By synthesising an analysis of historical documents with a series of interviewees with former detainees in Northern Ireland, the thesis examines the motivation, significance and consequences of narrating state violence. As a result of the conflict, a number of testimonies exist in which former detainees describe human rights abuses committed by agencies of the state, particularly during internment, interrogations in Castlereagh and in the prison setting of the H-Blocks. Through a multi-disciplinary approach, the thesis deconstructs the language of state violence and brutality alongside former detainees. It examines the existence of healing as a motivation to make public experiences of violence. It analyses the meaning and significance of masculinities for men whose personal experiences of pain form a contested part of the history of the conflict. It also explores the extent to which former detainees felt their narratives. were significant as propaganda, and discloses in depth the lived reality of the denials seen in the official discourse of the state. The thesis finds that there is a lack of homogeneity within former detainees' motivations, significance and consequences of narrating state violence, and that there are many complex and multifaceted factors which intersect when making private experiences part of a public history of the conflict
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:602971 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | White, Lisa Marie |
| Publisher | Queen's University Belfast |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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