Conclusion: Making Things Difficult for the Sectarians

The Conclusion takes up ideas in the previous chapters—especially the previous chapter’s discussion of Rancière’s arguments about politics being a process of identifying who ‘counts’ and misidentifying who doesn’t. The repudiation of that notion, a disidentification with its explicit reproduction of inequality, is denoted by a disidentification and a commitment to fundamental equality. In part, this involves drawing attention to how easy it is in deeply divided societies such as Northern Ireland for people to opt-in to sectarian structures (schooling, electoral politics, cultural and religious activities) almost by default. As I point out, this is not the same as the paternalistic condemnation of people’s beliefs by self-proclaimed non-sectarian groups such as the Northern Irish Alliance Party. Instead, disidentifying anti-sectarianism demands a questioning of all inequalities.