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

所有的家庭都是易记的社区，利用自我参照的叙述——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，这些故事还能传递信息和指示；他们提供蓝图和理想；他们会发出警告和禁令”（Stone, 2017）。当这样的故事不再适合一个家庭的目的时，它们就被遗忘了。在一场教派冲突之后，特别是一场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，特别是宗教、政治或文化方面的身份问题，具有更为紧迫的意义。这个项目将比较北爱尔兰家庭中与冲突有关的故事所包含的主题。我将采访来自不同宗教、政治和社会经济界限的个人，他们都是在1998年耶稣受难日协议签署后出生的。我将要求参与者重现他们在自己的家庭中听到的与冲突有关的故事，并检查他们所听到的故事是否包含共同的主题，无论是在文化和阶级界限内还是跨文化和阶级界限。在北爱尔兰，对家庭内部讲故事的研究是有限的，而且专门集中在与重大创伤事件有关的故事上。这个项目采用了一种更全面的方法，利用更广泛的叙述，来探索所讲述的故事是否主要与创伤事件有关。这个跨学科口述历史项目旨在建立在与家庭故事相关的现有工作基础上，了解长期冲突局势如何影响家庭持有的故事及其时间范围，以及跨文化和阶级鸿沟的家庭如何以相似或不同的方式使用这些叙述的再生产。

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.