Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict: The Other side 9781847792259

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SOCIO-IDEOLOGICAL FANTASY AND THE NORTHERN IRELAND CONFLICT

New Approaches to Conflict Analysis

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Series editor: Peter Lawler, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Department of Government, University of Manchester Until recently, the study of conflict and conflict resolution remained comparatively immune to broad developments in social and political theory. When the changing nature and locus of large-scale conflict in the post-Cold War era is also taken into account, the case for a reconsideration of the fundamentals of conflict analysis and conflict resolution becomes all the more stark. New Approaches to Conflict Analysis promotes the development of new theoretical insights and their application to concrete cases of large-scale conflict, broadly defined. The series intends not to ignore established approaches to conflict analysis and conflict resolution, but to contribute to the reconstruction of the field through a dialogue between orthodoxy and its contemporary critics. Equally, the series reflects the contemporary porosity of intellectual borderlines rather than simply perpetuating rigid boundaries around the study of conflict and peace. New Approaches to Conflict Analysis seeks to uphold the normative commitment of the field’s founders yet also recognises that the moral impulse to research is properly part of its subject matter. To these ends, the series is comprised of the highest quality work of scholars drawn from throughout the international academic community, and from a wide range of disciplines within the social sciences. PUBLISHED

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Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict the Other side

ADRIAN MILLAR

Manchester University Press MANCHESTER

Copyright © Adrian Millar 2006 The right of Adrian Millar to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA, UK

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements — vi 1

Introduction 1 Psychoanalytic theory

13

2 Conflict resolution

29

3 Explanations of the Northern Ireland conflict

51

4 The republican Real

81

5 The republican Imaginary

86

6 The republican Symbolic

126

7 Loyalists

151

8 Conclusion

200 Appendix — 209 Bibliography — 210 Index — 217

v

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I grew up in Belfast in the thick of it – battles on the green in front of my home, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) ‘fighting for Ireland’, the Brits ‘keeping the peace’, loyalists picking off neighbours who strayed too far. As an adult, I met republicans and (in lesser numbers) loyalists and eventually recorded them (or had them recorded) and wrote this book with a view to better understanding what motivated them. I thank them for being so frank. This research was made possible by funding at different points in its evolution from the Institute of Technology, Tallaght, the Irish Province of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences (Higher Education Authority); I am suitably grateful for their support. My thanks are also extended to a number of academics who helped me plod this path – particularly Dr Jennifer Todd who did an excellent job of supervising much of this research during my stint as doctoral candidate and post-doctoral researcher at the School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin. I am also indebted to Professor Richard English (Queen’s University, Belfast) for his useful suggestions and enthusiasm for this project, to Dr Sean Homer (University of Thessaloniki) who helped me clarify some Lacanian concepts, to Dr Iain Atack (Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin) whose encouragement never faltered throughout, and to Helen Sheehan (Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy) and Fr Micheál McGréil SJ for guidance in the early days. I also thank Anthony Mason at Manchester University Press for, in equal measure, his persistence and patience, and the International Association for Conflict Management whose award for best theoretical paper in 2001 set this book in motion. The interest and admiration of a number of friends kept me at it as I developed the ideas in this research: Lorna, Mary O’Connor, Ann D’Arcy, Gerry Judge and my father, Sammy, are due my thanks. Mary, Aisling, Rebecca and, latterly, Ciara deserve the biggest thanks of all, however, for giving me space to write.

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Introduction

Much work has been done in the field of peace-building and reconciliation in a number of the world’s conflict zones, but in many of these same areas antagonism persists and violent conflict continues to erupt in spite of peace agreements, substantial funding to address peace-building and economic disadvantage, and international goodwill. The conflict in Northern Ireland and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are but two such instances. This book asks why such conflict endures and argues on the basis of an examination of the Northern Ireland conflict that the reason for this is the function of the unconscious in the reproduction of antagonism and division.1 The recognition of this dimension has important consequences for a theory of conflict management. Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, Northern Ireland has experienced an upsurge in paramilitary beatings, loyalist feuding and intimidation, and increasingly bitter and violent sectarian confrontation in North Belfast, East Belfast and Portadown.2 It has also witnessed the growth of a widening gulf between the two communities at the polls and a growing sense of alienation within both communities, but particularly within the unionist community. As a result, the Good Friday Agreement itself has come under serious threat. Meanwhile division has emerged between victims and perpetrators of violence, and serious questions have arisen about the activities of the Special Branch in its investigation of atrocities. The Good Friday Agreement was heralded as a new beginning but even the above cursory look at Northern Ireland would suggest that the opportunities it has heralded for peace and reconciliation have not been welcomed by all, have been ignored by many more and have been experienced by few. Historically rooted patterns of relationships have remained relatively intact. It is perhaps a fallacy to have ever believed that they could have been changed by the stuff of high politics alone but who among 1

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Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict

us, in desperation, has not at some level or some moment entertained this illusion? The Good Friday Agreement is not the solution to ‘the Irish problem’, and perhaps not even the new beginning it was heralded as. Is it too much to conjecture that the celebrated ambiguity at the heart of the Good Friday Agreement that rendered the Agreement ‘all things to all men’, thus, some would argue, enabling an historic agreement to be brokered between nationalists and unionists in the first place, perhaps contains the seeds of self-destruction?3 This is not to deny that structures can influence the pace of change – they can. However, it is clear that one needs to examine what it is that structures the relationships the Good Friday Agreement purports to address. The challenge now facing the communities at large is to do the work that the signatories to the Good Friday Agreement failed to do, and deal with the substance that structures the antagonism and division there, namely the unconscious. It is the aim of this research to demonstrate the need for such an analysis of the conflict that enables parties to the conflict to explore and change the unconscious patterns of their historically determined relationships. Such an analysis must build upon the strengths of the peace and reconciliation work that has been carried out to date against the backdrop of the difficult, often violent, circumstances described above. Unconscious desire and conflict resolution People want what they do not want and effectively never get what they do want because the moment they get it they no longer want what they have got, but something else. This constantly shifting nature of desire in part explains why in a world where everyone wants peace and justice, we actually choose war, in a world where everyone is for democracy, voter apathy is rife, and everyone sees him/herself as a pluralist, yet racism and xenophobia are commonplace. No liberal would argue against equality, be this racial, gender-based or economic, but Western liberal democracies are ridden with inequalities that are ignored or rationalised. Often those who preach freedom, oppress, while sometimes those who promote respect for human dignity and human rights stand idly by in the face of genocide. Desire is forever frustrated by the unconscious such that the best will in the world is waylaid. It is my belief that the more we attend to the workings of unconscious desire in the socio-ideological domain, the greater the possibility for positive change in the social, economic and political realms. This book is in particular concerned with the effect of the unconscious in the prolongation of violent political conflict. While other writers on political violence in Northern Ireland admit their work is hampered by an abundance of ‘military rhetoric’, the problem of obtaining ‘reliable evidence’, 2

