scholarly journals Memory, Trauma and Forgetting in Northern Irish Drama

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-91
Author(s):  
Anthony Roche
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
The Other ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
Violent Incident ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
The Past ◽  
Irish Drama ◽  
Bloody Sunday

The ethical exhortation ‘not to forget’ runs the risk of ‘a memory that would never forget anything’. At the other extreme is the no less dangerous risk of total amnesia, an erasure of the past that immediately suggests Freud and the return of the repressed. The complex balance to be found between memory and forgetting is particularly fraught in Northern Ireland and the politics of how the past is to be negotiated in the current post peace process climate. I propose to look at this subject in relation to the trauma engendered by decades of violence in two Northern Irish plays: Quietly (2012) by Owen McCafferty, set in the post peace process climate of 2009 but harking back to a violent incident in the same location thirty-five years earlier; and Frank McGuinness’s Carthaginians (1988), a canonical play about one of the central events in ‘the Troubles’, Bloody Sunday of 30 January 1972, but set more than a decade later.

Commemorating bonds of Union: remembering the Ulster Special Constabulary at the National Memorial Arboretum

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. J. Armstrong
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Active Role ◽  
The Other ◽  
Remote Site ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
Local Service ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Grant Scheme

In 2006, two acts of commemoration took place to the memory of the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC). One was staged in a public site of national commemoration at the National Memorial Arboretum (NMA) in Lichfield, Staffordshire and the other was a very local service in the remote site of Mullaghfad Church, Co.Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. Both of these events were state-funded under the terms of the ‘Victims and Survivors Befriending Grant Scheme’, but engaged in very different modes of remembrance. This chapter focuses on the USC memorial at the NMA as a strategic site of memory for the Ulster unionist community. Drawing upon interviews with members of the Ulster Special Constabulary Association (USCA) present at the commemoration, it explores the active role Britain plays as a physical and symbolic site of ‘respite’ for Ulster unionists. In contrast to the private, divisive nature of memorials to the USC in Northern Ireland, the NMA site enables the USCA to locate its role in the Troubles in terms of British heroism and sacrifice, alongside memorials to other UK police units. The chapter suggests that historians should look more closely at the active role Britain plays in commemorating the Northern Irish Troubles.

scholarly journals ‘The Troubles' and the peace process in Northern Irelanda in Seamus Heaney’s "The cure at Troy"

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan José Cogolludo Díaz
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Seamus Heaney ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Sectarian Violence ◽  
The Future ◽  
Irish People

Based on Philoctetes, the tragic play by Sophocles, the poet Seamus Heaney creates his own version in The Cure at Troy to present the political and social problems in Northern Ireland during the period that became known euphemistically as ‘the Troubles’. This paper aims to highlight the significance of Heaney’s play in the final years of the conflict. Heaney uses the classical Greek play to bring to light the plight and suffering of the Northern Irish people as a consequence of the atavistic and sectarian violence between the unionist and nationalist communities. Nevertheless, Heaney also provides possible answers that allow readers to harbour a certain degree of hope towards peace and the future in Northern Ireland.

scholarly journals Island cities: the case of Belfast, Northern Ireland

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-8
Author(s):  
Stephen A. Royle
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Contested Space ◽  
The Past ◽  
Belfast Agreement ◽  
The Future ◽  
Briefing Document

Abstract The paper considers Belfast as an ‘island city’ with reference to issues of identity and economy and especially in connection with a series of statements from the ‘Futures of Islands’ briefing document prepared for the IGU’s Commission on Islands meeting in Kraków in August 2014. Belfast as a contested space, a hybrid British/Irish city on the island of Ireland, exemplifies well how ‘understandings of the past condition the future’, whilst the Belfast Agreement which brought the Northern Ireland peace process to its culmination after decades of violence known as the ‘Troubles’ speaks to ‘island ways of knowing, of comprehending problems - and their solutions’. Finally, Belfast certainly demonstrates that ‘island peoples shape their contested futures’

‘Truth recovery’ and the role of the security forces in the Northern Ireland Troubles

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
The State ◽  
Security Forces ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
The Past ◽  
British State ◽  
Peace And Reconciliation

In light of the controversies that remain about Bloody Sunday and other violent episodes involving the state, this chapter examines three important aspects to the debate around truth recovery and the role of the Security Forces in the Troubles. First, it asks what role the Security Forces played in the conflict according to official state narratives. Second, it examines the apparent obfuscation of security forces’ experiences by an anti-state republican agenda. Here the chapter makes the case that republicans do this because of a need to reinforce tropes of meaning that preserve the integrity of the killings carried out by the Provisional IRA, while justifying continued hostility to the British state as well as their commitment to a peace process. Lastly, the chapter asks what consequences these official state and anti-state representations of the past have had on attempts to ‘give a voice’ to Security Forces victims (particularly those from Britain) amidst the apparent obfuscating of terrorist violence. By marginalising the experiences of those who soldiered during the Troubles we risk skewing our understanding of the three dimensional nature of the conflict and further postponing the opportunities to move towards meaningful peace and reconciliation.

