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Gramophonic technology grew up alongside Ireland’s progressively more outspoken and violent struggles for political autonomy and national stability. As a result, Irish Modernism inherently links the gramophone to representations of these dramatic cultural upheavals. Many key works of Irish literary modernism—like those by James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, and Sean O’Casey—depend upon the gramophone for their ability to record Irish cultural traumas both symbolically and literally during one of the country’s most fraught developmental eras. In each work the gramophone reveals its own complexity as a physical object and its multiform value in the artistic development of textual material. In each work, too, the object seems virtually self-placed—less an aesthetic device than a “thing” belonging primordially to the text. The machine is also often an agent and counterpart to literary characters. The gramophone, therefore, points to a deeper connection between object and culture than we perceive if we consider it as only an image, enhancement, or instrument. This book examines the gramophone as an object that refuses to remain in the background of scenes in which it appears, forcing us to confront its mnemonic heritage during a period of Irish history burdened with political and cultural turbulence.

Drawing upon a wide range of archival material and oral histories, this book analyses the internal dynamics of Irish republicanism since the outbreak of conflict in 1969. Examining more than 500 political periodicals and ephemera, ‘The age-old struggle’ assesses the complexity of republicanism’s composition, intellectual and ideological influences, and internal dynamics amid tactical and strategic reorientation. Moreover, engaging the perspectives of more than 250 republican activists, this book illuminates how the movement’s base experienced the conflict, and how it is remembered today. Through five thematic chapters, this book explains how class, place, and networks within the movement alternately sustained, complicated, and fragmented republican politics. Republicans experienced class and interacted with class politics differently. Activists spatialised and historicised their struggle locally, nationally, and internationally. At moments of crisis and transformation in their campaign, republicans mobilised in contrasting networks which either advocated or repudiated ‘new departures’. These competing milieux mediated individual interpretations of strategic change and power dynamics within republicanism. This book’s conclusions have implications for assessments of radical movements beyond Ireland, and for understanding Irish republicanism today.