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Article: What Does It Mean To Be Irish?(International)
- Article from:
- Newsweek
- Article date:
- March 30, 2009
- Author:
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Byline: Colm Toibin; Toibin's novel "Brooklyn" will be published in May.
Whatever they choose to call themselves, the island's people aren't going to let a few acts of violence disrupt their hard-won peace.
The battle in Ireland over the past 40 years has not been a struggle over territory. No one has wanted to take land away from others and claim it for themselves. It has, instead, been a struggle over identity: a long effort to find agreement over language and symbols, the terms of competing and complex definitions of what it means to be Irish.
It has been clear for some time that the old definitions would not work, that it was not useful to ...