Cognitive dissidents?: ideological demarcation, historical amnesia and the Irish Republican songbook

Due to its ideological absolutism and highly dogmatic philosophical worldview, militant Irish Republicanism is noted for its tendency towards organisational fracturing, with such internecine contestation resulting in multiple and systemic reinterpretations of the attendant historical narrative. Despite the pseudo-historical convention of projecting a retrospective revolutionary continuum across multiple centuries, this is rarely, if ever, presented in uninterrupted chronology, with Republicans consistently excluding events, persona and extensive historical timeframes from their self-crafted narratives as expedient. As a cultural adjunct of the physical-force tendency, Irish rebel music has long reflected such ideological tensions and resultant chronological inconsistencies, with the attendant soundscape displaying a similar heterogeneity to that evident within the wider Republican political tradition as a consequence. This paper will examine songbooks published by several militant Republican organisations over the course of the modern 'Troubles' so as to demonstrate how such texts have mirrored both political and methodological realignments within Irish Republicanism and how they have been routinely deployed as propaganda conduits for the reinforcement of organisational hegemony, particularly in ideologically contested post-split landscapes.