Introduction

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and the reality that written documents often offer ‘only a partial insight’ leaving one with ‘a very incomplete picture’,4 one of the advantages of this study is the use of some of the most candid interview material to date with former IRA members recorded during the 1994–96 ceasefire. I argue that the insights an examination of these materials provides will enable opponents to develop a more effective approach to the management of conflict. It is precisely because Lacanian theory places aggression and rivalry at the heart of human relations that it offers important insights into the management of conflict. However, far from presenting a dark view of humankind, it offers hope, if not happiness. Lacanian analysis explains why domination and dependence are part of identity construction and demonstrates how bringing the unconscious dynamics of human relations to the fore has the potential for positive change. The violent expression and extent of antagonism is a matter of how material (violence, inequality, injustice, etc.), imaginary (sectarian, cultural and political representations, etc.) and symbolic (cultural, religious and political ideals, etc.) aspects of reality impinge upon the construction of identity. In Chapter 1 I present an outline of Lacanian psychoanalysis and demonstrate that its development of the unconscious dynamics of identity construction helps explain the reproduction of socio-political conflict as participants indulge in fantasy and rival over jouissance. As Norval points out, in the construction of social and political identities people need to have theoretical tools which can account for the mechanisms of identification involved in the constitution of imaginaries and symbolic universes of meaning. Conflict resolution analysts need to better understand how the meaning out of which people interpret their own belonging to a community is constructed. Norval herself recommends a Lacanian approach to this subject. Conflict resolution theory needs to have the unconscious at its centre. I examine traditional conflict resolution theory in Chapter 2 and argue the case for a Lacanian approach to the management of conflict. According to Lacanian psychoanalysis, it is the unsatiated desire rooted in the pre-verbal ‘mirror stage’, i.e. the moment of the construction of the illusory, paranoid ego, that accounts for aggression. Upon the entry of the subject into language, this is compounded with contradictions, rationalisations, fictions, idealisation and wilful ignorance. Conflict henceforth becomes the norm. Thus, it is not enough to view aggression as the failure of systems to meet ‘inalienable’ needs, as Burton suggests.5 The satisfaction of ‘inalienable’ needs will not guarantee peace. Nor is it sufficient to build a theory of conflict resolution on ‘profound reconciliation’ and the ‘restoration and rebuilding of relationships’ as Lederach does.6 In a world where people dispense with others with the same passion with which they dispense with objects, 3

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Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict

new fantasies will not work. The tendency in conflict resolution theory has been to lend social conditions more value than they merit (notwithstanding Burton’s emphasis on needs that are indeed ultimately fulfilled by change in social conditions). External social conditions and even peace agreements alone are insufficient to effect significant change in communal conflict and division. Only unconscious desire can explain the attraction of violent conflict even when the cost for participants far outweighs the gains as is the case in so many conflicts today, and only factoring this reality into conflict resolution theory will enable significant change. An examination of unconscious desire would amount to little if it simply offered us theoretical insight into the nature of conflict. Lacanian theory also says something about how conflict can be managed. While from a Lacanian perspective human destructiveness is here to stay – there is no pre-established harmony, people are never satisfied, rationalisations abound, rivalry is permanent, subordination is the norm, and we forever rival over jouissance – change is possible. Lacanian analysis thus has an ethical dimension. Significant change in the dynamics of conflict will only occur when people take responsibility for what they unconsciously enjoy (e.g. domination, pain, woes, fragmentation, anxiety, ignorance, etc.), find less pleasure in domination, aggression and submission and traverse their fantasy to find new ways of attaining satisfaction. This involves judgement and choice. Change is not guaranteed. What is required is for communities to map out their fundamental socio-ideological fantasy and to grasp the way that they are fixed in it for the Other. From there, choosing peace over conflict is an ethical challenge, the nature of which Lacanian theory spells out for us. The principal challenge for conflict resolution today is to engage the desire of participants in the conflict, fostering among them a desire to move from the tantalising pleasure to be found in domination/submission (i.e. the dubious satisfaction of neuroses) to the pleasure to be found in respect and responsibility towards the Other. It means dealing with our unconscious desire for pain and our rivalry over jouissance or unconscious excitement. One has only to look at the case of people suffering from addiction to recognise that knowledge is not enough to persuade people to engage in change for themselves and their nearest and dearest, let alone for someone beyond their immediate circle of friends. Knowledge is for cooking, not for integration, as Schneiderman points out.7 One needs to do something with it. It needs an essential ingredient, namely judgement. So, ethics, behaviour and responsibility are central to Lacan’s understanding of change. By fanning desire, activists encourage parties to a conflict to move away from the normal or conformity, from social strictures that tell us how we will be happier. People need to move away from rationalisation and 4

Introduction

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intellectualisation and avoid new fantasies. Developing new cultural claims is not enough. Change is possible. The nuts and bolts of how change might occur is something I consider in the final chapter. The Northern Ireland conflict The conflict that serves as the empirical focus of this study is ‘the Troubles’ of Northern Ireland. If one accepts Ruane and Todd’s assertion based on their study of conflict between the Protestant and Catholic communities that ordinary people in Northern Ireland have a set of ‘ambiguous, mixed, often contradictory beliefs’ that are not reflected in their ideologies,8 and are thus overlooked in political analyses of the conflict, then Lacanian psychoanalytic theory helps us understand these beliefs. The extent of the antagonism, hatred, fear, anger, rivalry, inferiority and superiority that interviewees experience in relation to the Protestant (and British) Other or Catholic (and Irish) Other as revealed in Chapters 4–7 indicates that the conflict in Northern Ireland is not purely a constitutional problem or a problem of political partisanship as McGarry and O’Leary believe.9 Indeed, the examination of the available literature on republican experience undertaken in Chapter 3 and on loyalist experience in Chapter 7 suggests that much of their experience is not captured at the public level of ideology. While being a political conflict, the problem subsumes communal issues including political identity and boundaries, religion, communal power and communal violence that have their roots in the Plantation of Ulster.10 In accepting this view, I follow the broader political interpretation of Whyte and Ruane and Todd rather than the narrower political science reading of McGarry and O’Leary.11 Thus, the texts on the Northern Ireland conflict that I examine in detail in Chapter 3 are works that provide different ways of exploring this issue of communal division and antagonism as an explanation for the conflict. I highlight their strengths and weaknesses and conclude on the basis of this examination that the issues of community and identity have in some instances been dealt with inadequately and in others are good but insufficient. I propose that what is required is a psychoanalytic framework that with its emphasis on the unconscious enables one to go beyond ideology into the conceptual jumble of the republican and loyalist proponents of the violent conflict. I do not set out to prove a generalised theory about the wider Catholic and Protestant communities and the nature of the conflict between them, a generalised theory that some would argue is impossible because there are no shared positive values in these communities12 or because regional factors preclude such generalisation.13 Instead, the principal aim of this 5

