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“The old cause is never dead”: hauntology and Brendan Behan’s “The Hostage”

ABSTRACT Brendan Behan’s “The Hostage” poses a deep critique of extreme nationalism within an Irish context. The present article interrogates notions of identity and history through the theoretical lens of hauntology, first presented by Jacques Derrida in Specters of Marx. The probing of the spectral, absent presences within the text show history to repeat itself in the present through the workings of the Derridean spectre. The villainous nature of the IRA members and supporters, and also the victimisation of the same characters, enables the root of their actions throughout the play to be questioned and seen to be influenced by spectral voices of the past. The characters within the play are neither unitarily villains or victims, but instead are villainous victims who cannot escape past ideologies and are doomed to constantly repeat the past.