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While the role of religion in the production of nationalism has been subjected to uneven forms of scrutiny, most of these approaches rely on an implicit or explicit identification between sectarian affiliation and the dominant social group articulating a particular form of nationalism. This article will create a more nuanced picture by demonstrating the influence of a rhetoric of religiosity originating from a social group that generally resisted incorporation into a nationalist movement. It will do this by locating nineteenth century Irish nationalist John Mitchel firmly within a tradition of Presbyterianism at a time that his co-religionists were dominated by unionism and nationalism was taking on an increasingly Catholic orientation. This will show the difficulties of applying classic accounts of religion and nationalism to the Irish context. The ability of John Mitchel to intervene within the discursive space of nineteenth century Ireland is provocative in this context because of the implication that Mitchel's intervention would imply the existence of a non-sectarian social space through which confessional motifs could be exchanged and circulate with a regularity that is not often granted to Ireland due to the dominant tendency to view political and social conflict through a sectarian lens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the ways in which death can be understood to occupy a formative function in the construction of Irish national identity. The analysis of three distinct moments in Irish history (Plantation-era funerary practices, the Great Famine, and the 1981 hunger strikes) is undertaken with recourse to Michel Foucault's understanding of race as it is deployed through disciplinary and biopower and Achille Mbembe's concept of necropolitics. The continuing concern with history in Irish political discourse is juxtaposed with Derrida's idea of 'hauntology'. It will be seen that the act of remembering politically carries with it an ambivalent legacy, exposing the violence at the heart of the establishment of both states in Ireland, while maintaining the potential of emancipatory promise. This promise is itself rooted in the violence implicated in the production of alterity through the historical experience of death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores a hitherto neglected text on the history of India by leading nineteenth-century Irish nationalist Thomas Davis. India Her Own - And Another's marks an outright rejection of imperial fantasies of a civilizing mission motivating British involvement in India through an innovative reading of imperial texts. In India Her Own, Davis posits the "spirit of conquest" in direct opposition to the "spirit of nationality," which in turn is identified as kindred to freedom. It will be seen that Davis set up a dichotomy between conquest/empire and nationality/freedom which allows him to oppose imperial expansion without succumbing to notions of universalism or philanthropy. He sees in India's pre-imperial past a potential model for Ireland's future - one that could overcome ethnic tensions within the harmony of an ancient yet emergent nation. This marks an important contribution to how we understand the ambivalent discursive structures underpinning nascent anti-imperial ideological formations in the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]