Claiming trauma, glimpsing optimism: women's cultural production and understandings of reality in post-conflict Northern Ireland.

自1998年签署《耶稣受难日协定》以来，北爱尔兰妇女的艺术和文学在形式上越来越具有试验性。这项研究项目将考察妇女在“动乱”之后的文化生产，以及它如何挑战冲突后社会中公认的真理和现实观念。我将调查女性的艺术和文学是如何让人诚实地参与到北爱尔兰的情绪化经济中来的，以及当冲突中占主导地位的男子汉气概之外的经历总是被贬低到过去的时候，残存的创伤如何在公民的生活中上演。北爱尔兰女性的艺术和文学如何颠覆她们冲突后社会的限制性社会、历史和文化条件？无论是在学术界还是在流行文化中，对“麻烦”的另类叙述都得到了越来越多的认可，特别是那些为现有历史中的空白和缺席铺平道路的人。这表明更广泛的愿望是摆脱冲突遗留下来的占主导地位的男子汉气概，以便意识到到目前为止北爱尔兰有相当多的人没有意识到“麻烦”。更广泛地认识到当代女性写作中的实验线条，以及它在处理具有重大社会重要性的主题方面的应用，以及这些主题对性别身体的影响(Bracken&Harney-Mahajan，2017)，我认为这种颠覆提供了一种方法，可以通过冲突后状态的二重性来工作，并挑战历史创伤的临时性。这个项目提供了一个双管齐下的方法。首先，考察女性文化生产中实验方法的使用如何培养出质疑我们在“麻烦”之后对真相和现实的理解的空间，以及这如何允许排除的经验和叙事被平台化。其次，挑战这些叙事的暂时性，以及更广泛地说“后麻烦”社会的概念。这篇论文通过挑战冲突的线性时间线，质疑北爱尔兰社会二元结构的现实，并介绍了一部情绪化历史，介入了当前关于北爱尔兰历史和文化的学术研究。作为一个女权主义研究项目，它为北爱尔兰研究中的一个新兴领域做出了贡献，并在跨学科方法方面独树一帜。这篇原创作品将展示女性文化作品创造的空间，探索冲突的排他性经历，以及通过询问我们对真相和现实的看法，这是如何改变我们对“麻烦”的理解的。这个跨学科的项目将主要包括简·卡森、安娜·伯恩斯、露西·考德威尔、温迪·厄斯金和玛丽莲·麦克劳克林的小说阅读。为了充分了解冲突的情感历史和竞争空间的思想，我还将整合对桑德拉·约翰斯顿、米凯拉·库伦、乌苏拉·伯克和贝扬德等视觉艺术实践者的作品以及西内德·莫里西、莱昂蒂娅·弗林和苏珊娜·迪基等当代诗人的作品的分析。我选择的小说、诗歌和视觉艺术之间的共同点是一种实验的倾向。通过使用魔幻现实主义、超现实主义和卡通黑色幽默等创造性方法，专注于极限性和情感体验，这些实践者不断挑战线性历史理论和传统现实主义模式，这种模式通常与文化生产相联系，与“麻烦”相联系。

Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, art and literature by women from Northern Ireland have becomeincreasingly experimental in form. This research project will examine women's cultural production after the 'Troubles' andhow it challenges accepted ideas of truth and reality in the post-conflict society. I will investigate the ways women's art andliterature allow for an honest engagement with Northern Ireland's emotional economies after the 'Troubles', and howresidual trauma plays out in the lives of its citizens when experiences outside the dominant machismo of the conflict arealways already relegated to the past.How does art and literature by Northern Irish women subvert the restrictive social, historical and cultural conditions oftheir post-conflict society? Alternative narratives of the 'Troubles' are gaining increasing recognition, both in academiccircles and in popular culture, particularly those that platform the gaps and absences in available histories. This denotes abroader desire to move away from the dominant machismo of the legacy of the conflict, in order to gain a consciousness ofthe 'Troubles' that has hitherto been denied to a significant number of the population of Northern Ireland. Recognising thelineage of experimentation in contemporary women's writing more broadly, and its employment in tackling themes ofsignificant social importance and the implications of these on the gendered body (Bracken & Harney-Mahajan, 2017), Ipropose that this subversion offers a way to work through the duality of the condition of being 'post'- conflict, and tochallenge the temporality of historical trauma.This project offers a two-pronged approach. Firstly, to examine how the use of experimental methods in women's culturalproduction cultivates the space to question our understandings of truth and reality after the 'Troubles', and how this allowsfor excluded experiences and narratives to be platformed. Secondly, to challenge the temporality of these narratives andthe notion of a 'post-Troubles' society more broadly. This thesis intervenes in current scholarship on the history and cultureof Northern Ireland by challenging the linear timeline of the conflict, questioning the reality of the binary structure ofNorthern Irish society, and introducing an emotional history of the 'Troubles'. As a feminist research project, it contributesto a burgeoning field within Northern Ireland studies and is unique in its interdisciplinary approach. This originalcontribution will demonstrate the space that has been created by women's cultural production to explore excludedexperiences of the conflict and how, by interrogating the way we perceive truth and reality, this has transformed ourunderstandings of the 'Troubles'.This interdisciplinary project will primarily incorporate readings of fiction by Jan Carson, Anna Burns, Lucy Caldwell, WendyErskine and Marilyn McLaughlin. In order to fully engage with an emotional history of the conflict and ideas of contestedspace I will also integrate analyses of the work of visual arts practitioners such as Sandra Johnston, Michaela Cullen, UrsulaBurke and BBeyond, as well as work by contemporary poets such as Sinead Morrissey, Leontia Flynn and Susannah Dickey.The commonality between the fiction, poetry and visual arts I have chosen is a tendency towards experimentation. Byemploying creative methods such as magical realism, surrealism and cartoonish dark humour with a focus on liminalityand emotional experience, these practitioners consistently challenge theories of linear history and the traditional realistmode normally associated with cultural production that engages with the 'Troubles'.