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Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict

research is to allow for the development of a theoretical reconstruction of communal identity that is to be judged in terms of its capacity for insight, its explanatory powers and empirical adequacy in the area of conflict resolution as tested in future research. In Chapters 4, 5 and 6 I focus on the republican community in Belfast, using primary interview material for my analysis. Although the Symbolic, Imaginary and Real orders overlap in reality, I deal with each of these separately in these chapters in order to maximise their value. For Lacan, it is the interplay of the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real that reveals something about the subject’s self-interpretation. It would therefore be a misinterpretation of my work if one were to draw conclusions about any of these chapters in isolation. I argue that the unconscious fantasies that underpin the constitution of the political identities of republicans (and later, in Chapter 7, of loyalists) are central to the reproduction of the conflict in that they nurture the desire of the Catholic and Protestant communities to expand their economic, political, social and ideological sense of self or identity, leading to domination, dependence, inequality and the Catholic and Protestant threat. The conscious rationalisations that these unconscious fantasies cause to arise in republicans and loyalists cover up the unconscious trauma or deadlock that is at the root of communal antagonism. In this context, when one’s own aggression is rationalised as attack by the other, interests become a focus of violent conflict. The institutionalisation of the rationalisations involved in the constitution of the self reinforces communal division and prolongs antagonism. In Chapter 4 I consider the position of the Real in the republican interviewees’ self-interpretation. The goal of an examination of Real relations is to determine the nature of interviewees’ pain, loss, lack, confusion, fear, fragmentation, etc. and to uncover their rationalisations in handling this experience. In Chapter 5 I examine Imaginary relations, i.e. the way republicans perceive both themselves and socially and politically significant others, and the place of domination, dependence, rivalry and aggression in these relations. I demonstrate how the interviewees indulge in denial and how they project that which they find unpleasurable in themselves onto others. Given Lacan’s claim that the ‘I is an other’,14 rivalry is central to these relations. In Chapter 6 I look at the key to Symbolic relations, namely the unconscious dimension of republicans’ identification with cultural values or ideological discourses. In Chapter 7 I focus on loyalists, availing of the interview materials of Anthony Kimbley whose research I supervised at University College Dublin, which I supplement with a study of interview-based literature.15 6

Introduction

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In the final chapter, Chapter 8, I present my conclusions and attempt to tease out their implications for proponents of conflict resolution. Interviewees I interviewed twenty-five people for the present research and, given the volume of the material, I confined myself to a detailed analysis of seventeen of these and drew on the other interviews for background materials and particular examples. However small the numbers, one has only to look at Freud to understand that insight can be gathered from a few subjects.16 The interviews with republicans were recorded in Belfast in the summer of 1995, during the first IRA ceasefire that collapsed in February 1996. On average, interviews lasted two or more hours. Initially interviewees in the Catholic community were chosen on the basis of their interest and concern about the fate of those imprisoned in relation to the killings of two British soldiers during the course of the funeral of IRA man Kevin Brady in Belfast in March 1988.17 There was widespread concern among a variety of human rights’ groups regarding the reliability of these convictions.18 I had hoped that an examination of that incident and the attack carried out by loyalist Michael Stone on Catholics in Milltown Cemetery in which Kevin Brady had died would bring to the fore the relationship between republicans and the British and loyalists. However, as the research got under way I persuaded interviewees to talk more broadly about their experience of life in Belfast, which in effect provided me with a more complete republican self-interpretation for the purposes of critique. Of the twelve republican interviewees that I analysed in depth – four men and eight women – eight live in West Belfast, three in East Belfast and one in North Belfast. The youngest interviewee was 30 years old at the time of the interview and the oldest was 72. Eight of the interviewees indicated in the course of their interview that they were involved in some way in the IRA in the past, one of them in the 1950s campaign and the others in the campaign generally referred to as ‘the Troubles’ (1969–2005). Eleven of the twelve interviewees identified themselves as republicans. Five of the interviewees spent periods in jail in connection with charges relating to political violence. Eleven of the interviewees voted Sinn Fein in the last general election prior to the interviews. Loyalist interviewees comprised four men and one woman from North Belfast and were interviewed in 2000. All were involved in local community and regional development and all were from a working-class background. They were neither strategists nor ex-paramilitaries.

7

Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict

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Methodology The methodology employed here is based on an application of Lacanian theory to slips of the tongue, which enable the analyst to identify meanings other than the intended meaning. In this sense, this approach differs significantly from other studies of identity to date where the nature of people’s identities is ascertained on totally subjective grounds through the acceptance or rejection of interviewees’ opinions by researchers.19 For Lacan, conscious thought is mere rationalisation. The whole task of the analyst is to understand which part of the discourse carries the significative term. In this regard Lacan writes that the analyst ‘takes the description of an everyday event for a fable addressed to whoever hath ears to hear, a long tirade for a direct interjection, or on the other hand a simple lapsus for a highly complex statement, or even the sigh of a momentary silence for the whole lyrical development it replaces’.20 Things must not be taken ‘at the level at which the subject puts them – in as much as what we are dealing with is precisely this obstacle, this hitch, that we find at every moment’.21 At the heart of human relations is deception: ‘The subject is presented as other than he is, and what one shows him is not what he wishes to see.’22 Nothing happens by chance according to Lacan. So interviewers take what must appear to others as liberties, but they are not. The analyst must have ears not to hear – ‘having ears in order not to hear, in other words, to pick up what is to be heard’.23 The analyst is interested in ‘non-sensical – composed of non-meanings – signifying elements’.24 Interpretation enables us to isolate a kernel of non-sense in the subject. ‘Interpretation is not open to all meanings. It is not just any interpretation. It is a significant interpretation, one that must not be missed . . . What is essential is that he [i.e. the subject] should see, beyond this signification, to what signifier – to what irreducible, traumatic, non-meaning – he is, as a subject, subjected.’25 There is nothing arbitrary about interpreting interviewees’ speech. People persuade others to believe their truth at the point where they are mistaken and so the analyst’s position is that of returning the subject’s deception – for that is what language is – to him in an inverted form, saying in your deception you are telling the truth.26 As Lacan puts this: ‘There is no truth that, in passing through awareness, does not lie.’27 And when the unconscious speaks, ‘[i]t must be listened to and taken literally, letter by letter and signifier by signifier’.28 The analyst must not be taken in by the patient, nor, by extension, the researcher by the interviewee. The fact that my results might not be necessarily shared by an interviewee should not be seen as a diminishment of the interviewee’s good faith. The list of slips of the tongue should, moreover, enable others to confirm or legitimate a particular interpretation.29 8

