"It's a Very Emotional Kind of Thought". An Appraisal of Five Community Workers' Accounts of their Involvement during the Troubles in Northern Ireland

Joana Etchart (1)

1 ALTER - Arts / Langages : Transitions et Relations

The conflict in Northern Ireland started in the 1960s and rapidly deteriorated between 1968 and 1971. As violence escalated, various forms of community activism developed at grassroots level with the overall aim of improving living conditions locally. The role of nonviolent community workers in fulfilling a range of key purposes was crucial. Given that they experienced a truly "close encounter" with conflict and its local ramifications, this paper will analyse how they refer to their "involvement" in personal accounts and, particularly, which links the interviewees establish between the events-"what was taking place"-and their decision to "do something". Based on the assumption that emotions serve as a means to establish a connection between oneself and the historical event, the paper will analyse how this link is construed by focusing on the feeling of fear (Bourke, Fear and Anxiety). Eventually, on the basis of Bede Scott's contribution on affective disorders (Scott, Affective Disorders), the paper will seek to identify what emotional patterns may be drawn from the sample interviews. Overall, by relying on theoretical contributions made by specialists in the history of emotions and oral history, this article will also seek to identify means by which subjective accounts of contested events may be used a source of historical knowledge.

Keywords: Northern Ireland; conflict; community workers; history of emotions; oral history

Domains: History; Political science; Humanities and Social Sciences

Joana Etchart. "It's a Very Emotional Kind of Thought". An Appraisal of Five Community Workers' Accounts of their Involvement during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Close Encounters in War journal, 2021. ⟨hal-03508363⟩