Moving through time and space: Performing bodies in Derry, Northern Ireland

Journal of Historical Sociology

Volumn 20, Issue 1-2, 2007, Pages 102-125

  Conway, Brian ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34250014456     PISSN: 09521909     EISSN: 14676443     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6443.2007.00302.x     Document Type: Article

References (127)

1. For representative examples see Iwona Irwin-Zarecka, frames of Remembrance: The Dynamics of Collective Memory (New Brunswick, Transaction Publishers, 1994);
2. John Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory. Commemoration and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991);
3. Barbara Misztal, Theories of Social Remembering (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2003);
4. Lyn Spillman, Nation and Commemoration: Creating National Identities in the United States and Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997);
5. Yoshikuni Igarashi, Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945-1970 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000);
6. Jennifer Cole, Forget Colonialism? Sacrifice and the Art of Memory in Madagascar (Berkeley: University of California, 2001);
7. Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European cultural history (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995);
8. James V. Wertsch, Voices of Collective Remembering (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
9. For a review of the collective memory literature from a specifically sociological perspective see Jeffrey K. Olick and Joyce Robbins, "Social Memory Studies: From 'Collective Memory' to Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices" Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998: 105-140).
10. For more on this see Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember. Work by Stoller also uses Connerton's analysis as a conceptual jumping-off point.
11. Paul Stoller, "Embodying Colonial Memories." American Anthropologist 96 (1994: 634-48).
12. Also see Sandra Lee. "Dys-appearing Tongues and Bodily Memories: The Aging of First-Generation Resident Koreans in Japan." Ethos 28 (2000:198-223).
13. Bloody Sunday refers to the shooting dead of 13 civilians while peacefully marching against internment in Derry, Northern Ireland, 30 Janaury, 1972. This event was a watershed in the collective memory of "The Troubles", the 30-year campaign of violence and murder carried out by loyalist and republican paramilitary organizations and the state over competing claims to the territory of Northern Ireland. In particular, it became a key part of the collective narrative of the nationalist community. For more detail see B. Conway, "Active Remembering, Selective Forgetting and Collective Identity: The Case of Bloody Sunday". Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research, 3, 4 (2003), 305-323.
14. The distinction between settled/unsettled cultures used here comes from the work of Ann Swidler. Talk of Loue: How Culture Matters (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
15. How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 4.
16. How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 4.
17. An effort to complexify and problematize Connerton's work is set forth in L. Spillman and B. Conway, "Texts, Bodies and the Memory of Bloody Sunday", Symbolic Interaction, 30,1 (2007), 79-103..
18. See also B. Conway, "Texts, Bodies and Commemoration: Bloody Sunday as a Case Study". Ph.D. diss.. University of Notre Dame.
19. How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 72.
20. How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 45.
21. How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 45.
22. Bloody Sunday, for the most part, has come to be viewed as a "nationalist" or "republican" event. But it also means something to the Protestant/unionist community, through clearly there are important shades of opinion within it. just as there are within the nationalist community. It would be misleading, then, to reduce the Protestant community to a single point of view of this event. But it is fairly true to say that Protestants view the event from their own perspective and that this has shifted over time. We can distinguish between Protestant reaction to the original event, to the commemoration of Bloody Sunday, and to the more recent Saville Inquiry.
23. Most Protestant opinion echoed that of the British state and viewed the march as an illegal activity that should not have taken place in the first place and that had the march not taken place nobody would have died. This point tended to be highlighted in Protestant media coverage of the Bloody Sunday commemorations. An article about the annual commemoration in the Londonderry Sentinel, the city's main Protestant newspaper, stated that a rally was held to "mark the fourth anniversary of the deaths of 13 people, who were shot during a banned Civil Rights march" (Londonderry Sentinel February 4, 1976, p. 21).
24. Some Protestant people in Derry were shocked and repulsed by the events of January, 30. Others were indifferent to it. Still others felt that Bloody Sunday should have been called "Good Sunday" and that it was unfortunate that more people were not killed (Derry Journal January 18, 1973, n.p.).
25. During the 1970s and 1980s, the Bloody Sunday commemorations were often reported upon in the local Protestant newspapers such as the Londonderry Sentinel but the coverage tended to focus on skirmishes, riots or other violent incidents take took place on the march or at the fringes of it. The banned nature of the original 1972 march also tended to be foregrounded.
