JL;DR
Daily Podcasts Video Research
29 May

Kneecap and the Politics of Language Reclamation

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JL;DR SUMMARY The episode explores the film 'Kneecap' and delves into the intersections of language reclamation with politics through music, with a focus on Irish and Jewish languages. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski.

  • At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself.
  • This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude.
  • Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from.
  • But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
  • And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.
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Tags

Diaspora  Language Reclamation  Solidarity  Nationalism  Jewish Languages  Music And Politics  Irish Language  Cultural Resistance  Irish Rap  Kneecap Film 

Places mentioned

Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
"Today, we'll be discussing the West Belfast-based Irish language rap group, NECAP, and their self-titled semi-autobiographical film, which came out last year."
Palestinian Territories
"Coachella in support of Gaza."
London, England, United Kingdom
"Why don't you just speak the Queen's English?"
Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
"and their advocacy for the Irish language, which faced centuries of repression under British colonial rule."
New York, United States
"like Bernadette Dublin, who had come to America and say, like, Irish Americans, who are participating, like policing, and these other systems, like, what are you doing in the north of Ireland, where the people who are being targeted by the police, and I think she even she's given the key to the city to New York, and like gave it to Angela Davis or something, because she was just like, so disgusted with the racism that Irish Americans were benefiting from."
San Francisco, California, United States
"had anything to do with my personal background until I was an adult and took Yiddish classes with the Worker's Circle in San Francisco, even though at the time my grandfather was like, who are you going to speak that to when I told him? And so there's something really kind of magical and special about seeing this relationship to a language unfold also through the language of hip hop, which felt like it was kind of speaking back to me in a personal way as a Black American."
Ireland
"Or you only hear Yiddish, and you don't hear any other diasporic languages, you can very easily experience a tremendous sense of alienation, because it's the thing that you're looking for so deeply. And so a lot of work that I do is working with different Jewish groups to help think about building out a calendar where different Jewish cultures can have homes. Because there's no silver bullet for this problem, because the multi-ethnicity of our community is a huge strength and also a challenge for booking artists. If I could just tack on a little part to what I was saying, especially related to the Judeo-Arabic and maybe other Jewish diasporic language, Judeo-Farsi, there are many others. I think the comparison with Irish becomes very interesting here, because I think in the film, it's very important for Irish and English to be set in opposition to each other as a dichotomy."
This podcast episode was indexed and curated by Cairo, JL;DR's web crawler.
Cairo Item ID 52734
Cairo Source ID 14
Retrieved 2025-05-30 05:30:32 UTC
Curated 2025-05-30 06:03:46 UTC