Literary representations of borders and partitions in provincial memory cultures (Northern Ireland and Upper Silesia)

Abstract

AbstractNorthern Ireland and Upper Silesia exhibit numerous analogies when it comes to their local communities' experience of borders, divisions and partitions. The experience is reflected in recent partition narratives which prove that geopolitical and administrative interventions in space and territory are likely to create and define more than just lines on the maps and new jurisdictions. Borders and partitions are felt and endured, often imprinted on provincial memories, both individual and communal. Border crossings, borders in the mind and actual experiences connected with being partitioned and living in a borderland have determined, for the last 100 years, the parameters of what I call provincial memory in Northern Ireland and Upper Silesia, making them markedly different from national memory cultures in Ireland/Britain and Poland, respectively. The transcultural memory of partitions and borders, preserved in contemporary literary accounts of the past, informs the main thrust of the narratives of belonging in both regions. By exploring related examples of partition narratives and attitudes of regional writers to borderlands and partitions, this essay argues for a recognition, in the respective contexts of Northern Ireland and Upper Silesia, of significant differences between the discursive performances of provincial memory cultures and national ones.