Our colleague Dr Michael G Cronin has published a new book called Sexual/Liberation.
The book is part of the Síreacht: longings for another Ireland series. These are short, topical and provocative texts addressing what may often be disparaged as utopian ideas or critiques of received wisdom. The series editors are Fiona Dukelow, Orla O Donovan, Rosie Meade and Heather Laird and it is published by Cork University Press.
Sexual/Liberation compares two concepts which have inspired the LGBTQ and feminist movements at different times in history: ‘equality’ and ‘liberation’.
To address the question of sexual freedom the book offers critical reflections on images of gay men, male bodies and male intimacy circulating in contemporary Irish culture. Those images are of diverse kinds. Leo Varadkar’s media image; photography used in advertising and online sex work; commemorations of Declan Flynn and Roger Casement; Anu’s theatre productions and Joe Caslin’s murals.
The book does not examine these images to find out about the real-life experiences of actual Irish gay men today. Instead, the purpose is to explore the complex and contradictory ways in which our culture thinks and feels about the ‘gay man’ as an imaginary figure. And the purpose of doing that is to speculate about how our society might be revolutionised, and liberation achieved for everybody.
Dr Cronin is a lecturer/assistant professor in the English Department and this is his second book to be published in 2022. Revolutionary Bodies: homoeroticism and the political imagination was published last Spring by Manchester University Press.
For more details on Sexual/Liberation: https://www.corkuniversitypress.com/Sexual-Liberation-p/9781782055235.htm
For more details on Revolutionary Bodies: https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526135421/revolutionary-bodies/