Introduction

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The use of a Lacanian psychoanalytic framework enabled me to deal more effectively with inevitable interviewer bias. Being from the Catholic community and being from Belfast, I identified with many of the comments that Catholic interviewees made regarding their own life experience. Indeed, analysing the slips of the tongue and the ego-talk of the interviewees from a Lacanian perspective made the extent to which I shared significant unconscious aspects of their worldview obvious to me, sometimes for the first time. I am confident that this heightened awareness has enabled me to examine the interview materials with as little interviewer bias as possible. My approach is redemptive rather than judgemental for even though I examine the rationalisations of the interviewees with a view to unearthing whatever it is they find unpleasurable about themselves and wish to hide from themselves, my intention throughout is to better understand what motivates the interviewees struggling with the issues that living in conflict creates for them. Indeed, psychoanalysis is by its nature non-judgemental. It is not a hermeneutics of suspicion. Every ‘normal’ person is in denial, as is every ‘normal’ ethno-national group. Given the sensitive nature of the republican interview material that was recorded while many of those accused of the murder of the two British soldiers were still in prison, and the equally sensitive nature of loyalist interviews, Anthony Kimbley and I promised our interviewees total anonymity. This has enabled us to gather some of the most candid interview material available in the studies of republican and loyalist identity against a backdrop of a dearth of interviews in academic works with people close to the events – unless of the journalistic vein. Given the openness and the vulnerability of the interviewees, I have taken the liberty of making the material changes to the interview transcripts that I deemed necessary in order to protect their identities. Interviewees are simply identified numerically. NOTES

1

2

English correctly notes that the substance of the Northern Ireland conflict is the matter of perception, a phenomenon that, as is clear from the next chapter, is a matter of illusion, idealisation and rationalisation arising from the construction of the unconscious. Thus, for English, the significance of the fact that the IRA sees itself as non-sectarian and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers saw themselves as ‘normal human beings just doing their daily job’ is that ‘via such starkly different perceptions was the conflict born and sustained’ (Richard English, Armed Struggle: A History of the IRA (London: Macmillan, 2003), p. 347). However, while claiming that such perceptions created and reproduced the conflict, English does not systematically analyse these or the unconscious that shapes these. McDonald and Cusack are of the opinion that ‘Belfast in the twenty-first century is more bigoted and divided than it was before the IRA and loyalist ceasefires of 1994’. And ‘[b]y the start of the new century there were twenty-six barriers – “peace walls” – most of them erected only after the loyalist and IRA cessations’ (Henry McDonald and Jim

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Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict

3

4

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5 6 7 8 9 10

11 12

13

14 15 16

Cusack, UDA: Inside the Heart of Loyalist Terror (fully updated edition) (Dublin: Penguin Ireland, 2005), p. 343.) McDonald and Cusack speak of ‘the essential design fault in the Good Friday Agreement, that is that its architects failed to address the problem of on-going sectarian attitudes, especially among the young working class and underclass’ and ‘the failure of politicians to provide an antidote to the virus of sectarianism’ (ibid., p. 347). M. L. R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland? The Military Strategy of the Irish Republican Movement (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 5. John W. Burton, Conflict Resolution and Provention (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990), pp. 96 and 98. Jean-Paul Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1997). Stuart Schneiderman, Jacques Lacan, the Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 102. Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd, The Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland: Power, Conflict and Emancipation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 6. John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1995). Given the importance of the communal dimension of the conflict, I elect to refer throughout to the two main communities in Northern Ireland as the Protestant community and the Catholic community and not the unionist and nationalist community. John Whyte, Interpreting Northern Ireland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). Frederick W. Boal, Margaret C. Keane and David N. Livingstone (eds), Them and Us?: Attitudinal Variation Among Churchgoers in Belfast (Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University, Belfast, 1997), p. 62. The editors suggest that there is in fact no monolithic Catholic identity and that Catholics are united instead around negative notions of self such as non-British, non-unionist and non-Ulster. The Opsahl Report on Northern Ireland notes that an East–West of the Bann divide exists in both the Protestant and the Catholic community. Andy Pollak (ed.), A Citizens’ Enquiry: The Opsahl Report on Northern Ireland. (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1992), p. 99. West of the Bann, young Catholics were less likely to have a local identity than their counterparts east of the Bann who identified more strongly with the geographic region of Northern Ireland. In his autobiography, Gerry Adams remarks that in Derry there was traditionally very little republicanism and no history of radical struggle unlike in Belfast (Gerry Adams, Before the Dawn (London: Heinemann, 1996), p. 180). Eamon Phoenix speaks of the existence of a ‘border nationalist mentality’ and a ‘Belfast nationalist mentality’, indicating strong historical differences in political attitudes (Eamon Phoenix, Nationalist Politics, Partition and the Catholic Minority in Northern Ireland 1890–1940 (Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation, 1994), p. 155). John Whyte attests to contemporary regional differences (Whyte, Interpreting Northern Ireland). Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection. (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 23. Anthony Kimbley, ‘A Lacanian psychoanalytic approach to loyalism in Northern Ireland’, MA Thesis, University College Dublin, 2000. Holland outlines the ‘holistic method’ of research that applies not only to psychoanalysis but also to archaeology, anthropology, sociology, geography, history and political science (‘Psychoanalysis as science’, Journal for the Psychological Study of the Arts, www. clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2004_holland08.shtml#holland08, p. 9) and concludes that psychoanalysis ‘is not only testable and falsifiable, but it has been tested and to some extent confirmed, to some extent falsified’ (ibid., p. 2). Researchers typically use this method for investigation of unique systems that cannot readily be multiplied, e.g. a

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Introduction

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patient, a community, a family, a corporation (ibid., p. 5). They collect data from, for example, interviews, group data into themes and generalise a model or narrative from their examination of these themes by means of typologies or by finding aspects of a unique case in another unique case. He concludes that psychoanalysis is scientific, resting as it does on holistic method. Two British soldiers, Corporals Howe and Woods, drove into Kevin Brady’s funeral cortege as it approached Casement Park on the Andersonstown Road. Mourners at the funeral thought that they were under attack from loyalists – as had happened when Kevin Brady was killed a few days earlier in Milltown Cemetery – and some rushed towards the car to apprehend the soldiers whose identities were as yet unknown. In the ensuing chaos, one of the soldiers fired a shot before he and his companion were overcome by members of the crowd and carried into Casement Park. There they were beaten, partially stripped and identified before being taken to Penny Lane where they were shot dead by two IRA men who were never caught. Several of the accused who had served between three and ten years were subsequently granted early release. Bruce provides a good example of this type of subjective approach to research analysis (Steve Bruce, The Red Hand: Protestant Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992)). While he rightly acknowledges that his loyalist interviewees ‘may wish to appear more insightful, honest, courageous, or principled than they really believe themselves to be’ and, during interviews, ‘are trying to make particular impressions on me and on themselves’ (ibid., p. 4) and thus will ‘distort, embellish, prevaricate, and plain lie’ as people do in ‘the everyday life of conversation’ (ibid., p. 3) he concludes that ‘[c]ontrary to the impression given by some research-methods textbooks, there are no techniques or procedures that definitively resolve’ these problems. Instead, he hopes that the ‘diligence and common sense of researchers [will] allow them to penetrate the most obvious smokescreens’ (ibid., p. 4). The problems with this approach are all too clear from a reading of his work: it results in what he himself calls ‘often little more than plausible speculation’ (ibid., p. 5) such that he doubts he has ‘discovered anything except what people . . . wanted to tell me’ (ibid., p. 2). At times he discounts commentators’ accounts because his Ulster Defence Association (UDA) interviewees offer nothing to support them (ibid., p. 66) though he says elsewhere that paramilitary activity is an area of ‘lies, deception, and self-deception’ (ibid., p. 4). At other times he rejects interviewees’ accounts, indeed in one instance because they repeat their claim too often (ibid., p. 196). Lacan, Ecrits, p. 44. Jacques-Alain Miller (ed.), The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis (London: Penguin Books, 1994), p. 54. Ibid., p. 104. Lacan, Ecrits, p. 45. Miller (ed.), The Four Fundamental Concepts, p. 250. Ibid., pp. 250–1. See ibid., p. 140 for more detailed account. Ibid., p. xxxix. Ibid., p. xxviii. See Appendix 1.

