Racialisation and Dystopianism in the Irish Literary Context: A Case-Study

Abstract

The “anomalous state” of Ireland that David Lloyd (7) referred to in his homonymous volume portrays accurately the in-betweenness in which the Irish have been historically relegated. In this respect, not only critical theory but also a considerable number of literary works have attempted to give voice, respond and, ultimately, challenge the stereotypical imagery associated with the country in the heyday of the Victorian era and  afterwards. Peter Dickinson’s rather unknown The Green Gene (1973) emerges as a noteworthy example of how notions of race in an Irish/Celtic context can be anatomised through traditional dystopian tropes. Thus, the aim in this study is to analyse how this work epitomises a new way of dealing with the very concept of race and how, in this precise case, it is strongly determined by the excesses of science and genetic manipulation, two questions that have been strongly related with dystopian literature.