The Curious Case of Cu Chulainn: Nationalism, Culture, and Meaning-Making in the Contested Symbols of Northern Ireland

This article examines the ways that political movements utilize contested imagery to further ideological goals. While scholars have long recognized the importance of symbols for nationalism, most analyses rely on national symbols being relatively unambiguous. I seek to understand how such processes function when this is not the case, examining how organizations on both sides of the conflict in Northern Ireland deployed the same symbol - representations of the Irish hero Cu Chulainn - to support diametrically opposed political programmes. I argue that the different movements in Northern Ireland imbued symbols such as Cu Chulainn with their own meaning by emplotting them within their ideological narratives. These narratives shaped and gave significance to visual symbols, producing myths that sought to structure the ways members of society viewed the world. In return, these symbols and myths provided evidence which reciprocally strengthened and supported the ideological narratives of the movements that produced them, serving as potent reminders of the ideological worldview such narratives advocate.