Declan Kiberd is sure he knows how his mother would react to his new book, After Ireland. As he told Seán Rocks on Arena, when his mother was alive she deemed him “over-exposed to academia”. If she were around to read this book, Kiberd believes she would say something in the form of:
“Ireland will be there a long time after you’re gone.”
Kiberd’s latest non-fiction book, the third in a trilogy, posits that Ireland is suffering from a “crisis of authority”. As Kiberd told Seán, events like the abuse scandal within the Catholic Church and the 2008 Financial crisis have led the nation to this point.
“I feel at the present moment, recent history has demonstrated how little sovereignty we have in relation to economics or politics.”
Can Kiberd offer any hope? The answer, he believes, lies in culture and supporting the Arts.
“We’re back to the revival. Once again, culture is where it’s at. It’s the sight and stake of all our troubles, which was what was said by Augusta Gregory and Douglas Hyde all those years ago…those people who had said ‘revolution or death’ and then lived to see the end of the revolution.”
Seán suggests that limited funding for the Arts will make this difficult. Kiberd isn’t moved. While he acknowledges the less-than-ideal situation surrounding funding for arts projects, he has faith that the creatives will win out.
“I’d be optimistic because I think now, people are more aware than they have been for a hundred years, that culture is the way in which an Irish identity will be explored and expressed and we need, simply, to find a way of mapping that again onto the wider world…We need to seize the new media, of course, to do that. But I think people will.”