Afterlives of the Troubles: Life stories, culture and conflict transformation in Northern Ireland

by Graham Dawson

Overview

Focusing on experiential life stories across a range of forms and practices, this book investigates subjectivity, culture and the cultural politics of representation as a neglected dimension of conflict transformation in the Northern Irish peace process. Interdisciplinary critical perspectives from historical cultural studies, oral history and popular-memory theory inform close interpretive engagement with life stories in their cultural, historical and geographical contexts. This enables exploration of the complex temporal dynamics of 'post-conflict' subjectivities in the lengthening 'afterlife' of the Troubles, where feelings attached to conflict experiences are not 'past' but haunt the present, and memory-work carries future-oriented desires for truth, justice and reconciliation. Through case studies responding to the evolving peace process through this prism of life-storytelling, Afterlives maps a contested history of legacy policy-making and approaches to 'dealing with the past', from devolution in 2005-7 through to the Legacy and Reconciliation Act of 2023.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781526146496
Publisher:	Manchester University Press
Publication date:	01/13/2026
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Graham Dawson is Visiting Professor in INCORE (International Conflict Research Institute) at Ulster
University.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Afterlives of the Troubles: Life stories, 'post-conflict' culture and conflict transformation in Northern Ireland
1 Where am I? Unsettling encounters in researching memory, subjectivity and conflict transformation after the Northern Irish Troubles
2 The meaning of ‘moving on’: From trauma to the history and culture of feelings and emotions
3 Masculinities and the affective afterlife of ‘the terrorist’ in conflict transformation: Representation, identity and intersubjectivity
4 The desire for justice: Discourses of victimhood, psychic reparation, and the politics of memory
5 Memoryscapes, spatial legacies of conflict, and the culture of historical reconciliation in ‘postconflict’ Belfast
6 Memory, the afterlife of emotion, and the temporal politics of ‘post-conflict’ transition
7 Storytelling in ‘post-conflict’ times: Experiential narrative, subjectivity and the temporal practice of community-based conflict transformation
8 Memories of conflict and redevelopment at West Belfast interfaces: Complex temporalities and place-based structures of feeling in oral histories from the Dúchas Archive
9 Oral history and the legacy of conflict: Policy, history-making and the afterlife of feeling in archived interviews of the Troubles