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Most accounts of contemporary Irish culture tend to be largely affirmative,
even Whiggish, in cast. The contemporary cultural moment is recurrently
described as one characterized by renaissance, experiment, and
iconoclasm, a moment vitalized by the emergence of radical new voices,
styles, media, forms, and energies. This upbeat view is clearly underpinned
by a broader sociohistorical narrative, also of a decidedly Whiggish temper,
in which contemporary Irish society is construed as one engaged over
recent decades in an often laborious, but on the whole overwhelmingly successful,
overcoming of a more repressive, provincial, censorious past. As
Irish society leaves behind that past to become more liberal, secular, postnationalistic,
multicultural, more confidently European in its outlook, contemporary
Irish culture—the account runs—gives imaginative expression to
this dynamic process of social change.
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