Policing politics: framing the past in post-conflict divided societies

Abstract

Dealing with violent pasts in post-conflict societies is especially problematic in ethnically divided societies where ideas about historical events are inextricably bound up with ideas about identity, community, and nation. In such cases “the past” often becomes a key issue on which to contest long-standing grievances and justify particularistic visions of the future. This article argues that, in conjunction with judicial procedures, post-conflict societies might best foster fragile settlement processes by fencing in or framing historical narratives about the past. This framing of the past involves a repositioning of historical events in relation to the present and involves not simply a rewriting of the historical record but its re-presentation through discursive tropes. While that process is intrinsic to ethnic mobilization, I argue that it can be counterproductive to cultivating peace and consolidating democracy. Alternatively, I argue (following Jacques Rancière) that the recognition of framing processes in regard to dealing with the past is the beginning of “politics” – as characterized by dissensus and debate – which is the opposite of the stultifying tendency to superimpose ethnically inflected received wisdoms. That recognition can give way to alternative frames that speak to broader concerns about peace-building through democratic consolidation.

Keywords:

• framing processes
• Bosnia
• Northern Ireland
• peace-building
• memory
• Spain

Notes on contributor

Cillian McGrattan lectures in politics at Swansea University. He received his PhD from the University of Ulster. His books include Memory, Politics and Identity: Haunted by History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Everyday Life after the Irish Conflict: The Impact of Devolution and North–South Cooperation (Manchester University Press, 2012) (co-edited with Elizabeth Meehan); and Northern Ireland, 1968–2008: The Politics of Entrenchment (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). The author would like to thank the editor, the anonymous reviewers, and Dr Stefanie Lehner for their comments on this article.

Notes

1. Jordan, Mistaken, 286.

2. The appointment of a former Irish Republican Army member – and, at one time, one of the “most wanted” persons in the United Kingdom – to a new victims' liaison body, for example, was the cause of much controversy in Northern Ireland (see Kane, “Who Are the Real Victims?”). In Croatia, meanwhile, authorities remain inundated with cases relating to the violence of the 1990s; although the State Prosecutor's Office revised its procedures for dealing with such cases – reviewing, for example, cases in which undue importance may have been given to ethnicity, it has continued to be the subject of criticism from human rights agencies (see Braniff and McGrattan, “Dealing”). Again, in Bosnia, the multinational company ArcelorMittal remains the subject of lobbying by victims' groups who wish it to build a monument acknowledging the human rights abuses and murders carried out at the Omarska detention centre whose land it now owns (see Vulliamy, The War, 143–5). ArcelorMittal's reluctance to do so echoes the British government's position on the question of a truth commission for Northern Ireland: namely, that any decision would be impossible owing to the lack of public consensus (Breen-Smyth, Truth Recovery, 139).

3. See, for example, Adorno, “The Meaning of Working Through the Past.”

4. Levi, The Drowned, 12.

5. Cohen, States of Denial, 241.

6. Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 61.

7. Smith, National Identity, 14, 21.

8. Pocock, “Time,” 126.

9. Plumb, The Death.

10. Cohen, States of Denial, 243.

11. Ibid., 249.

12. See, Judt, Postwar, 803–31.

13. Snow, “Framing Processes,” 384.

14. See Ferree et al., Shaping, 14.

15. See Johnston, “Verification,” 66.

16. See, for example, Opp, Theories, 234–303.

17. Ferree et al., Shaping, 15.

18. Jasper, “A Strategic Approach,” 1.

19. See Snow et al., “Frame Alignment.”

20. Noakes and Johnston, “Frames of Protest,” 15.

21. McAdam, Political Process, x.

22. Jasper, The Art.

23. Snow, “Framing Processes,” 400.

24. Ferree et al., Shaping, 62.

25. Snow and Benford, “Ideology.”

26. Gamson, Talking Politics, 135.

27. Kubal, Cultural Movements, 3.

28. Ibid., 170–1.

29. Bar Tal, “Collective Memory,” 78, 85.

30. McGrattan, Northern Ireland.

31. See McGrattan, “‘Order.’”

32. Jonathan Steele, “Break the Cycle of Abuse.” Guardian, June 14, 2009. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/1999/jun/14/balkans11 (accessed June 26, 2012).

