constitutes an effort to avoid the paradoxical temptation to treat one's own study work as a sort of private property to be defended jealously rather than a gift to share. In defending an idea of "shared research”, the intention of the founders points to our firm belief in the potentialities of debate and intellectual commitment for cultural improvement within society. Thus, the cost of each issue will be within the reach of any public and university library, as well as individual scholars and students.
Why Irish Studies?
The first answer would be: "because such a review does not exist yet". A rigorous analysis of the dynamics of Irish culture is particularly fascinating - if not necessary - due to the problematic role of the "Irish Case" in utterly diverse contexts: first of all, Ireland's coexisting (post)colonial status and Europeanism; secondly, the circumstance of Ireland having become, in the last 15 years, the object of western outsourcing. With this being the case Ireland has always been functioning as a sort of experimental laboratory, in which complex and emblematical socio-economical processes are still being sorted out. Furthermore, the cultural and ethnographic implications of such dialectics inform one of the most estranged, and thus fascinating, literatures of the western world. Finally, the choice of Irish studies is justified by the vivacity of the social and political debate which, unlike in other European nations, maintains literature and human sciences as fundamental and effective "institutions" in the life of a community.
Why Internationalist?
Beside avoiding the danger of self-referentiality, such a political perspective is particularly useful in today's Ireland which has rapidly become the destination of distant peoples bringing with them different experiences and cultural backgrounds. Be that as it may, all of these additions, changes and combinations are actually to be taken as progressive contributions to the ongoing redefinition of Irish identity. Moreover, the perspectives from which we will draw have one thing in common: the belief that only the analysis of the historical development of global economic processes and their intersections with their socio-cultural implications can provide useful and comprehensive answers to the questions posed by the contemporaneity, in socio-political as well as in cultural and literary terms. In accordance to the “critical theory” developed by the Frankfurt School, we believe that the cultural — and to some extent economically determined — nature of artistic activity and human sciences, and their indissoluble bonds with society are the key-elements of a truly internationalist outlook.