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1

Psychoanalytic theory

Introduction Psychoanalysis plumbs the depths of how we imagine ourselves, how we establish worldviews and values, and how we relate out of these.1 According to Anthony Elliott, psychoanalysis ‘powerfully accounts for the . . . essential and primary foundations of all human social activity’,2 namely representation, fantasy, identification and pleasure. It ‘highlights the fantasmatic dimension of cultural practices, social institutions, political norms’.3 For this reason, Elliott is correct in his contention that one must consider the place of the psyche in our understanding of human subjectivity if one is to bring about social and political transformation. For Elliott, the social world will never be the same again after reading Lacan because ‘his theories capture something of the strangeness that pervades the mundane and familiar in daily life’.4 Lacanian and postLacanian analyses have helped evaluate the self and society, connecting the self to political domination and exploitation. They have also focused on rethinking and deconstructing the possibilities for political emancipation and autonomy. The approaches of the Lacanian and Frankfurt Schools ‘highlight that modern social processes interconnect in complex and contradictory ways with unconscious experience and therefore with the self’.5 Unconscious processes affect social relationships, contemporary culture and all attempts at conceptualisation. In light of the above, it would be hard to argue that Lacanian psychoanalysis has little to say about socio-ideological fantasy, the denial which it involves, and the conflict it gives rise to, a contention that is strengthened by Lacan’s remark that psychoanalysis ‘rests on a fundamental conflict, on an initial, radical drama’6 at the psychic level.

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Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict

Lacanian psychoanalysis7

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For Lacan, conflict and domination are not marginal deviations from normality but part and parcel of society’s basic structure. There is no preestablished harmony. He understands the self, as constructed in the West, to be ‘an ideological construction which makes our whole civilization in a meaningful sense mentally ill’.8 The point of psychoanalysis for Lacan, however, is not primarily an explanatory one: it is change. Evidence the following: Analysis is not a matter of discovering in a particular case the differential feature of the theory, and in doing so believe that one is explaining why your daughter is silent – for the point at issue is to get her to speak, and this effect proceeds from a type of intervention that has nothing to do with a differential feature. Analysis consists precisely in getting her to speak.9

Add to this his development of the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real orders,10 accounting for the fragmented ego and the centrality of aggressivity to this,11 the constitution of the split subject caught up in the exigencies of the Other (otherwise the Lacanian unconscious, which is structured like language),12 and rivalry over jouissance even when this involves suffering,13 and it becomes clear what it is that makes Lacanian analysis particularly relevant to a study of conflict and its resolution. The Imaginary order is the realm of opposition, domination, oppression, alienation, images, mirrors, paranoia, perception, identifications with others, and identity. Paraphrasing Lacan, Fink characterises the Imaginary order as ‘the world of rivalry and war’.14 He notes that ‘[i]t is in a fundamental rivalry . . . that the constitution of the human world as such takes place.’15 Lacan believed that the basic natural state for mankind was that of aggression. Aggression is already present in the pre-verbal child born out of the narcissistic relation with the image and is linked to the structures of objectification that ‘characterize the formation of the ego’.16 The Symbolic overwrites the Imaginary, subordinating Imaginary relations involving rivalry and aggressivity to symbolic relations that are ‘dominated by concerns with ideals, authority figures, the law, performance, achievement, guilt, and so on’.17 The Symbolic order situates the individual in culture, the world of metaphor and metonymy. A person’s thoughts are made within culture. Thus: ‘The subject does not speak, he “is spoken” by the symbolic structure.’18 The Symbolic thus inhabits the individual and dominates him or her, imposing its law on the desiring subject, both curtailing desire and propelling its motion. So, Turkle can write that for Lacan ‘[t]he individual and the social order are inextricably bound’.19 14

Psychoanalytic theory

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The Real is trauma, violence, a moment of excruciating pain, pure antagonism. People construct ‘reality’ out of the Real in part to protect themselves against its pure antagonism. They recreate ‘a harmony with the real’.20 Lying outside the world of the signifier, the Real ‘governs our activities more than any other’.21 We repeat it without recognising it: ‘the real is that which comes back to the same place – to the place where the subject in so far as he thinks, where the res cogitans, does not meet it’.22 Nevertheless, one can say something about the Real from the way the unconscious speaks where there is pain, revealing truth, which Lacan views as a function of the unconscious. In Zˇizˇek’s words, truth ‘belongs to the order of contingency: we vegetate in our everyday life, deep into the universal lie that structures it, when, all of a sudden, some totally contingent encounter – a casual remark by a friend, an incident we witness – evokes the memory of untold repressed trauma and shatters our self-delusion’.23 This is what tells us what is really going on, what people really desire. The Imaginary order The ego For Lacan the point of departure for human subjectivity occurs at the preverbal ‘mirror stage’. Looking into a mirror the child is captivated or ‘captured’ by its image, seeing the image as reality and concluding ‘I am that’ and ‘That is me’. In effect, the subject collapses into its object, failing to distinguish itself from the Other. It is thus in the Other that the subject first lives and registers himself or herself. The individual is alienated from himself or herself because of his or her desire for the image. It is a relation of opposition because what is established is established on the basis of what is not, i.e. an Other. Thus, Imaginary relations always involve intimidation, aggression, aggressive competitiveness, superiority, jealousy, or resentment. Lacan says that with the ‘captation of the subject’24 in the mirror we have a formula for ‘the madness that deafens the world with its sound and fury’.25 The mirror stage is rooted in the ‘fragmented body’ (‘corps morcelé’) fantasy. According to this fantasy, the individual has a sense of bodily disarray that feeds the desire for a secure, stagnant, frozen ‘I’. The ego is condemned to perpetual torment, caught as it is between a push towards integration and wholeness as imaged in the mirror and the disintegration of the ‘corps morcelé’, which is a reminder to the individual of its lack and incompleteness. As a result of the mirror stage, all Imaginary relations are fixated on an idealisation and an illusion, and otherness in the form of oppositions persists throughout adult life. Others always appear to have the totality 15

