Footnote 9 Furthermore, these trends have affected female sexual behaviour, which, according to Susanne Lettow, has incorporated different forms of subjection. Additionally, sexual behaviour developed as a marker for identity, and often equated with subjection, involving some degree of domination in love-sex relations.
Footnote 8 This phenomenon is particularly visible in the media, with female bodies frequently identified as commodities and the habits and interests of the wealthy presented as universal. Footnote 7 In neoliberal economies, Post-Celtic Tiger Ireland included, economic contraction resulted in repolarisation of class and gender, both in discourse and representation, with a marked regressive orientation. The years of recession gave way to a discourse of personal responsibility and guilt, and the logic of austerity worked for redemptive purposes. Inevitably, these tensions affected cultural values too, shattering what Gerry Smyth called the “idea of Irish national identity.” Footnote 6 Accordingly, the contemporary Irish imaginary turned into a “massive void in terms of collective self-identity” Footnote 5 with no new signifiers in the horizon. Footnote 3 Liminality, defined as “in-between situations and conditions characterized by the dislocation of established structures, the reversal of hierarchies, and uncertainty about the continuity of tradition and future outcomes,” Footnote 4 is an interim that should be temporary and transient by nature, but after the Celtic Tiger it became a permanent ontological indeterminacy. Ireland, once a disciplined, stable and internally coherent social system, changed into a transient and flexible one, Footnote 2 and according to Szakolczai, the country remained stuck in a period of permanent vacuum, a liminal state from which it seemed unable to emerge. These convolutions in the economic field encompassed dramatic transformations in the social arena. Footnote 1 Within a short period of time, Irish people enjoyed one of the richest economies in the world, suffered an economic collapse and the drastic restrictions that followed, and allegedly recovered again from 2014 onwards. This led to the financial bailout in 2010 and a subsequent period of austerity that prompted the deregulation of the welfare state. But, exultation was soon followed by a collapse and the crisis that unfolded in 2008 revealed the weaknesses of a fragile boom. Among other factors, the Celtic Tiger phenomenon (mid-1990s to mid-2000s and 2004–2008) made the country a benchmark for economic success. In less than a century, Ireland has transitioned from a self-sufficient and protectionist state to a prosperous country in the European Union. Irish women’s writing in recessionary Ireland
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