26. By the 1990s, unionist opinion had changed. In 1992, Gregory Campbell of the Democratic Unionist Party wrote an article in a special feature about Bloody Sunday in the Irish News (Belfast daily newspaper with a mainly Catholic/nationalist readership), itself an important indicator of change, in which he stated that after Bloody Sunday. "I felt nothing and that was typical of the Protestant community" (Irish News, January 30, 1992, p. 9).
27. At a seminar on "Unionist/Loyalist Perspectives on the Peace Process" in Riots Row Community Centre as part of the 23rd anniversary commemoration (Derry Journal, January 20, 1995, p. 5),
28. Gregory Campbell stated that "over the years within the Unionist community has developed a greater appreciation of the depth and intensity that the nationalist community have felt regarding the suffering that they went through but at that time there was not" (Derry Journal, February 3. 1995, p. 5).
29. In 1997, a seminar in the Calgach Centre, Butcher Street, Derry, attended by representatives from the Democratic Unionist Party and the Ulster Unionist Party addressed the issue of Protestant perceptions of Bloody Sunday (Derry Journal, July 11, 1997, p. 3), indicating that the Protestant community was now clearly a key part of the constituency that memory entrepreneurs during this period sought to appeal to.
30. Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950).
31. Also see Barry Schwartz, "Social Change and Collective Memory: The Democratization of George Washington" American Sociological Review 56 (1991: 221-236).
32. Sinn Féin refers to the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, a paramilitary organization which has sought to bring about, through violent means, an end to British occupation of Northern Ireland. Since the 1990s, SF has moved closer to the political mainstream as the IRA in turn has abandoned its long-standing "armed struggle" against British rule. SF is now the dominant political party representing Irish nationalists and republicans in Northern Ireland, outvoting its long-time rival, the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). In recent times, SF has also made significant political gains in the Republic of Ireland, owing, at least in part, to the party's significant organizational abilities particularly in working-class areas often neglected by other political parties.
33. NICRA refers to a civil rights organization that emerged in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s. Based on principles of non-violence and peaceful protest and taking the lead from the American civil rights movement, it sought to end discrimination in voting, housing and employment. It organized a number of high-profile marches that pressed its campaign for reform on the national consciousness. Its "repertoire of contention" (see Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly. Dynamics of Contention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) included marches and sit-ins.
34. In the 1970s, because of the reaction of the British state to its political claim-making around housing and job discrimination, law and order issues came to the fore. For a classic account of the organization see Bob Purdie, Politics in the Streets: The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland (Belfast, Blackstaff Press, 1990).
35. See also Niall Ó Dochartaigh, From Civil Rights to Armalities: Derry and the Birth of the Irish Troubles (Cork: Cork University Press, 1997).
36. Lloyd W. Warner, The Living and the Dead: a study of the symbolic life of Americans (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1975), 235.
37. See David Kertzer, Ritual, Politics and Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).
38. For more detail see Neil Jarman, Material Conflict: Parades and Visual Displays In Northern Ireland (Oxford: Berg, 1997).
39. See also Dominic Bryan, Orange Parades: the politics of ritual, tradition and control (London: Pluto Press, 2000).
40. For an example of this, see Kelleher, The Troubles in Ballybogoin, (Ann Arbor, Michigan, University of Michigan Press, 2003).
41. See Jarman, Material Conflict.
42. Eviatar Zerubavel, "Calendars and History: A Comparative Study of the Social Organization of National Memory," in Jeffrey K. Olick, ed., States of Memory: Continuities, Conflicts, and Transformations in National Retrospection. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).
43. Connerton, How Societies Remember,
44. see also Luke Gibbons, '"Where Wolfe Tone's statue was not': Joyce, monuments and memory." Ian McBride, ed., in History and Memory in Modern Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001);
45. Charles Withers, "Place, Memory, Monument: Memorializing the Past in Contemporary Highland Scotland," Ecumene, 3 (1996: 325-344).
46. Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (New York: The Free Press, 1995).
47. See Neil Jarman 1997. Material Conflicts: Parades and Visual Displays in Northern Ireland (Oxford: Berg, 1997);
48. David Kertzer, Ritual, Politics and Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988);
49. Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead: circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).