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Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict

and stability that the individual desires. Pulled between the desire for autonomy or identity and the identification with a rival, the ego is in a constant paranoid relation with the Other. The ego’s desire to be the Other by dissolving its otherness in this gradually becomes a desire to control the Other through which it sees itself because any change in the Other would threaten its view of itself. This is the source of human conflict. Conflict for Lacan is not the innocuous, anodyne competition or disagreement that exists between individuals or groups. It is a matter of domination and oppression – forms of violence that may or may not have a physical expression. Lacan notes that the effects of aggressive intention are ‘more farreaching than any act of brutality’.26 This understanding of conflict makes Lacanian analysis relevant to situations of communal conflict where the threat of violence can paralyse a community.27 According to Lacan, the ego has a paranoiac structure and is buttressed by denial. Violence, for Lacan, is the result of ‘paranoid justifications of our own insecurity, which we project as aggressivity emanating from the others we control’.28 Feelings of persecution lead to anxiety and this in turn leads the ego to express itself through negative projections onto others, throwing its own disorder and bad feelings onto them and fearing their return in the form of paranoia. When someone says ‘They are out to get me’ what they are actually saying is ‘I am out to get them’. The term ‘projection’ has many usages in psychoanalysis but it always appears as a defence.29 It is best understood for the purposes of the present study as the unconscious process whereby the individual attributes to another wishes, qualities or feelings ‘that the subject repudiates or refuses to recognise in himself’.30 As pointed out by Freud, the ego projects what it finds too unpleasurable because of its intensity.31 Another important manoeuvre of the paranoiac ego is called splitting. Splitting is best understood as the process whereby the ego both takes account of reality and disavows it. The process of disavowal enables the ego to create a new, delusional reality. The fragile ego fears splitting because reality slips in. Where there is oppositional identification one automatically finds the source of the Master–Slave struggle for recognition that binds the ego as Master and the Other as Slave one to another. The Other/Slave is pacified by the ego/Master, which directs its aggression and negative feelings towards it. The Other/Slave remains dependent on the image the Master gives it.32 For all this, the ego/Master also needs the recognition of the Other/Slave. So the Master needs the Slave as much as the other way around. In this sense, the ego is itself in the position of Slave in so far as its identification with the Other entails an acceptance or rejection of a code of values defined by the Other. 16

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The Symbolic order The Symbolic is an experience of aliénation. ‘By mediating himself in his discourse, the subject in effect destroys the immediate relation of self to self and constructs himself in language . . . as he wishes to see himself, as he wishes to be seen, and thereby alienates himself in language.’33 The subject, then, is radically divided, ‘[f]or in this labour which he undertakes to reconstruct for another, he rediscovers the fundamental alienation that made him construct it like another, and which has always destined it to be taken from him by another’.34 Thus, as Zˇizˇek puts this, a personal narrative ‘is a bricolage of ultimately failed attempts to come to terms with some trauma; a social edifice is an ultimately failed attempt to displace/obfuscate its constitutive antagonism’.35 A political identity likewise is an attempt at coverup, an inauthentic act that strives for fullness. There is, then, a split between the subject and the ‘I’, subject and Other, and the subject and the world. The subject is the subject of desire from which it is alienated, not of reflexive consciousness.36 Lacan summarises subjectivity in two propositions that play on Cartesian philosophy and give expression to the effects of this split in the subject: ‘I am not wherever I am the plaything of my thought; I think of what I am where I do not think to think.’37 For Lacan, the key to the subject is therefore to be found in the unconscious, not the conscious. When the subject realises how the Other is in itself inconsistent or deprived of the thing that he/she desires, the subject experiences separation from the Other. This is what leads to fantasies of wholeness – the attempt to (re)constitute the consistency of the Other and deal with the anxiety of separation. Fantasies help people to ‘forget or misrecognize satisfaction, to explain it away or not take responsibility for it’.38 Homer writes: ‘The object of desire is always an unattainable object and it is fantasy that designates a subject’s “impossible” relation to “a”’,39 i.e. to the Real. Fantasy renders the individual prone to all the alienation and lies of group life and of culture because in order to refer to self, desire or life, individuals need language and this is never direct or immediate. Speech is already one step removed from the Real. Desire Split by language, which therefore blocks the construction of identity rather than establishes it, the subject does not know what it wants, which simply adds to its sense of inner conflict, rivalry, aggressive intention and lack. Desire desires whatever the Other desires. In some cases, desires are ‘based on nothing more than the fact that the thing in question has been forbidden you’.40 Desire seeks transgression. Thus, whatever it is unconscious desire represses is the very thing upon which unconscious desire is dependent. 17

Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict

As a result, as Fink remarks,41 people are actually dependent upon the very thing they rebel against.

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Speech The everyday events of speech, the medium of desire, within which the subject lives, affecting and being affected by others through language, is at the heart of Lacan’s understanding of the human person. The external world is populated above all by speaking subjects. In our everyday reality people ‘address each other and affect each other by what they say . . . say what they mean and what they don’t mean simultaneously; whatever they get they always want more, or something different; and at any one moment they are consciously aware of only some of what they want’.42 What is literal, meaning, which is of the Imaginary order, ‘is always ambiguous, polyvalent, betraying something one wanted to remain hidden, hiding something one intended to express’.43 There is always a difference between what a person consciously means to say and what words actually say (or reveal) because words are linked to groups of meanings. Signifiers, then, can mean more than what the individual intends and the individual can have very little conscious access to their meaning. They carry meanings beyond our understanding and control. What people mean or intend to mean is irrelevant. What people mean and what they say are different. Lacan is interested in what people say, and why they say it one way rather than another. He is not interested in meaning and communication but the failure of meaning and the failure of communication. In this sense, although Lacanian analytic theory takes Saussurean linguistics as a starting-point, it is not interested in linguistics or how language hooks up with reality. The Symbolic is not reducible to verbal language but to all signifying systems.44 Lacan considers the signifier as comprising metaphor and metonymy. Metaphor is the mechanism that allows for some other meaning than what is being said to arise by the substitution of one word for another. In metonymy the word comes to signify something ‘quite other than what it says’.45 Lacan writes: What is important is to understand what one is saying. And in order to understand what one is saying it’s important to see its lining, its other side, its resonances, its significant superimpositions. Whatever they may be – and we can include every misconstrual – there is no element of chance . . . Language entirely operates within ambiguity, and most of the time you know absolutely nothing about what you are saying. In your most ordinary conversations language has a purely fictional character, you give the other the feeling that you are always there, that is to say, that you are capable of producing the expected response, which bears no relation to anything whatsoever that is susceptible to being pursued any further. Nine-tenths of discourses that have effectively taken place are completely fictional in this respect.46