‘The Troubles we’ve seen’: film, television drama and the Northern Irish conflict in Britain

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Hill
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
Television Drama ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Relative Scarcity

This chapter examines films and television dramas dealing with the impact of the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ in Britain and the controversies that they generated. It begins with a consideration of early TV dramas such as The Vanishing Army (1978) and Chance of a Lifetime (1980) dealing with the experiences of the returning British soldier. This is followed by an examination of the representation of the IRA’s activities on the British ‘mainland’ in productions such as The Patriot Game (1969), Hennessy (1975), Eighteen Months to Balcombe Street (1977) and The Long Good Friday (1979) as well as an analysis of how the miscarriages of justice that emerged in the wake of the IRA’s bombing campaigns were turned into (documentary)-dramas such as Who Bombed Birmingham? (1990) and In the Name of the Father(1993). The chapter then concludes with some consideration of the ‘peace process’ and the relative scarcity of dramas dealing with the divisions and tensions that were a feature of the earlier period.

Conflict and Peace: History of the Northern Irish and Turkey’s Kurdish Peace Processes

2020 ◽  
pp. 72-109
Author(s):  
İ. Aytaç Kadıoğlu
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
The Other ◽  
Historical Account ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Peace Processes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Agents ◽  
The One

The chapter provides an overview of the conflicts and peace processes in Northern Ireland and Turkey that dominated almost four decades of politics and security concerns in both cases. This overview demonstrates the dilemmas faced by authorities in deciding whether to adopt traditional terrorism and counter-terrorism tactics versus ‘conflict resolution’ measures. This historical account explores the transition in the perception of the British and Turkish governments on the one hand, and the leadership of the IRA and PKK, on the other. It reveals that peace efforts and violent campaigns were used together since the beginning of the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, and since the early 1980s in Turkey. The use of violent and non-violent resolution methods depended on the attitudes of political agents in both conflicts. The chapter also reveals the agents and actors who played a critical role in the transition towards a peaceful resolution. It provides an understanding of how the attitudes and actions of the conflicting parties influenced the outcome of both peace processes.

scholarly journals “What Is This, the Seventies?” Spectres of the Past (and the Future) in Recent Northern Irish Television

2020 ◽  
pp. 152747642098582
Author(s):  
Colin Coulter
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
Television Drama ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Theoretical Frame

For all the gains made during its celebrated peace process, Northern Ireland remains haunted by a conflict that claimed more than 3,700 lives. One of the spaces in which the ghosts of the past manifest themselves is that of television drama. In this article, Mark Fisher’s reading of “hauntology” provides the theoretical frame for an analysis of two recent TV series set in Northern Ireland: The Fall and Derry Girls. Although the programs could not be more different in both tone and content, they both illustrate sharply that the region remains, in John Hewitt’s indelible phrase, a “ghost-haunted land.” In particular, The Fall and Derry Girls reveal that Northern Ireland continues to be deeply troubled both by those who were lost during the conflict and by that which was lost in the transition to peace.

Culture, Rhetoric, and Reconciliation: The Place of Language in the Northern Irish Conflict and Peace Process (1998-2002)

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Dougherty
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
National Level ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
Seamus Heaney ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
Potential Conflict ◽  
Positive Role ◽  
Language Play ◽  
The Troubles

Alterations in public discourse towards multiculturalism, reconciliation and liberal democracy at the national level in Northern Ireland are evident from 1998 - 2002, but to what end? To what extent did language play a positive role in the Northern Ireland peace process? Recognizing that language does not tell the whole story of the Northern Irish experience of the Troubles or current peace process, the author highlights how language, as a transmitter and constitutor of culture, has played a role as a signifier of potential conflict, peace and progress (or lack thereof). In particular, the author considers several texts including excerpts from speeches given by Noble Prize Winners—the former First Minister David Trimble and former SDLP leader, John Hume; an IRA apology, Bloody Sunday Inquiry and the Belfast Agreement; and several selections from the work of Northern Irish poets Seamus Heaney and Eavan Boland.

scholarly journals The symbiosis of oral history and agonistic memory: Voices of 68 and the legacy of the past in Northern Ireland

2021 ◽  
Vol 9s3 ◽  
pp. 73-94
Author(s):  
Chris Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
Effective Response ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
The Past ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
National Museums ◽  
The Subject

This article offers a reflection on the potency of combining oral history and agonistic memory. Via the specific example of a recent collaboration between the author and National Museums NI on the subject of 1968, it will be argued that the symbiotic relationship between this methodological approach and theoretical underpinning provides a potentially effective response to the current and pressing challenge of managing the legacy of the Troubles as part of the Northern Irish peace process. The success of this approach in the particular and difficult context of Northern Ireland suggests that there are potential lessons for other post-conflict societies coming to terms with the challenges of their own difficult pasts.

scholarly journals ‘Look What We Have Gone Through’: Representation and Memory in the Bogside Murals in Northern Ireland

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Aguiar
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
The Other ◽  
British Army ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
The Past ◽  
Visual Evidence

Murals have been painted on the outside walls of houses and businesses in Northern Ireland and have functioned as visual evidence of people’s experiences of the conflict known as the Troubles. Created in 1994, The People’s Gallery is a series of twelve murals painted by three local artists in the Bogside district in Derry. This article examines how the murals ‘remember’ the conflict, what stories are included or excluded, how ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ are portrayed, and how the depiction of the past relates to the present. The analysis shows that the murals focus on the Bogside’s own experiences, portraying ‘Us’ as victims and as activists. The Other is represented directly by the image of the British army/RUC, and indirectly by the image of the chaos and violence caused to ‘Us’. Due to the lack of sectarian messages, The People’s Gallery can have a positive use as a storytelling tool in Northern Ireland’s current transitional scenario.

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