Trickster's Metempsychosis in the Mythic Age of Globalization: The Recurrence of the Leprechaun in Irish Political Culture

Abstract

Tribunals, public inquiries and similar institutions, increasingly common in the political culture of the United Kingdom, the European Union, and in America, can be seen as exemplifying the auto-correcting, self-reflexive capacity of political institutions in information-rich and communicatively fluent societies. They represent the modernization of political culture guided by communicative rationality, paralleling the accelerated modernization of globalization. This view Cultural Politics Published by Duke University Press CULTURAL POLITICS 258 KIERAN KEOHANE

Zombie banks, zombie politics and the ‘Walking Zombie Movement’: Liminality and the post-crisis Irish imaginary

“…O’Carroll (1987) has analysed the idiomatic content of the system of clientelism and brokerage in Irish political culture in terms of a politico-libidinal economy wherein ‘strokes’ (favours/tricks) are performed by ‘cute hoors’ (wily politicians), who receive legitimation from ‘sneaking regarders’ (admiring punters). Drawing on O’Carroll’s work, Keohane (2005) has also argued that like the Leprechaun and other mythological Trickster figures, Irish politicians are adept at ‘hiding their crock of gold’ and playing the liminal and changing contexts characteristic of Irish globalisation to their advantage. Clancy et al’s (2010) study of 40 top companies in Ireland demonstrates that a mere 39 individuals comprise Ireland’s ‘Golden Circle’ or ‘power elite’ of bankers, politicians and developers, and their members circulate among the boards and directorships of the top banks, corporations and state-owned bodies.…”

Kennan and the Neglected Variable in Post-Socialist Societies: The Loss of Honest Dialogue and the Need for Empathy

“…These situations advantage elites who do not engage in parrhesis. They lack pathos for conditio humana, and instead as tricksters monopolize conversation [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [29], [31] locking individuals into liminal states in which souls are corrupted and constrained. The result places democratic values and institutions under pressure from schismatic forces which reject norms of openness and inclusion, and threaten to stall transition or shred democracy.…”