In recent months, a little corner of UK politics/economics Twitter has become somewhat obsessed with an excellent series of articles by In The Sight of the Unwise and its main protagonist – Deano.
Loved this. I think the fascinating thing about "Ulster Deano" is the degree to which he is (as you mention but don't really go into detail about) a figure with no real nationalist counterpart. I wonder if a big part of this might be the university/non-university division you point out. Unlike people in the rest of the country in the same economic class, a nationalist proto-Deano who chooses to go to university does not face culture clash: he likely ends up in Queen's, where a kind of oddly masculinist nationalist politics is (if anything) the norm. (There's a lot of low-quality populist bait about this around Queen's being a "cold house" for unionists, which is mostly bullshit, but there is unquestionably some truth here: the number of GAA tops you see in Elms speaks for itself.) As such, there ends up being no real distinction between 'nationalist Deano' and any other 26-36 nationalist, and so graduate and non-graduate nationalists end up feeling political affinities with each other in a way that no other demographic in the UK does. Certainly, as a nationalist-by-birth who went to uni in England I find myself increasingly at odds, politically speaking, with many of my friends at home, but there's no obvious split between those who went to uni and those who didn't.
I think you are definitely on to something regarding how a nationalist proto-Deano is in a somewhat unique situation in not facing much of a culture clash when they go to university and therefore don't really have to adapt to their new environment. I do wonder how much this is a Queen's or UU thing specifically though - Normal People was at pains to emphasise how Connell (in some ways the sort of person we are talking about) struggled to adapt to how different life at Trinity was compared to the culture he was at ease with in his school. This may also touch on a wider question of is Deano a largely "British" phenomenon that doesn't translate well outside of that context (it is also hard to think of an American equivalent for example).
Loved this. I think the fascinating thing about "Ulster Deano" is the degree to which he is (as you mention but don't really go into detail about) a figure with no real nationalist counterpart. I wonder if a big part of this might be the university/non-university division you point out. Unlike people in the rest of the country in the same economic class, a nationalist proto-Deano who chooses to go to university does not face culture clash: he likely ends up in Queen's, where a kind of oddly masculinist nationalist politics is (if anything) the norm. (There's a lot of low-quality populist bait about this around Queen's being a "cold house" for unionists, which is mostly bullshit, but there is unquestionably some truth here: the number of GAA tops you see in Elms speaks for itself.) As such, there ends up being no real distinction between 'nationalist Deano' and any other 26-36 nationalist, and so graduate and non-graduate nationalists end up feeling political affinities with each other in a way that no other demographic in the UK does. Certainly, as a nationalist-by-birth who went to uni in England I find myself increasingly at odds, politically speaking, with many of my friends at home, but there's no obvious split between those who went to uni and those who didn't.
I think you are definitely on to something regarding how a nationalist proto-Deano is in a somewhat unique situation in not facing much of a culture clash when they go to university and therefore don't really have to adapt to their new environment. I do wonder how much this is a Queen's or UU thing specifically though - Normal People was at pains to emphasise how Connell (in some ways the sort of person we are talking about) struggled to adapt to how different life at Trinity was compared to the culture he was at ease with in his school. This may also touch on a wider question of is Deano a largely "British" phenomenon that doesn't translate well outside of that context (it is also hard to think of an American equivalent for example).