Trouble Research Articles

‘Inhospitable it would be’: rivers of unbelonging in Willie Doherty’s Secretion

ABSTRACT In Ghost Story and Secretion, the Northern Irish artist Willie Doherty depicts landscape as haunted. Both films register the presence of ghosts through a malodorous ooze: a residue of repressed secrets whose return disturbs the living. These miasmic flows literalize the seepage between ‘concentrationary histories': the interrelation between particular histories of institutional violence. Doherty's haunted topographies explicitly connect the Breitenau and Dachau camps with Northern Ireland's Troubles and Abu Ghraib. Haunting, understood here through the uncanny, and Nicholas Abraham and Maria Torok's theory of encryption, embodies concentrationary memory's focus on narrating the seepage between histories and the camp’s continued threat.

“Blurring the main story”: news in the work of Ciaran Carson

ABSTRACT This article explores Ciaran Carson’s engagement with print and television news media. While critics have emphasised the news’s importance to Breaking News (2003), this article argues that the collection extends the journalistic concerns of Carson’s earlier work. By analysing coverage of the Northern Ireland conflict and drawing on the Carson archives at Emory, University, Atlanta, it shows that Carson’s responses to the news remain interested in the “blurring” of different reports, images, and narratives. In critiquing “objectivity” as a journalistic value, Carson’s work explores the tendency of news stories to shift and change, suggesting that no account can offer more than “the half of it.” Alongside this, the article explores how Carson’s senses of place and event respond to media saturation. Life in Belfast during the Troubles, his work realises, is often itself a “blur” of different stories, with even the most ordinary experiences coloured by the consumption of news.

Niall Gilmartin and Brendan Ciarán Browne. Refugees and Forced Displacement in Northern Ireland's Troubles: Untold Journeys Migrations and Identities. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2022. Pp. 256. $130.00 (cloth).

Niall Gilmartin and Brendan Ciarán Browne. Refugees and Forced Displacement in Northern Ireland's Troubles: Untold Journeys Migrations and Identities. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2022. Pp. 256. $130.00 (cloth).

“The Non-Combatant on the ‘Front Line’: British Servicewomen During the Troubles in Northern Ireland”

Critical scholarship recognises women’s longstanding but unacknowledged presence on the “front line” but tends to explore what it means for the individual rather than why the military institution is invested in this myth. This paper draws on 20 interviews with female veterans of the Troubles and extensive archival material. It examines how servicewomen’s war labour was controlled by the British Army, by policy that kept them unarmed and wearing skirts, labelled as “non-combatants.” Building on scholarly recognition of women’s unacknowledged presence in “front line combat,” this paper considers the implications of control over servicewomen for how we understand military power.

THE IMPACT OF BREXIT ON THE PEACE PROCESS IN NORTHERN IRELAND

The article analyzes Brexit as a factor influencing the Good Friday Agreement and the transformation of the peace process in Northern Ireland, as well as the relationship between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It is argued that Brexit poses a threat to the security of Ireland and the EU, since it undermines the foundations of the peace process in Northern Ireland and creates the likelihood that the border will be closed on the island of Ireland again. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 was based on the fact that both signatory states are members of the EU, and many of its provisions will not be implemented after Brexit. It has been proven that after Brexit, the most controversial issue was the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which became the external border of the EU. The border, which was heavily militarized during the conflict, became virtually invisible after its settlement, and people and goods freely cross it. This became possible largely because both Ireland and the UK were part of the EU single market, a common set of rules that ensures the free movement of goods, services, people and finances within the bloc.It is argued that the new relationship between the EU and the UK, which was agreed during 2020 and implemented from January 2021, resulted in an attempt to resolve the complex border issue, which was carried out in the Northern Ireland Protocol. The arrangements of the Northern Ireland Protocol, according to which Northern Ireland, but not the rest of the UK, remains within the framework of the EU single market for goods, make it possible to maintain an open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The establishment of an open border was a key aspect of the Northern Ireland peace process and the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended the conflict in Northern Ireland. It is shown that the Northern Ireland Protocol creates a de facto customs border in the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom. Mainly to address the concerns of the DUP unionists about the Northern Ireland Protocol, in 2022-2023, the EU and the UK agreed on revised mechanisms for its operation – the Windsor Framework, which entered into force on March 24, 2023. The DUP refused to accept the Framework Program as meeting their interests until early 2024. Further adjustments to its work have not been agreed upon and the formation of a new Northern Ireland executive has not begun. It is proved that Brexit is becoming a new and significant factor in the unification of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland. Brexit has put the issue of the unification of Ireland at the top of the political agenda of both parts of Ireland. The majority of Northern Irish residents voted to remain in the EU in the 2016 UK referendum. Unification would give Northern Ireland, where both British and Irish citizens live, full EU citizenship.

