TARA, THE M3, AND THE CELTIC TIGER Contesting Cultural Heritage, Identity, and a Sacred Landscape in Ireland

This article explores the intersubjectivities of person and place, present and past, imagination and memory, heritage and identity, in the context of a decade-long dispute over the Irish government's decision to build a motorway through the iconic landscape of Tara in County Meath. Tara has performed as a mnemonic for innumerable cultural narratives from the Neolithic to the twentieth century stories materialized in the archaeological monuments and sedimented in the landscape. The state's backing of the motorway signaled a departure from the traditional, state-encouraged yoking of Tara with Irish roots, identity, and nationalism and pointed to a major reconfiguration of the state's relationship with its cultural heritage at the height of the economic boom called the Celtic Tiger. Public debate became entangled with bitterly contesting views about the republic's economic and political direction. The paper argues that the campaign to "save Tara" was a fight as much for intangible heritage as for tangible heritage.