its intersections with other unfolding relations.^4 As Hall indicates:
Ireland, Australia, Canada, Nigeria, India and Jamaica are not post-
colonial replicas of one another, yet it does not follow that they are not
in any way post-colonial. At the risk of generalization, Peter Hulme’s
definition for the post-colonial predicament is helpful:
If ‘post-colonial’ is a useful word, then it refers to a process of disengagement
from the whole colonial syndrome, which takes many forms and probably is
inescapable for all those whose worlds have been marked by that set of
phenomena: ‘post-colonial’ is (or should be) a descriptive, not an evaluative,
term [...]^5An examination of this ‘process’ of disengagement from the ‘whole
colonial syndrome’ that ‘is probably inescapable’, is central to the
discussion of writers from the North of Ireland.
A Post-Colonial Ireland?
Related to the debates surrounding the term ‘post-colonial’, there has
been some disagreement over whether the island of Ireland, the
Republic of Ireland and the North of Ireland can be labelled as
colonial, post-colonial or neo-colonial.^6 Depending on where one
stands, the North may be viewed as a province of Britain or as one of
the last remaining British colonies. In this way, the South can be
labelled post-colonial since it became a Republic and in 1949 it left
the British Commonwealth. Even so, the Northern critic, Edna
Longley, has difficulties with the term ‘post-colonial’ and questions
4 Ruth Frankenberg and Lata Mani, ëCrosscurrents, Crosstalk: Race,
ìPostcolonialityî and the Politics of Locationí, Cultural Studies, 7, 2, 1993.
5 Hall, p.246; Peter Hulme, ëIncluding Americaí, Ariel, 26, 1, 1995, p.120.
6 For example, the Republic of Ireland can be viewed as post-colonial but where
does this leave the island of Ireland? Whereas hard line Unionists would view
ëUlsterí as a province of Britain, republican nationalists view the North of
Ireland as a British colony. Bearing in mind the entrance of the Republic of
Ireland into the EU, it may also be viewed as European. At a basic level then,
the island of Ireland may be understood according to colonial, post-colonial and
European definitions.