Memory, Politics and Identity - by C McGrattan (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The question of how to move beyond contentious pasts exercises societies across the globe. Focusing on Northern Ireland, this book examines how historical injustices continue to haunt contemporary lives, and how institutional and juridical approaches to 'dealing' with the past often give way to a silencing consensus or re-marginalising victims.

Review Quotes

Memory, Politics and Identity is a highly provocative book. It challenges the 'placating consensus' on violence, victims and the past emergent during the Northern Ireland peace process. Often critical of politicians and academics, McGrattan's work may be one of the most talked-about books yet produced on Northern Irish politics.

Jon Tonge

Professor of Politics, University of Liverpool

As Northern Ireland enters a decade of commemorations this book will be a major resource for all those interested in the politics and history of memory. Cillian McGrattan makes a frontal assault on the shibboleths of 'truth recovery' in Northern Ireland charging its political and academic proponents with reproducing and legitimising the self-justifying narratives of loyalist and republican ex-paramilitaries. Using a wide range of sources from party archives and interviews to drama and film he argues that the peace process has been based on entrenching ethnic narratives which deny the sordid and murderous history visited upon the thousands of victims by the IRA and its loyalist counterparts.

Henry Patterson

Professor of Politics, University of Ulster, UK.

About the Author

Cillian McGrattan is a Lecturer in Political and Cultural Studies at the University of Swansea, UK