scholarly journals Political Violence and Re-victimization in The Ferryman

Author(s):  
Mesut Günenç

<p>Jez Butterworth’s <i>The Ferryman</i> (2017) is a play about the Carney family living in 1980s Ireland during the period of the rebellion of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and its efforts to get rid of British sovereignty in Northern Ireland, a period known as ‘the Troubles’. This paper focuses on Jez Butterworth, one of the most distinctive voices of the contemporary British theatre scene and a typical representative of the 1990s cultural trend, and his tragedy <i>The Ferryman</i>, which portrays the struggle and conflicts between Catholic nationalists and Protestant loyalists in Northern Ireland in the last decades of the twentieth century. The second major point of the study is that the power of the Irish Republican Party has a heavy impact on the play. The paper also discovers how Sean Carney and other members of his family both embody and apply the story of Eugene Simons and other members of ‘the Disappeared’. Like other young men, Seamus Carney became a victim during the Troubles and the campaign of political violence. The discovery of his body symbolizes how political violence created the Disappeared and shows that re-victimization and re-traumatisation continue in the aftermath of the Troubles.</p>

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mesut Günenç

<p>Jez Butterworth’s <i>The Ferryman</i> (2017) is a play about the Carney family living in 1980s Ireland during the period of the rebellion of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and its efforts to get rid of British sovereignty in Northern Ireland, a period known as ‘the Troubles’. This paper focuses on Jez Butterworth, one of the most distinctive voices of the contemporary British theatre scene and a typical representative of the 1990s cultural trend, and his tragedy <i>The Ferryman</i>, which portrays the struggle and conflicts between Catholic nationalists and Protestant loyalists in Northern Ireland in the last decades of the twentieth century. The second major point of the study is that the power of the Irish Republican Party has a heavy impact on the play. The paper also discovers how Sean Carney and other members of his family both embody and apply the story of Eugene Simons and other members of ‘the Disappeared’. Like other young men, Seamus Carney became a victim during the Troubles and the campaign of political violence. The discovery of his body symbolizes how political violence created the Disappeared and shows that re-victimization and re-traumatisation continue in the aftermath of the Troubles.</p>


Ars Aeterna ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-95
Author(s):  
Mesut Günenç

Abstract Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman (2017) is a play about the Carney family living in 1980s Ireland during the period of insurgency of the Irish Republican Army (IRA – also known as the Provisional IRA) and its efforts to end British rule in Northern Ireland, a period known as “the Troubles”. This paper focuses on Jez Butterworth, one of the most distinctive voices of the contemporary British theatre scene and a typical representative of the 1990s cultural trend, and his tragedy The Ferryman, which portrays the struggle and conflicts between Catholic nationalists and Protestant loyalists in Northern Ireland in the last decades of the 20th century. The second major point of the study is that the power of the Irish Republican Party has a heavy impact on the play. The paper also discovers how Sean Carney and other members of his family both embody and apply the story of Eugene Simons and other members of “the Disappeared”. Like other young men, Seamus Carney became a victim during the Troubles and the campaign of political violence. The discovery of his body symbolizes how political violence created the Disappeared and shows that re-victimization and retraumatisation continue in the aftermath of the Troubles.


Worldview ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 16 (11) ◽  
pp. 5-13
Author(s):  
Richard J. Neuhaus

Take or leave a few lives, about 865 people have been killed by political violence in Northern Ireland since the troubles broke out afresh in 1969. It is not improbable that the toll will reach a thousand by March, 1974. The outsider is inclined to view March, 1974, as a kind of moment of truth for Northern Ireland, for that is the date by which, according to the British “White Paper“ of March, 1973, the people of Northern Ireland are to get themselves together around an elected Assembly. What happens if they don't get themselves together by then is unclear, but the alternatives now under discussion are not pleasant to contemplate. An outsider, such as I, might view March, 1974, as the fast approaching moment of truth, but as one Protestant leader there remarked: “Ireland has been undergoing ‘moments of truth,’ ‘definitive crises’ and 'once-and-for-all decisions’ for several hundred years now.


