Themes and Narrative Patterns in Conflict-Related Intrafamilial Storytelling in Northern Ireland: An Oral History of the Ceasefire Generation

所有的家庭都是记忆社区，利用自我指涉的叙述-家庭故事-来构建集体身份。除了在家庭成员之间建立凝聚力和认同感外，这些故事“提供信息和指示;他们提供蓝图和理想;他们发出警告和禁令”（Stone，2017）。当这样的故事不再适合一个家庭的目的时，他们就会被遗忘。在教派冲突之后，特别是在跨越几代人的冲突之后，这一过程更加复杂，也更加重要;身份问题，特别是沿着宗教、政治或文化路线的身份问题，具有更加紧迫的意义。该项目将比较北方爱尔兰家庭内部讲述的与冲突有关的故事中所包含的主题。我将采访来自不同宗教、政治和社会经济领域的个人，他们都出生在1998年耶稣受难日协议签署后的几年里。我将要求参与者重现他们在自己的家庭中被告知的与冲突有关的故事，并将检查他们被告知的故事是否包含共同的主题，无论是在文化和阶级界限之内还是跨文化和阶级界限。对北方爱尔兰家庭内部讲故事的研究是有限的，只集中在与重大创伤事件有关的故事上。这个项目采用了一个更全面的方法，利用更广泛的叙述池，以探讨所讲述的故事是否主要是那些与创伤事件有关的故事。这个跨学科的口述历史项目旨在建立在现有的工作有关家庭的故事，并了解长期的冲突局势如何影响的故事，一个家庭举行和他们的时间范围，以及如何复制这些叙述是由跨文化和阶级划分的家庭使用类似或不同的方式。

All families are mnemonic communities that make use of self-referential narratives - family stories - to construct a collective identity. As well as forging cohesion and identification between family members, such stories 'give messages and instructions; they offer blueprints and ideals; they issue warnings and prohibitions' (Stone, 2017). When such stories no longer suit a family's purpose, they are forgotten. In the wake of a sectarian conflict, especially one which has spanned multiple generations, this process is both more complicated and more vital; questions of identity, especially along religious, political, or cultural lines, take on a more urgent significance. This project will compare the themes contained in the conflict-related stories that are told within families in Northern Ireland. I will conduct interviews with individuals from across religious, political, and socioeconomic boundaries, all of whom were born in the years following the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. I will ask participants to reproduce the conflict-related stories they have been told within their own families and will examine whether the stories they have been told contain common themes, both within and across cultural and class boundaries. Research into intrafamilial storytelling in Northern Ireland is limited and has exclusively focussed on stories relating to significant traumatic events. This project adopts a more holistic approach, drawing on a wider pool of narratives, to explore whether the stories told are predominantly those related to traumatic events. This interdisciplinary oral history project seeks to build on existing work relating to family stories and understand how a long-running conflict situation impacts on the stories that a family holds and their temporal scope, and how the reproduction of such narratives is used by families across cultural and class divides in similar or dissimilar ways.