The British and Irish Governments’ Role in Restoring the Assembly in Northern Ireland: October 2002 to May 2007 and January 2017 to January 2020

In 1998 the Good Friday Agreement (GFA), aimed at resolving the conflict in Northern Ireland, was met with celebrations. However, there were initial delays in establishing the institutions provided for by the GFA and they have subsequently been suspended on seven occasions. As kin-states, the role of the British and Irish governments in facilitating continued negotiations between the local parties has been central to overcoming these difficulties. This article focuses on the role that the British and Irish governments played during efforts to restore the Stormont Assembly during two prolonged periods of suspension. In order to do so it draws on the theory of external ethnonational guarantors (EEGs) and examines whether the British and Irish governments’ actions were in line with identified best practices: (1) EEGs must cooperate to ameliorate the conflict; (2) EEGs must not intervene on behalf of their co-nationals; (3) EEGs must pay careful attention to the internal dynamics of the conflict, including the dynamics within their co-national community.

Blurring the line? Music, sound and “sonic gaze” in post-ceasefire Troubles-themed film

This article appraises developments in soundtracks of narrative fiction features based on the Northern Ireland Troubles, focusing on selected titles released in the post-ceasefire period that was consolidated by the Anglo-Irish (“Good Friday”) agreement of 1998. It does this with reference to earlier approaches to music and sound for Troubles-themed film, and by drawing on Danijela Kulezic-Wilson’s sound-design-is-the-new-score proposition. The article advances “sonic gaze” as a pertinent critical lens through which to complement artistic appraisals of historical and contemporary soundtracks in light of political and colonial contexts and legacies. In comparison to earlier Troubles-themed film, a small number of narrative fiction features from the turn of the twenty-first century propose alternative positions and/or innovations in their overall sound design. Readings of Resurrection Man (Marc Evans, 1998), Hunger (Steve McQueen, 2008), Five Minutes of Heaven (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2009) and ’71 (Yann Demange, 2014) interpret several significant soundtrack developments. These arise from the involvement of popular music producers, notably David Holmes, technological affordances (production and postproduction) and alternative artistic perspectives that interrupted a colonial-anthropological sonic gaze. The article concludes that Hunger comes closest to Liz Greene and Kulezic-Wilson’s theorisations on the integrated soundtrack and on narrative film’s potential for achieving a holistic audiovisual musicality.

Ontological security and protracted conflict in frontier societies: towards a trans-local turn in peacebuilding

ABSTRACT This article proposes a trans-local turn in peacebuilding in frontier societies. Drawing on René Girard’s concept of ‘mimetic desire’, the article conceptualises how a crisis of ontological insecurity cannot be addressed by rational approaches to institutionalising a process to resolve incompatibilities between conflict parties, but requires de-escalation of the mimetic rivalry between the parties, who are often described as being in conflict over identity. Empirically, the article focuses on the, apparently very different, examples of intractable conflicts in Northern Ireland and Korea, and the trans-local peacebuilding interactions between the two. This article demonstrates how relationships of unresolved mimetic rivalry have intensified ontological insecurity in both cases, creating dynamics of existential anxiety and mutual antagonism, and how the reflexivity based on peacebuilding stories from other frontier societies, which do not impose direct ontological threats, appears to increase hope for change by transcending the endemic sense of ontological insecurity.

