Our Troubled Past: The Glory and the Grief

Stray Bullets

In this episode I attempt to conclude my thoughts on the aspects of Forgiveness and Recrimination in Northern Ireland's post-Troubles' society. In saying that, I'll add the caveat that I'll most likely be revisiting nuances of such topics threaded through future episodes.
For the time being I'm looking at how we memorialise the past in terms of 'isolating' sacred spaces from the eyes of the 'other', along with other related aspects, and how this may hamper reconciliation.
Some works cited:
Michael Ignatieff, The Liberal Imagination: A Defence, Toronto Star, 1998
Jenny Edkins, The Rush to Memory and the Rhetoric of War, Journal of Political and Military Sociology 31, 2003
_____________
“I know from experience that the isolation of those who try to forget the past is as terrible as the isolation of those for whom the past is an obsession; I’ve learned that the question is never whether or not to forget, that this is a false dichotomy; the only question [...] is how to remember the past without repeating it.”
Édouard Louis, Histoire de la violence

Click here if you’d like to send me a comment or question. Thank you.