50. Paulo Jedlowski, "Memory and Sociology: Themes and Issues," Time and Society 10 (2001: 29-44).
51. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics and Power.
52. The concept of memory work comes from the work of Jennifer A. Jordan, A Matter of Time, 44.
53. Northern Irish nationalism has tended to be divided between physical force nationalists (e.g. SF) on the onehand and constitutional nationalists on the other (e.g. SDLP). Physical force nationalists favour violent means to bring about political change. The distinction between provisional ("the Provos") and official ("the Officials") SF goes back to a split in the republican movement in the 1970s between one camp ("the Officials"), favouring a more socialist route to political change, who became known as "the Stickies" because of the Easter lily badges they wore on their lapels, and another camp ("the Provos"), favouring a more militant and violent strategy of ending British occupation. The "other" tradition in Northern Ireland is referred to as Unionism, a catch-all term for a people who claim loyalty to Westminister and to the British Crown and who wish to maintain the union with the British mainland. Most Unionists belong to the Protestant faith tradition (just as most nationalists are Catholic), at least nominally anyhow.
54. Derry Journal, 27 January, 1978.
55. Irish Press, January 18, 1973, LHNIPC (Linenhall Northern Ireland Political Collection), NIO (Northern Ireland Office) Cuttings File, Civil Rights Association, File 4.
56. Jennifer Jordan, "A Matter of Time: Examining Collective Memory in Historical Perspective In Postwar Berlin," Journal of Historical Sociology, 18: 1/2 (2005: 37-71).
57. Republican News, February 4, 1978, 6.
58. An Phoblacht/Republican News, February 3, 1979, 6.
59. Interview with author, 26 July, 2004.
60. Derry Journal December 10, 1974, 6.
61. NICRA press statement, January 1, 1973, LHNIPC, NICRA box 1.
62. The Irish News, January 27, 1973; LHNIPC, NIO Cuttings Files, Londonderry Civil Rights March.
63. Derry Journal, January 28, 1973, n.p.
64. Suggested Text for Leaflet for Marchers at the 1974 NICRA commemoration, LHNIPC, NICRA box 24.
65. NICRA press statement, January 22, 1974, LHNIPC, NICRA box 24.
66. Letter, NICRA to Alfie Byrne, New Zealand. February 3, 1976, LHNIPC NICRA box 9. The SAS refers to the Special Air Service, a wing of the British army specializing in counter-terrorism and undercover work.
67. Jarman, Material Conflict, 150.
68. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 3 February, 1983, 12.
69. War and an Irish Town, (London: Pluto Press, 1993), 40.
70. Derry Journal, February 1, 1983, 6.
71. James Wray, letter to the editor, Derry Journal February 4, 1983, 11.
72. Derry Journal February 15, 1983, 6.
73. Derry Journal February 8, 1983, 6.
74. The Birmingham Six refers to six men who were imprisoned for the bombing of two pubs in Birmingham on November 21, 1974. Their convictions were overturned in 1991 by the British Court of Appeal.
75. Derry Journal January 30, 1990, 6.
76. Derry Journal January 30, 1990, 1;
77. An Phoblacht/Republican News, February 1, 1990, 8-9.
78. Derry Journal February 6, 1990, 8.
79. Derry Journal, January 30, 1990, 9.
80. Londonderry Sentinel, January 31, 1989, 3.
81. Londonderry Sentinel, January 24, 1990, 15.
82. Derry Journal February 2, 1990, 3.
83. Derry Journal January 24, 1992, 1.
84. Derry Journal, January 24, 1992, 1.
85. Derry Journal January 31, 1992, 2.
86. Anonymous, letter to the editor, Derry Journal, March 6, 1992, 4.
87. Anonymous, letter to the editor, Derry Journal March 4, 1997, 14.
88. Derry Journal, January 31, 1995, 2;
89. The Sentinel, February 3, 1999.
90. 10; An Phoblacht/Republican News, February 6, 1997, 10;
91. An Phoblacht/Republican News, February 3, 1994, 8. The "peace process" refers to the process of negotiation between nationalists and unionists and the British and Irish governments about the political organization of Northern Irish society.
