Intervening in Northern Ireland: Critically re‐thinking representations of the conflict

Abstract

This article introduces the main themes that underpin this special issue, namely representations of the conflict in Northern Ireland. Overall a primary aim of this collection is to problematize how the conflict has conventionally been represented, particularly through scholarly work. A central reason for doing this is the suspicion that conventional analyses of the conflict, especially in the context of the persistent search for solutions, may be partly constitutive of the very problems that analysts seek to resolve. Deploying contemporary political theory, the article discusses the vexed relationship between the production of scholarly work and the impact of this work on matters of social and political significance. It then goes on to illustrate one way in which conventional analysis works to mask the functions of a crucial site of political antagonism – gender. This is demonstrated through the examination of a scholarly text and through an analysis of the electoral failure of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition.

Key Words:

• Representation
• political intervention
• gender
• gender ghosts
• Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition

Acknowledgments

I extend warm thanks to Elizabeth Meehan for awarding me sabbatical leave with the Institute of Governance, Queen’s University, Belfast in 2003, and for her continuing support more generally. This enabled me to embark upon this project. I am also grateful to the Institute of Governance, the School of Sociology and Social Policy and the School of Law at Queen’s for their financial support of the conference ‘Troubling the Troubles’ held in April 2004 from which this special issue emanates. We are also very grateful for financial support from the British Academy who generously funded this project. Many thanks also to my co‐organizer and co‐editor John Barry, who has now taken on the mantle of Directorship of the Institute of Governance, I wish him well in this post and to his politics of the future. The contributors to this volume have had to deal with my copious email requests and I thank them for their patience and cooperation. I have learned a great deal from working with all of them and appreciate their thoughtful and thorough contributions to this project.

Notes

1. http://www.netscape.co.uk/news/2.html, accessed November 2004.

2. At the time of going to press the Assembly has been reinstated but it has no decision‐making powers. The British and Irish governments have imposed a deadline of 24 November 2006 by which time a power‐sharing executive must be agreed. Tony Blair is alleged to have said that ‘this is the last chance for this generation to make this process work’. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/5127058.stm, accessed 10 July 2006.

3. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/3756137.stm, accessed 10 July 2006.

4. BBC Radio 4, 6 PM news, 6 April 2005.

5. As suggested by David Frost on the BBC Frost programme, 17 April 2005.

6. BBC Politics show, 12 June 2005.

7. Drawn from a comment made by Wendy Brown (2001: 156).

8. Thinking and theorizing are conjoined here to problematize the idea that thinking about the ‘real world’ is separate from theorizing, or that thinking is a qualitatively different set of practices to theorizing. See Edkins (2006) and Zalewski (1996).

9. The gendered term is significant.

10. Gender is one amongst many such sets of multiply layered practices.

11. Some of this analysis has been published in Zalewski (2005).

12. See ‘Gender Ghosts’ for more reasons and explanation.

13. http://www.niwc.org/aboutus.asp, accessed July 2005.

14. The Good Friday Agreement obliges Northern Ireland Assembly members to self‐designate as Unionist, Nationalist or Other. In November 2001 when there was a contest for the post of first minister, David Trimble failed to gain enough Unionist support (a certain percentage was necessary) and as such his subsequent re‐election was dependent upon the re‐designation of non‐aligned members to the Unionist label (see Hayes & McAllister 2004). The Coalition members re‐designated – with Monica McWilliams re‐designating as Nationalist and Jane Morrice re‐designating as Unionist and therefore in line with their own personal/political backgrounds. It is interesting that they chose to re‐designate in such traditional ways – though it is testament to the strength of these affiliations even in the face of constructing a party to challenge them. Thanks to Bernie Hayes for pointing this out to me.

15. Of course much of this treatment is dealt with a great deal of wit. On the occasion that a member of the DUP said ‘as long as I live, I’ll have a mission, which is to teach those two women [McWilliams and Sagar of the Coalition] to stand behind the loyal men of Ulster’. McWilliams and Sagar promptly began singing ‘Stand By Your Man’. The DUP member was ‘raging’. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r105:S20MR7-444: accessed 22 July 2005.

16. I do not mean to imply a separation or distinction between ‘theorists/thinkers’ and ‘others’. See Zalewski (1996).

17. Which may also be due to other factors such as lack of effective party infrastructure – this conjures a different set of arguments to the ones I am working with here.