2000 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-322
Author(s):  
Sabine Wichert

James Loughlin, The Ulster Question since 1945 (London: Macmillan, 1998), 151 pp., £10.99 (pb), ISBN 0–333–60616–7.David Harkness, Ireland in the Twentieth Century. Divided Island (London: Macmillan, 1996), 190 pp., £9.99 (pb), ISBN 0–333–56796–X.Thomas Hennessey, A History of Northern Ireland, 1920–1996 (London: Macmillan, 1997), 347 pp., £12.99 (pb), £40.00 (hb), ISBN 0–333–73162–X.Brian A. Follis, A State Under Siege. The Establishment of Northern Ireland, 1920–1925 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 250 pp., £35.00 (hb), ISBN 0–198–20305–5.Dermot Keogh and Michael H. Haltzel, eds., Northern Ireland and the Politics of reconciliation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 256 pp., £35.00 (hb), ISBN 0–521–44430–6.William Crotty and David Schmitt, eds., Ireland and the Politics of Change (London/New York: Longman, 1999), 264 pp., £17.99 (pb), ISBN 0–582–32894–2.David Miller, ed., Rethinking Northern Ireland. Culture, Ideology and Colonialism. (London/New York: Longman, 1999), 344 pp., £17.99 (pb), ISBN 0–582–30287–0.Anthony D. Buckley and Mary Catherine Kenney, Negotiating Identity: Rhetoric, Metaphor, and Social Identity in Northern Ireland (Washington: Smithonian Institution Press, 1996), 270 pp., £34.75 (hb), ISBN 1–560–98520–8.John D. Brewer, with Gareth I. Higgins, Anti-Catholicism in Northern Ireland, 1600–1998: the mote and the beam (London: Macmillan, 1998), 248 pp., £16.99 (pb), ISBN 0–333–74635–X.During the last three decades, and accompanying the ‘troubles’, the literature on Northern Ireland has mushroomed. Within the last ten years two surveys have attempted to summarise and categorise the major interpretations. John Whyte's Interpreting Northern Ireland covered the 1970s and 1980s and came to the conclusion that traditional Unionist and nationalist interpretations, with their emphasis on external, that is British and Irish, forces as the cause for the problem, had begun to lose out to ‘internal conflict’ interpretations. He felt, however, that this approach, too, was coming to the end of its usefulness, and he expected the emergence of a new paradigm shortly.


2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 462-485
Author(s):  
Daithí Ó Corráin

Pope John Paul II’s visit to Ireland in 1979 was an iconic moment in the history of twentieth-century Irish Catholicism. It has, however, received little detailed historical scrutiny. Based on state archival and hitherto unavailable diocesan material, this article contextualizes the visit by explaining the pastoral and leadership challenges that confronted the Irish hierarchy. Second, this article discusses how close the pope came to visiting Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. This was of concern not just to the hierarchy but to the Irish and British governments. Third, the organization of the visit, which was closely tied to the pastoral concerns of the Irish bishops, is surveyed. Lastly, the pastoral impact of the visit is considered. If the Catholic hierarchy hoped that the papal visit might arrest the declining institutional influence of the Catholic Church, reverse a quiet but growing faith crisis, or hasten a cessation of violence in Northern Ireland, then those expectations were misplaced. Ultimately, the pastoral impulse of the 1979 papal visit to Ireland was to preserve rather than renew the Irish Catholic tradition at a time when Irish Catholics were fixed on future material advancement rather than fidelity to their spiritual past.


