Rundale

Collage by Kathleen Stokes

Welcome to the August edition of Rundale, which is coming to you with a wee delay (we’re resisting the return to order that the new term is increasingly insisting on). In this issue, we bring you pieces of other places, which invite us in to embed ourselves in spaces and times that may seem other to us.

In Dundalk is Antifascist, James Renaghan reports on anti-fascist organising over the summer in the border town. Dundalk served as a rallying point of the socialist left that confronted both the government & fascist dividers on the street. James outlines how counter-protesters worked to disrupt and resist far-right and anti-refugee demonstrations in the town, and their on-going experimentation with anti-fascist and socialist organising.

Rory Rowan reviews an exhibition of Japanese photographer Akihiko Okamura’s remarkable images of the conflict in the north being held in the Ulster Museum. Okamura’s images, largely unseen until now, offer a powerful record of everyday life lived amidst the turmoil of war and occupation. Okamura found personal peace moving to an Ireland wracked by war: a peace grounded in anti-colonial solidarity.

Finally, Emer Purcell and Stephen Hewer relocate us to Irish Medieval Law, and explore what insights medieval Irish law might provide on understanding and addressing Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people. They argue that medieval history provides a set of perspectives and tools that can help orient ourselves in the present.

We hope that you’ll learn from these pieces of other places, which we invite you to spend some time in or with.