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The unconscious As a result of the split the subject experiences because of language, the unconscious quickly comes into being to house that which is lived or experienced but not voiced.47 By its nature thought represses and overlooks its own faults as people attempt to rationalise a lived experience. Repression is intentional. Laplanche describes this as ‘an operation whereby the subject attempts to repel, or to confine to the unconscious, representations (thoughts, images, memories) which are bound to an instinct’.48 The unconscious is ‘lacuna, cut, rupture inscribed in a certain lack’.49 It is ‘the memory of those things he [i.e. the subject] forgets’.50 And the individual arranges everything so as to forget these things that Lacan describes as the ‘stench and corruption that always yawn like an abyss’.51 At such times the satisfaction of the instinct is considered to lead to pain because it does not fit in with one’s view of oneself or with one’s moral principles and is thus avoided. The repressed thing may make its way into consciousness on condition that it is denied. In this way the subject removes the repression but does not actually accept what is repressed. It is an intellectual acceptance of the repressed thing. This is called ‘negation’. The subject presents him/herself or some reality as what is in the mode of not being what one or something is. The repressed thing can also return inversely. Thus a repressed love can return in the form of an apparent anger or hatred or a repressed hatred can return as love. Failing an expression of conscious negation, the revelation of the unconscious is mainly dependent upon a variety of linguistic phenomena such as ‘slips, memory disturbances, dreams, and the phenomenon of jokes’52 or mistakes, distortions, absentmindedness, a personal meaning given to an otherwise anodyne word, obsessional repetitions, verbal inability, interruptions, silence and ambiguity. The subject’s desire only ever comes to the surface in language through distortion. The unconscious reveals itself ‘at the level of the subject of the enunciation . . . in an interjection, in an imperative, in an invocation, even in a hesitation’.53 It appears in ‘[i]mpediment, failure, split. In a spoken or written sentence something stumbles.’54 ‘Discontinuity, then, is the essential form in which the unconscious first appears to us as a phenomenon – discontinuity, in which something is manifested as a vacillation.’55 Finding the truth, then, requires one to go to the unconscious. ‘At the level of the unconscious, the subject lies. And this lying is his way of telling the truth of the matter.’56 Lacanian truth tells us what is at the root of our lack, loss and confusion and provides us with measures for limiting these. The analyst must go in search of that ‘liberating truth’.57 He/she must express ‘ethical witness’.58 Thus, ‘the status of the unconscious is ethical’.59 19

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Rationalisation Conscious thought for Lacan is little more than rationalisation. It is also alienating because in so far as it is comprised of language, it is someone else’s language people use to speak of themselves. Thus, Lacan describes the ego as a ‘means of the speech addressed to you from the subject’s unconscious, a weapon to resist its recognition’.60 It is a set of conscious defences. The defences block or reject the unconscious in an effort to produce order where the subject experiences lack and fragmentation. The characteristic modes of the agency of the ego in dialogue are ‘reactions of opposition, negation, ostentation, and lying’.61 The ego is rigid and resists the truth at all costs. It will invent in order to appear complete or coherent to itself and others. Lacan recommends therefore that the analyst approach statements of belief, understanding, feeling and thinking with a critical ear. Rationalisation serves, then, to camouflage what the ego wants to defend, namely its ideal self-image and it works to create explanations that are in keeping with this by covering up the slips of the unconscious. The being that results from rationalisation is therefore false or fake because it overlooks the unconscious. So, according to Lacanian analysis, it is important to examine conscious ego thought in order to unravel its unconscious motivations. What is important in rationalisation in the context of analysis is to bring to light what a rational explanation for a particular behaviour neglects to say about certain unconscious motives. These are what the ego defends against. In research into the Northern Ireland conflict researchers frequently point out the relative unreliability of interviewee material but rarely approach it from a subversive perspective to get to the bottom of what is really happening. The problem does not lie in the quality of interviewee material but the quality of the reading. There is always more going on than meets the eye, which it is the job of the ego to conceal. The aim of the present research is to help reveal those unconscious aspects of republican and loyalist identities that reproduce the conflict. I do this by identifying rationalisations and the unconscious dynamics shaping them.

The Real order Socio-ideological fantasy Slavoj Zˇizˇek has written extensively on the relevance of the Real to how the political field is constituted and articulated. He argues that it is the Real that propels the subject to identify with ideological meanings as the internal trauma of the subject is displaced on to the symbolical field. The primordial 20

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repression of an antagonism is constitutive of ‘reality’, reality being ‘the minimum of idealization the subject needs in order to sustain the horror of the Real’62 or a ‘fantasy-construction which enables us to mask the Real of our desire’.63 According to Zˇizˇek, the job of psychoanalysis is to provide an ethics of the Real that undermines the social-ideological fantasy of a cohesive society, confronting us with the lack or traumatic kernel not covered by any ‘ideal’. He also points out that the tendency of social and political scientists to externalise the cause of conflict onto social conditions is an avoidance of the unacknowledged desire of the subject.64 This could also be said of some conflict resolution theorists. The present study looks for signs of fantasy and assesses their effects on the management of conflict. For Zˇizˇek specific ideologies work ‘not through conscious processes of manipulation and the successful interpellation of subjects, but through unconscious fantasies and the “failure” of interpellation’.65 Therefore, following Lacan, ideology ‘has to be read as a ciphered formation of the unconscious’.66 It works in a form of misrecognition at the level of social reality. People overlook the illusion that structures their relationship to reality by means of the ‘ideological practice of disidentification’.67 They believe the illusion that they are not identical to the ideological identification, which they accept has a hold on them. They say to themselves, ‘“I’m not merely a direct embodiment of . . .; beneath this ideological mask, there lurks a warm human person with his small sorrows and joys which have nothing to do with big ideological issues . . . .”’68 According to Zˇizˇek, it is precisely this stance that makes war, violence, conflict or whatever acceptable. This warm human person appeal or an appeal to solidarity, justice, community or whatever is the trans-ideological kernel of ideology. They are appeals to something other than the political. Fantasies of an ideological nature often operate in such a way as to keep people from becoming politicised. Thus, Zˇizˇek writes that ‘the political gesture par excellence, at its purest, is precisely the gesture of separating the Political from the non-Political, of excluding some domains from the Political’.69 Zˇizˇek notes other features of the social-ideological fantasy that sustain antagonism. As the swing between attraction and repulsion is constitutive of human desire, fantasy too displays this tendency. The resolution of this conundrum is to make the concrete Other occupy the place of the sublime image. In conflict resolution this means one has to see people as they really are. He also notes that whatever we desire in fantasy becomes unsustainable in reality. In other words, fantasies do not work out in reality: what you get is not what you want. Furthermore, identification with a fantasy is not sustained by big things but by small things because the nature of antagonisms are such that small differences become big issues. People will also accept lies, big lies, for the good of the Other. A further trait of fantasy is that 21