2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 174-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debbie Lisle

In the Ulster Museum’s new gallery The Troubles and Beyond, the central display showcases a Wheelbarrow bomb disposal robot. This machine was invented by the British Army in Northern Ireland in 1972 and used by officers of the 321 Explosive Ordinance Disposal Squadron (321EOD) to defuse car bombs planted by the Irish Republican Army (IRA). This article offers an alternative history of that machine – a dirtier history – that critically assesses its role during the Troubles. Centrally, the article contests the British Army’s preferred account of this machine as a ‘game-changing’ technological innovation in counterinsurgency, and their understanding of themselves as benign peacekeepers. Rather than figure the Wheelbarrow robot as an unreadable ‘black box’ used instrumentally by the superior human operators of 321EOD, this article seeks to foreground the unruly transfers of agency between the machine and its operators as they tested and experimented in the exceptional colonial laboratory of Northern Ireland. The article further explores the machine’s failures during bomb disposal episodes, the collateral damage that resulted, and the multiple and often unruly reactions of local populations who watched the Wheelbarrow robot at work. Providing a ‘dirty history’ of the Wheelbarrow robot is an effort to demonstrate that war can never be fully cleaned up, either through militarized mythologies of technological innovation or hopeful museum displays.


2010 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 105-118
Author(s):  
Stephanie Schwerter ◽  

In Irish literature a substantial number of writers turn to different cultures and histories in order to contemplate on their own environment through the lens of otherness. In particular, poets from Northern Ireland draw upon contrasting literary traditions to articulate their personal experience of political violence through an international framework. In the poetry of Seamus Heaney, Tom Paulin and Medbh McGuckian a noticeably strong link between Northern Ireland and pre- and post-revolutionary Russia can be discerned. Through allusions to Russian literary figures, politicians and social conflicts, the three poets attempt to reconsider established power structures ingrained in Northern Irish society and challenge conventional interpretations of the Troubles. Employing Victor Shklovsky’s technique of defamiliarisation, Heaney, Paulin and McGuckian take Russia as a point of comparison and contrast. In so doing, they attempt to generate a new vision of the Northern Irish situation and work against the traditionally one-sided discourse of the conflict. In the following article I analyse the different ways in which the three writers establish links to Russian literature, history and culture in order to give voice to their individual perceptions of contemporary Northern Ireland. In this context, I shall shed light on the reasons why they feel compelled to look outside their own culture in order to come to terms with the Northern Irish Troubles.


Author(s):  
Elsie Doolan

The Conflict Textiles website is a digital resource that allows users to learn more about how individuals who have experienced or been impacted by political violence have used textiles to respond to and recount their experiences. Some of the textiles on the website were made in response to the wars and conflicts in South America in the 1970s and 1980s (including the Dirty War in Argentina, the Pinochet regime in Chile, and the conflict in Peru between the government and the Shining Path), while others have emerged as a response to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The majority of the textiles were created by women, though in some instances, men have also contributed to their creation. Conflict Textiles is the name of both the digital resource and a physical collection of textiles. Originating from the Art of Survival International and Irish Quilts in 2009 in Derry, Northern Ireland, this collection and online repository highlights the prolific use of textiles as a medium through which individuals are able to express themselves and the overarching nature of this medium as a form of expression. These two entities, the website and the physical collection, coexist, with the Conflict Textiles website documenting the textiles present in the physical collection and events that occur, or have occurred, in association with the collection. In this way, the Conflict Textiles website serves as an online repository of the physical Conflict Textiles collection and allows users internationally to learn more about a collection that includes textiles from dozens of different countries including, but not limited to, Chile, Northern Ireland, and Argentina.


Author(s):  
Padraic Kenney

What do states do with the opponents they have imprisoned? This chapter explores the treatment of prisoners as a way to understand political incarceration. For political prisoners, arbitrary and uncertain rules replace rights in the twentieth century. Prisoners see rules as capricious, but the capriciousness undermines prisoners’ sense of themselves and of their fate. Prison denies ordinary sensations and strips prisoners of their identity, even of their humanity. It instills uncertainty through the use of informers, purposeless labor, and torture. Examples in the chapter include Nazi Germany, Poland in the 1930s and in the Stalinist era, British Northern Ireland during the Troubles, and apartheid South Africa.


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