Anti-Sectarianism and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland

This book addresses the limitations of dominant ways of thinking about and doing politics in Northern Ireland. Arguing for the foregrounding of anti-sectarianism as a way of displacing the divisive dynamics of religion and nationalism, it provides a new lens for studying Northern Ireland. Drawing upon a close reading of the political philosophy of Jacques Rancière, the book aligns anti-sectarianism to the ways that people refuse affiliation with the traditional ethnic values and practices. It describes this refusal as dis-identification, and reveals how dissensus acts as an alternative to the displacing of equality. Returning equality and equality claims-making to a clear position of visibility, the book provides a radical rethinking of Northern Ireland a quarter century beyond the 1998 peace accord. It will appeal to all those interested in politics and peacebuilding studies. Cillian McGrattan is Lecturer in Politics at Ulster University, Northern Ireland. He is the author of Northern Ireland, 1968-2008 (2010), and The Politics of Trauma and Peacebuilding (2017). His The Northern Ireland Conflict on the Margins of History: Protestant Memory on the Irish Border (with Ken Funston) is in preparation.