The Kilt's use in Irish Nationalism

[CMcG]

See, this whole "Celtic" thing is anither thing I and many others just don't get.

Groups such as the Celtic Congress and the Celtic League think of the Celts as peoples who either speak a Celtic language or have spoken it within the modern historical period. While all six Celtic nations have unique histories and societies, they also share many elements of culture. Celtic is a bit of a catch-all term and is not without its flaws. Notwithstanding the romantic thrust of Pan-Celtism, it can also be useful as a general category.

That article you posted about DNA is fascinating but has relatively little bearing on either most people's identity, or the adoption of the Scottish kilt by other Celtic nations. It might be more productive to consider the discourse surrounding the way that people construct their sense of self, which is a big topic in the social sciences and humanities.

Social identity is far more complex than just citizenship and a nation is not simply a country. To go back to Benedict Anderson's idea of a nation as an imagined community, he points out that one can never actually see all the other members but rather knows they are there through communication. He also finds that a nation's borders are imagined to be permanent and solid, whereas they are instead permeable and subject to change. At this point, I should point out that of the six Celtic nations, only Ireland is actually a sovereign state...

In this global internet age, people are able to connect to a far more dispersed community and perhaps a semi-recent upsurge in interest in the kilt can be tied to the new ease of transnational flows of goods, services, people, and information. People are able to make links -- both weak and strong -- to various aspects of their heritage, citizenship, associations, locality, history, interests, etc.

Modern societies tend to also be more open to people expressing their individuality and collectivity in new and interesting hybrid ways. In fact, the post-modern condition recognizes that reality is constructed, plural, and variable. What does all that mean? It means that in the big picture, people can -- and will -- identify with different aspects of their individual heritage, culture, and history in various ways. For some, that means wearing the kilt as a symbol of Celtic identity, by way of a general association between the Celtic peoples, and thereby expressing a feeling of admiration, solidarity, and/or affinity for the distinctive dress of the Highlanders.