We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland

“The fear that stalked so many Irish artists and intellectuals in the 1960s and 1970s – that Ireland would disappear as a distinctive cultural space – was misplaced. In 1958, and for many decades afterwards, there was this sense that, if it did not pretend to know itself thoroughly and absolutely, Ireland would not exist at all. Perhaps we are learning to live without being so defined. Maybe Ireland has reached the point of accepting that half-knowledge is better than the swinging between the pretence of knowing everything and the denial of what you really do know. Now, it is a more positive idea: there need not be a single, knowable future.”