After Words

Abstract

There is so simple way to conclude this book. The performance of masculinities and their ongoing construction and re-evaluation precludes the possibility of making overarching claims for the representations of masculinities on the Irish stage in the contemporary period. I used 1990 as a historical marker to begin the book but kept the frame porous enough to reflect on what led up to the beginnings of the contestation of hegemonic patriarchal practices in all aspects of Irish political and cultural life. The period covered by this book embraced the Celtic Tiger years, the period between 1996 and 2007 that saw a remarkable shift in the economic fortunes of the country, as well as the demographic shifts, legal changes, and political agreements that were to have an enormous impact on the performance of masculinities in the social sphere on both sides of the border. Economically, the boom fuelled a spending spree and a property bubble that ensured the collusion of a hegemonic speculation of reckless financial gambling with a working-class hard-body masculinity that created the property on which fortunes were made. Demographically, the boom configured Ireland as a beacon for migrant workers and asylum-seekers from Eastern Europe and Africa. And thus Irish masculinities had a new identity marker (race) to add to the ranks of the subordinated, and re-subordinated.