‘Better Way to Live’: race, gender, and challenging hegemonic postcolonial ideology in discursive constructions of KNEECAP via Irish and British state media

Sammanfattning

This thesis investigates the extent to which and how non-hegemonic identities are discursively constructed in terms of race and gender in postcolonial contexts, as well as the implications thereof for hegemonic state ideology. KNEECAP, a music group from Northern Ireland, has been the subject of media controversy over the past two years for protesting the ongoing genocide in Gaza during its live performances. In light of Ireland’s colonial history under British rule, KNEECAP’s pro-Palestine advocacy speaks to a longstanding tradition among Northern Irish (Catholic) Nationalists of expressing solidarity with Palestinians, whose experiences of oppression are understood in parallel to their own. Grounding its framework and approach in Postcolonial, Postcolonial Feminist, and Discourse Theories, the research uses poststructuralist discourse analysis to identify key elements and signifiers used by Irish and British state media that serve to construct KNEECAP’s identity in racialised and gendered terms. It finds that British state media discourses in particular tend to racialise KNEECAP as a (Catholic) Nationalist Other, demonstrating the power of Ideological State Apparatuses in upholding the postcolonial hegemony of(Protestant) Unionism in Northern Ireland. Yet, the research also shows how certain aspects of KNEECAP’s non-hegemonic identity, such as its protest masculinity and use of Gaeilge, can serve implicitly to challenge hegemony by disrupting the ideological status quo in the Northern Irish context.