Aisling

There are certain indigenous words that carry a considerable burden of signification within a culture, across space and time; Aisling is one such keyword. In tracing its origins, histories, sublimations, and transformations as a musicopoetic form, we illustrate the power and limitations in applying Raymond Williams's methodology to a Gaelic word and cultural concept. Aisling confronts and subverts the colonial logic of Western epistemological thought, as manifest in the original Keywords project. Aisling is understood as a “resource of hope,” a native artistic response and speculative hermeneutic for a contemporaneous society beset with immense challenges and experiential ruptures.