Roger Casement: Cruising as Praxis

Casement's Leftovers

There's a reason we chose Roger Casement as the symbol for this podcast: a queer figure in Irish revolutionary history (queer here meaning gay, a failure and truly disruptive) and a genuine anti-imperialist who saw through a persuasive ideological hegemony in order to understand the brutality and illegitimacy of colonialism and dedicated his life to fighting it, he represents an active, civic republicanism that offers the contemporary Left so much.
It's about time we dedicated an episode to him, and so Helen and Glen are joined by Professor Gerry Kearns to discuss Casement's life and the lessons we can take from his actions and ideas. They examine his cruising and the intersectional spaces of encounter that this carved out for him, his ability to identify and articulate the problems of colonialism in an explicitly socialist, materialist way, the importance he placed on love and humanity and his haunting final speech before his execution.
They debate the limits of cultural nationalism, specifically with a 1916 framework, and look at how nationalism can be expanded through a re-imagining of the nation, an impetus on what kind of nation you want to build, and a centring of love, loyalty, legitimacy and humanity. As if this wasn't enough, they finally discuss contemporary colonialism and how unregulated late stage capitalism has led us into a world as confusing and inhospitable as the one Casement faced, and use Casement's many lessons to try to understand how to make our way into a future he would be proud of.
Prof Gerry Kearns has written a piece on Casement which can be read here: https://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/11094/1/Kearns%2CNally%2CAn%20accumulated%20wrong.pdf
*Note: around 19 minutes in Gerry mentions Thomas Davitt, but this should actually be corrected to Michael Davitt.

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