33. Sekularac, “Warcrimes.”

34. Vulliamy, The War. See also Gagnon, The Myth.

35. See, for example, Ferree et al., Shaping, 205–31.

36. Rancière, “Ten Theses,” 42–3.

37. Ibid., 36.

38. Ibid., 37.

39. Rancière, “Does Democracy Mean Something?,” 54.

40. Bermeo, “Democracy,” 277.

41. Aguilar, Memory and Amnesia, 21.

42. See also Cañás Bottos and Rougier, “Generations.”

43. Aguilar, Memory and Amnesia, 10.

44. McGrattan, “The 2010 Westminster General Election.”

45. Payne, Unsettling Accounts, 3.

46. Ibid., 290.

47. Conversi, “Majoritarian Democracy,” 8.

48. Ibid., 791.

49. Gamson, Talking Politics.

50. Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism, 148.

51. Ibid., 152.

52. Lukes, Power.

53. Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism, 153.

54. Braniff, Integrating the Balkans, 60.

55. Subotić, Hijacked Justice, 124.

56. Wilson, The Northern Ireland Experience, 64.

57. Chandler, Bosnia, 204.

58. Aitchison, “Governing Through Crime,” 14.

59. Knaus and Martin, “Lessons,” 70.

60. Vulliamy, The War, 173.

61. Patterson, Ireland, 342–3.

62. Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism.

63. Of course, people continue to traverse and subvert ethnic boundaries at an everyday level in both regions, where daily existence means not only recognizing but also not recognizing or transcending those barriers; see, for example, McGrattan and Meehan, “Introduction,” 3–29.

64. Kelly, “Geopolitical Eclipse,” 547.

65. Payne, Unsettling Accounts, 2.

66. Newsletter, “Local IRA Men Apologise for Frazer Father Murder,” June 19, 2012. http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/local/ira-men-apologise-for-frazer-father-s-murder-1-3965445 (accessed July 26, 2012).

67. Humphrey, “Marginalizing,” 53.

68. Ibid., 54.

69. See, for example, Grandin, “The Instruction”; Gready, The Era; and Hayner, Unspeakable Truths.

70. Olsen, Payne and Reiter, Transitional Justice; see also Elster, Closing the Books.

71. See, for example, Marshall and Inglis, “Disempowerment.”

72. Subotić, Hijacked Justice, 5.

73. Braniff, Integrating the Balkans, 177–8.

74. Subotić, Hijacked Justice, 26.

75. See also on this point, Pinkerton, “Resisting Memory.”

76. Subotić, Hijacked Justice, 6.

77. For Volkan, a clear example of “chosen trauma” was Slobodan Milosevic's conjuring of the ghosts of the Battle of Kosovo to mobilize Serbian nationalism. See http://www.vamikvolkan.com/Chosen-Trauma,-the-Political-Ideology-of-Entitlement-and-Violence.php (accessed September 25, 2012).

78. Jansen, “The Violence of Memories,” 79.

79. Heaney, “Whatever You Say Say Nothing,” 78–80.

80. Jansen, “The Violence of Memories,” 85.

81. Kolind, “In Search,” 126.

82. See, for example, Jarman, Material Conflicts; McDowell, “Commemorating the Troubles.”

83. McAtackney, “Materiality.”

84. Blakely, “Digging up Spain's Past.”

85. Aguilar, Memory and Amnesia.

86. Druliolle, “Democracy,” 81.

87. Aguilar, “The Memory.”

88. Guardian, “Serbian President Denies Srebrenica Genocide,” June 2, 2012. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/02/serbian-president-denies-srebrenica-genocide (accessed June 27, 2012).

89. Ibid.

90. Duijzings, “Commemorating.”

91. Rancière, The Names of History, 8.