Voices from the Shadows: Intergenerational Conflict Memory and Second-Generation Northern Irish Identity in England

Recent scholarship has highlighted the heterogeneity of second-generation Irish identities in Great Britain, yet the varieties of self-identification espoused by the English-raised children of Northern Irish parents remain almost wholly unexplored. This article redresses this neglect by examining the relationship between parentally transmitted memories of the Northern Ireland Troubles (c.1969–1998) and the forms of identity and self-understanding that such children develop during their lives in England. Drawing on original oral history testimony and using the concepts of narrative inheritance and postmemory as interpretive tools, it demonstrates the complex correlation that exists between parents’ diverse approaches to memory-sharing and their children’s negotiation of inherited conflict memory as they position themselves discursively within contemporary English society. Based on a close reading of five oral history interviews, the analysis reveals a spectrum of creative postmemory practices and identity enactments, whereby narrators agentively define themselves in relation to the meanings they attribute to inherited memories, or the dearth thereof, as they navigate their tangled transnational affinities and allegiances. The article also explores how these practices and enactments are subtly responsive to narrators’ changing relationships to their narrative inheritances as their experience and awareness of their own and their parents’ lives deepen over the life course.

The necropolitics of military amnesty: Peacebuilding and Othering in Northern Ireland

Necropolitics, as described by Achille Mbembe, is the sovereign’s capacity to dictate who may live and who must die. In its delineation of which bodies can be killed and which bodies must not be killed, necropolitics is the framework through which governments assign value to human life that justifies killing in the name of the greater good. Proposed legislation in the UK Parliament from 2021 suggested the state intended to limit prosecutions of British service personnel for killings that occurred during Operation Banner, the UK military operation in Northern Ireland from 1969 to 2007. Interrogating the employment of military amnesty, we discuss the ways amnesty can maintain necropolitical organizations by working to reaffirm antagonistic relations between peacebuilding parties despite claims that it is a reconciliatory measure. Through a necropolitical lens, we examine historical approaches to military prosecutions by the UK alongside current proposals for amnesty over conflict-related homicides committed in Northern Ireland. Interrogating peacebuilding and reconciliation efforts made in the UK to address the conflict in Northern Ireland, we assert that the calls for amnesty remain under the same necropolitical organization that facilitated the Troubles to begin with and maintain narratives that Other Northern Ireland from Britain.

The spectre of terrorism and the stock market

ABSTRACT Terrorism is a major issue in the twenty-first century. In this paper, we examine the effect of terrorism on the stock market. We go beyond previous studies to explore the spectre of terrorism on the market rather than terrorist activities. Using a narrative-based approach á la Shiller (2019), we find that the spectre of terrorism during the Northern Ireland Troubles reduced returns and increased volatility in the UK stock market.

Who was Responsible for the Troubles?: The Northern Ireland Conflict By Liam Kennedy

Who was Responsible for the Troubles?: The Northern Ireland Conflict By Liam Kennedy

“Troubled” Meanings: An Affect Control Theory Exploration of the Conflict in Northern Ireland

The Troubles in Northern Ireland ranks among the most violent periods in recent history. While social movements scholars have long sought to understand the conflict, often they do not include micro-level approaches. We use affect control theory and cultural meanings among Catholics gathered at the height of The Troubles to create prototypical group members and then simulate interactions across and between groups. Using cultural meanings gathered at a Catholic high school in Belfast in 1977, we find that Catholic (in-group) identities hold more positive meanings than Protestant identities. This remains true for identities within the paramilitary organizations and non-combatant identities. However, we find that the meanings of combatant identities are much lower in evaluation—a measure of goodness—than non-combatant identities. Our simulations suggest that interactions between groups are expected to be relatively innocuous. However, we do find that, in simulations, combatants—on both sides of the conflict—are expected to interact negatively with others. These findings and the methods we use suggest future avenues for both researchers and policymakers to better understand conflict and peacemaking.

How teaching about peace and conflict in Northern Ireland reformulated our leadership teaching and learning philosophy.

In this reflective article, we offer innovative approaches to creating opportunities for leadership learning through questioning the intentions versus impacts of leading short-term study abroad courses. We consider the critical relevance of approaching a course like this from a learning disposition-recognizing our roles as learners, as well as facilitators of learning. We note the impacts of hegemony and identity, the effort and skills of dialoguing across difference, the complexities of constructive ambiguity, and the necessity to be adaptable as we navigate liminal spaces, concepts, and efforts for peace leadership. In the end, although this was a brief, 10-day experience, we came to realize our entire outlook on facilitating leadership learning shifted to recognize and grapple with these complexities.

