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

自1998年《耶稣受难日协议》签署以来，北爱尔兰妇女的艺术和文学在形式上变得越来越具有实验性。这个研究项目将研究女性在“麻烦”之后的文化生产，以及它如何在冲突后的社会中挑战公认的真理和现实观念。我将调查女性艺术和文学如何在“麻烦”之后与北爱尔兰的情感经济进行诚实的接触，以及当冲突中占主导地位的大男子主义之外的经历总是被归入过去时，残余的创伤如何在其公民的生活中发挥作用。北爱尔兰女性的艺术和文学是如何颠覆冲突后社会的限制性社会、历史和文化条件的？在学术界和流行文化中，对“麻烦”的另一种叙述正在获得越来越多的认可，特别是那些为现有历史中的空白和缺失提供平台的叙述。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大男子主义，以便获得迄今为止北爱尔兰相当多人口所否认的“麻烦”意识。更广泛地认识到当代女性写作中实验的传承，以及它在处理具有重要社会意义的主题及其对性别身体的影响方面的应用（Bracken & Harney-Mahajan, 2017），我认为这种颠覆提供了一种方式，可以通过“后”冲突状态的二元性来工作，并挑战历史创伤的暂时性。这个项目提供了一个双管齐下的方法。首先，考察实验方法在女性文化生产中的运用如何在“麻烦”之后培养出质疑我们对真相和现实的理解的空间，以及这如何允许被排除的经验和叙事成为平台。其次，更广泛地挑战这些叙事的时间性和“后麻烦”社会的概念。本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“麻烦”的情感历史，干预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，它为北爱尔兰研究的一个新兴领域做出了贡献，其跨学科方法是独一无二的。这一原创作品将展示女性文化生产创造的空间，探索冲突中被排除的经验，以及如何通过质疑我们感知真相和现实的方式，改变我们对“麻烦”的理解。这个跨学科项目将主要包括阅读简·卡森、安娜·伯恩斯、露西·考德威尔、温德斯金和玛丽莲·麦克劳克林的小说。为了充分参与冲突的情感历史和争议空间的思想，我还将整合视觉艺术从业者的作品分析，如桑德拉·约翰森，米凯拉·卡伦，厄苏拉·伯克和BBeyond，以及当代诗人的作品，如西尼德·莫里西，莱昂西娅·弗林和苏珊娜·迪基。我所选择的小说、诗歌和视觉艺术之间的共同点是一种实验倾向。通过采用创造性的方法，如魔幻现实主义、超现实主义和卡通黑色幽默，重点关注阈限和情感体验，这些从业者不断挑战线性历史理论和传统现实主义模式，这些模式通常与文化生产有关，涉及“麻烦”。

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'.