92. Derry Journal, January 31, 1995, 2
93. Irish News, February 6, 2003, 19.
94. An Phoblacht/Republican News, February 7, 2002, 10.
95. Jarman reports that some Twelfth (July 12) parades in the 1820s drew crowds of 50,000-60,000 (Jarman, 1997, 53) and that Orange Order parades in the 1870s attracted up to 100,000 (ibid, 65). In Derry, the 1960 Apprentice Boys parade commemorating the siege of the city drew a crowd of 40,000 (Jarman, Material Conflict, 75).
96. In 1991, a republican internment parade went to Belfast City Hall for the first time on its way to the Falls Road (Jarman, Material Conflict, 151).
97. An Phoblacht/Republican News, January 30, 1992, 1.
98. An Phoblacht/Republican News, February 3, 2000, 20.
99. Interview with author, August 15, 2004.
100. The Bogside artists, a group of Derry artists, put together a set of six life-size puppets of British paratroopers and hung them from the Derry Walls overlooking Free Derry Corner during the 1998 commemoration. The puppets were painted yellow to signify the cowardly actions of the soldiers (Kelly, Kelly and Hasson, Murals).
101. An Phoblacht/Republican News, February 6, 1997, 10.
102. Interview with author, 20 October, 2004.
103. An Phoblacht/Republican News, February 6, 1997, 11.
104. For detail see Don Handelman, Models and Mirrors: towards an anthropology of public events. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
105. See also Connerton, How Societies Remember.
106. See Paul Stoller, "Embodying Colonial Memories." American Anthropologist 96(3) (1994, 634-48).
107. See Arthur Kleinman and Joan Kleinman, "How Bodies Remember: Social Memory and Bodily Experience of Criticism, Resistance, and Delegitimation Following China's Cultural Revolution," New Literary History 25 (1994, 707-23).
108. Irish News, January 31, 2000, 3.
109. Irish News, February 6, 2003, 19;
110. Derry Journal January 30, 2001, 11;
111. Irish News, January 29, 2001, 4;
112. An Phoblacht /Republican News, February 4, 1999, p10-11;
113. An Phoblacht/Republican News, February 6, 2003, 10.
114. An Phoblacht/Republican News, February 6, 2003, 11.
115. Derry Journal July 11, 1997, 3.
116. The aims of the BSJC were three-fold: to campaign for the British government to acknowledge the innocence of the dead, to repudiate Widgery's report and to prosecute the soldier's responsible for the killings.
117. A sub-committee of the BSI, the Bloody Sunday Weekend Committee, organized the annual commemorative events from 1992.
118. On May 1, 1993, the BSI was re-christened as the Pat Finucane Centre (1993). Commenting on the new PFC in 1993, Paul O'Connor stated that "the transition from the Bloody Sunday Initiative to the Pat Finucane Centre reflects the success in terms of work and profile which the Initiative has achieved over the past four years. Increasingly our workload has reflected a social justice and human rights agenda in addition to the issue of redressing the injustice of Bloody Sunday" (Derry Journal April 30, 1993, 2).
119. He went on to say that since the establishment of the BSJC in 1993 that "it has since become clear that real confusion has been created in the minds of many people with two groups working closely together with 'Bloody Sunday' in their title. It is for this reason that members of the BSI decided to change the group's name to the Pat Finucane Centre" (Derry Journal, April 30, 1993, 2).
120. The Pat Finucane Center, named after the human rights lawyer killed in February 1989 by the UDA in collusion with a British MI5 agent, was established as a human rights organization.
121. This organization is composed of members of the families of the Bloody Sunday dead, academics and local community activists.
122. Interview with author, 20 October, 2004.
123. See Conway, 2003.
124. For a comprehensive account of the history and development of the Bloody Sunday memorial, Rossville Street, Derry, see Conway, "Texts, Bodies and Commemoration," 185-206.
125. For an extended discussion of the relationship between embodied and Inscribed memory, a neglected aspect of Connerton's study, see L. Spillman and B. Conway, "Texts, Bodies and the Memory of Bloody Sunday", Symbolic Interaction, 30, 1, 79-103.
126. See Jeffrey Alexander and Philip Smith's work on the concept of binary codes in political discourse in The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
127. Gille and Ó; Riain argue that "references to global ideas and actors today provide an entrance ticket to participating in public discourse, and those unwilling or unable to formulate their claims in global terms often find themselves invisible. See Zsuzsa Gille and Seán Ó Riain, "Global Ethnography," Annual Review of Sociology 28 (2002: 271-295), 283.