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Language Always Pre-exists Us: It Is Always Already 'in Place', Waiting To Assign Us Our Places Within It.

Irish Fiction Is Full Of Secrets, Guilty Pasts, Divided Identities. It Is No Wonder That There Is Such A Rich Tradition Of Gothic Writing In A Nation So Haunted By History.

Writing Seems To Rob Me Of My Being: It Is A Second Hand Mode Of Communication, A Pallid, Mechanical Transcript Of Speech, And So Always At One Remove From My Consciousness.

The Role Of The Intellectual, So It Is Said, Is To Speak Truth To Power. Noam Chomsky Has Dismissed This Pious Tag On Two Grounds. For One Thing, Power Knows The Truth Already; It Is Just Busy Trying To Conceal It. For Another, It Is Not Those In Power Who Need The Truth, But Those They Oppress.

All Communication Involves Faith; Indeed, Some Linguisticians Hold That The Potential Obstacles To Acts Of Verbal Understanding Are So Many And Diverse That It Is A Minor Miracle That They Take Place At All.