Via the excellent Open Democracy, there is a brilliant two part article available on this site called "Mad Dogs and Ulstermen: the crisis of Loyalism" by Stephen Howe, available here and here. The first part of the article places the recent riots in working-class protestant communities in Northern Ireland in a narrative of promiscuous cultural borrowings that attempt to shore up a collapsed political identity. He takes a detailed look at loyalist cultural expression in music, visual display and political rhetoric. The second part rebuts the common argument that these communities are some kind of atavistic residue but part of a response to global conditions and national pressures. Looking at the central questions of identity, nation and class he situates loyalism in a "postmodernism of despair".
This is not some glib cultural studies working of the topic, even if the word "discourse" is used rather a lot. Howe's historical scholarship is impeccable and his view of loyalism is both critical and sympathetic. Anyone who read the author's Ireland and Empire, which I would highly recommend, will recognize some of his themes being usefully re-worked to take account of the specificities of Ulster loyalism, especially in relation to the "crises of modernisation". These are subjects to which I will return.
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