Review of Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative Party and the Northern Ireland Conflict, 1975-1990, by Stephen Kelly

Review of Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative Party and the Northern Ireland Conflict, 1975-1990, by Stephen Kelly (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), 408 pp., ISBN 9781350115378, £85 (hardback)

Queer lives during conflict in Northern Ireland: deconstructing the “two communities” model

ABSTRACT This article poses the question of how incorporating the “subjugated knowledge” of queer histories of the Troubles in Northern Ireland affects understandings of the conflict in international relations and security studies. It argues that while the centrality of the “two communities” model drives all other issues to the political margins and perpetuates division, adopting a queer approach can deconstruct the identities of those communities and suggest ways to move beyond that model. It uses Jack Halberstam’s queer methodology as a “scavenger methodology” to draw on existing published interviews, as well as plays and films representing queer experiences during the Troubles, and a queer theoretical approach that seeks to both foreground queer experiences and challenge normative and binary understandings of identity in this context. Focusing on queer lives during the conflict reveals that constructing the identities of the two communities depends on excluding the queer subject, that queer people’s security during the conflict was shaped by their queer identity, and that queerness can and has been mobilized to deconstruct received narratives and the apparently essential identities of the two communities, demonstrating some possibilities for dismantling the unionist/nationalist dichotomy.

Travelling memories, the afterlife of feelings, and associative diffraction in oral histories of Northern Irish migrants to Britain during the Troubles

ABSTRACT This article proposes an innovative analytical framework for understanding memory work in oral history interviews with migrants who experienced the Troubles in Northern Ireland before migrating to Britain. Integrating theories of diasporic subjectivity from migration studies with conceptual developments in oral history and current research on memory, temporality and the history of emotions, it focuses on transnational dynamics in ‘travelling memories’ of the Troubles brought to Britain by first-generation migrants; the long temporal ‘afterlife of feelings’ attached to conflict memories; and the process of ‘associative diffraction’ whereby chronologically sequential memories are interrupted, fragmented and recombined in achronological sequences linking diverse temporal moments and spatial locations. The utility of these concepts is explored in an intensive analysis of memory dynamics and subjectivity in a single interview, with Siobhán O’Neill, who grew up Catholic, working-class and queer in nationalist/republican West Belfast at the epicentre of conflict violence, and moved to London in 1986. The article argues that the specificities of individual migration stories such as Siobhán’s resist conventional generalisation, and offers a new theoretical and methodological framework for the systematic investigation of quotidian experiences, memories and silences that are unexplored in the established historiographies of the Troubles and the Irish diaspora in Britain.

‘Enemy Action’: The UK Ministry of Defence, Academia and the Historical Record

The publication of Uncivil War, Huw Bennett’s history of the early years of the Northern Ireland conflict, has highlighted an increasingly obstructive and uncooperative approach by the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) towards academic researchers. Geraint Hughes argues that the impediments the MoD is placing by restricting access to archival evidence on recent military conflicts is not only undemocratic, but also distorts public awareness of the complexities of these wars, and hampers the British armed forces’ own efforts to develop as ‘learning institutions’ that can use military history to support their own professional understanding of the challenges posed by contemporary warfare. He calls for a dialogue between the MoD and the academic community that addresses the balance between operational security and accountability, and contributes to a mutually beneficial relationship where scholarship can contribute to the armed forces’ own process of self and institutional education.◼

Intertestualità dantesca in Electric Light (2001) di Seamus Heaney

ABSTRACT Critics have often acknowledged Dante’s influence on the poetry of Seamus Heaney, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. During the conflict in Northern Ireland, Dante’s political and linguistic thinking showed Heaney a way of cultural reconciliation between the British and Gaelic traditions. From the early 1970s to the late 1990s, political (dis)harmony, linguistic unity, faith and poetics are some of his major themes, often explored through the reworking of passages from the Commedia. After the end of the Troubles in 1998, Dante’s poetry may have taken on a new significance for the Irish author. This article therefore aims to explore Dantean intertextuality in Heaney’s first peacetime collection, Electric Light (2001). Through the revival of settings, themes and motifs (particularly in the remake of ‘Guido, i’ vorrei’), Dante’s presence seems to act as an analytical lens that shapes the poetic self, filters his literary experience, and redefines descriptive imagery.

The conflict in Northern Ireland

The conflict in Northern Ireland