Splintered Memory: Remembering and Reinscribing the Past in Northern Ireland
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Date
2015-08-18
Authors
Robinson, Joseph
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
Sixteen years after the Good Friday Agreement, Northern Ireland remains a deeply segregated society. One driver of this ongoing separation is the divergent ways in which the Troubles are remembered. Paramilitary groups in particular have been quite successful at inscribing their exclusionary conflict memories into public space. However, this work departs from the larger sub-field by arguing that narratives of violence are spatially and discursively resisted in Northern Ireland. I argue additional claimants have asserted their rights to remember in public space and have challenged the appropriation of their loved ones' bodies. Public space in Northern Ireland increasingly is becoming evocative of multiple pasts; it is splintering and diversifying. I argue that one of the chief drivers of this diversification is the reclamation and reinscription of the bodies of those 3,700 men, women, and children who violently lost their lives during the Troubles.
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Keywords
Memory studies, Northern Ireland, Political geography