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Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict

it tries to relive the point where things started to go wrong for the subject or subjects. This is a fantasmic point that exists simply to allow subjects to rationalise whatever it is they find unpleasurable. Zˇizˇek also stresses that some discourses only exist through the denial of their libidinal foundation. In other words, they exist on the basis of self-censorship. Self-censorship is used to enhance the power discourse because it veils what otherwise might abhor people and thus keeps people on board while sustaining repressed racism, homosexuality, etc. Jokes disclose what is publicly unacknowledged or censored. Likewise, appearances, a type of fantasmic support, are also a crucial hallmark of mainstream ideologico-political discourse as it wishes to appear tolerant etc. Appearances give the illusion of freedom or tolerance, but unwritten rules actually forbid certain things from happening. In this sense, these very appearances and the unwritten rules that sustain them are what guarantee the fantasy of freedom from prejudice etc. Ideology has a Lacanian ‘point de capiton’ or quilting point that enables its heterogeneous parts to become a coherent narrative or fantasy. The ‘point de capiton’ or quilt involves a notable inversion such that what was a failure is often turned into a triumph. This ‘point de capiton’ can equally be the outsiders who are held responsible for all the woes of the majority group. What is in fact happening is that people are externalising their lack on to others. The lack or repressed thing returns in the shape of ‘bad’ others, in Zˇizˇekian language, this return is termed the ‘spectral apparition’. The spectral apparition is always accompanied by a ‘symbolic fiction’, the beatific side of fantasy. The notion of a cohesive society, a coherent narrative, is predicated upon the notion of that which threatens it so much so that, in Homer’s words, ‘the prohibition that maintains and regulates the social order, draws its very strength from that which it prohibits and excludes. If the threat is not actually, empirically, present then it will have to be constituted.’70 Objects are invented to externalise the cause of nonsatisfaction of desire. Socio-ideological fantasy and jouissance Jouissance is a repressed pleasure or satisfaction forbidden by the Symbolic and against which desire acts as a defence because, in so far as desire is socialised, it does not have satisfaction as its goal. The enjoyment or jouissance may involve suffering. One’s angst becomes a substitute satisfaction for the repressed pleasure: feelings disguise the enjoyment. In the case of obsession the individual refuses to be the object of the Other’s jouissance and so engineers life in such a way as to never get what he/she wants. According to Zˇizˇek, that which renders ideology fascinating for people is not its content or latent thought but jouissance, which is structured by 22

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symptoms and fantasies. Ideology brings people unconscious pleasure because it offers them social reality as an escape from an encounter with the Real. It obfuscates the true horror of a situation, trying to get people to ignore the political and economic conditions behind conflicts. The impossibility of the fantasy of ideology is itself distortedly represented, positivised within an ideological field in the form of an external element. It does this by promoting the fantasy of the impossible fullness of society. As people flee division they ‘indulge in the notion of society as an organic Whole, kept together by forces of solidarity and co-operation’.71 Every ideology attaches itself to some kernel of jouissance that is obtained when a transgression occurs, i.e. when the neurotic, who has by definition renounced pleasure, breaks a norm of the Other. (In this sense, jouissance is akin to the addiction to alcohol that an otherwise fulfilled and happy person experiences and which can bring him/her suffering: the subject is satisified by the transgression.) Indeed, Zˇizˇek holds that an illicit enjoyment is the pre-condition for the ideology to work in the first place.72 Ideologies in effect attach themselves to a structure of enjoyment and prohibition, for the more one represses something or the more it is prohibited, the stronger the desire for it or the more we wish to enjoy it. Thus the superego, the prohibition of desire, paradoxically represents an imperative to enjoyment. Symbolic power indulges in a ‘phantasmic “inherent transgression”’,73 a disavowed obscene supplement such that ‘power can reproduce itself only through some form of self-distance, by relying on the obscene disavowed rules and practices that are in conflict with its public norms’.74 Jouissance is also what accounts for the construction of community. What holds together a community is not so much identification with the public or Symbolic law but, in Homer’s words, ‘the attribution of excessive enjoyment to other or alien groups and the fear of the theft of one’s own enjoyment’.75 Lacan notes that fear of robbery informs morality: ‘The whole relation of man to the real of goods is organized relative to the power of the other, the imaginary other, to deprive him of it.’76 This fear is often rationalised in the belief that these others have an unfathomable, impossible enjoyment which they have stolen from us. Such accusations are typically accompanied by feelings of paranoia: there are always enemies out there trying to deprive us of our fullness. Zˇizˇek notes astutely that people never had what they say has been stolen from them. There is an illusion at work. People also envy the Other’s jouissance or ‘superabundant vitality’.77 However, it is evident that what the subject envies in the other may not be what he/she wants. In this regard, Lacan remarks: ‘Everyone knows that envy is usually aroused by the possession of goods which would be of 23

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Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict

no use to the person who is envious of them, and about the true nature of which he does not have the least idea.’78 If people fantasise the enjoyment of the Other, they also hate it. For Zˇizˇek, the hatred of the Other’s enjoyment is the hatred of the self, for the Other speaks of the impossibility of one’s own enjoyment.79 The Other’s jouissance is also the object of jealousy. So, while a community can berate another community, hate it and attack it, underneath this is ‘a peculiar attraction, an attraction which finds expression in the elaborate construction of plots and conspiracies but above all in the attribution of excessive power, potency, and indulgence in pleasure by the other’.80 Oscillation between extremes – for example, viewing immigrants at one and the same time as lazy and over-diligent – also results in the types of contradictions that point to rivalry over jouissance. Society needs to deal with the fact that the enjoyment or jouissance of others is often the object of envy and resentment. It also means dealing with the reality of the uncertainty that drives us into the arms of totalising and paranoid ideologies that have as their aim the repression of this lack or gap that results in differences. The drive of hegemonic strategies towards consistencies by the use of myths is what leads to antagonistic strategies within the social.81 Jouissance and aggression Jouissance contains unconscious aggression as all neurotics seek retribution from the Other, which they hate for getting its kicks from him/her thereby enjoying what the neurotic has sacrificed.82 This explains why Lacan can write that ‘jouissance is evil . . . it is suffering because it involves suffering for my neighbour’.83 People unconsciously blame others for their woes. Lacan also notes that jouissance also involves suffering for oneself because the subject feels cruelty in relation to the self.84 The desire for retribution from the Other can also be described in the dialectic of the Master–Slave. The Slave (mis)perceives the Master as amassing jouissance and attempts to steal some back. But this stealing, while it brings the satisfaction of duping the Master, actually keeps the Slave locked into servitude for the Slave accepts the framework of the social relationship of domination. As Butler puts this: [W]e think we have found a point of opposition to domination, and then realize that that very point of opposition is the instrument through which domination works, and that we have unwittingly enforced the powers of domination through our participation in its opposition. It is unconscious. Dominance appears most effectively precisely as its ‘Other’.85

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Psychoanalytic theory

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Jouissance and ethics Building on Lacan, Zˇizˇek holds that jouissance is linked to ethics in so far as responsibility for evil is said to occur when the subject derives unconscious enjoyment from the action that is enjoyed as a transgressive activity. For this reason, shame for something is normally an indication of jouissance. Zˇizˇek also notes that when people claim ignorance for their defence, this does not merit forgiveness because ignorance is the state of not wanting to know, and this state brings unconscious enjoyment too. It is the disavowed subjective libidinal investment that makes something immanently wrong. In the domain of conflict resolution, this renders shame and claims of ignorance insufficient. People need to take responsibility for what they unconsciously enjoy if significant change is to occur. Conclusion Lacan’s explanation of the constitution of the ego and subjectivity and the role of jouissance in this clearly indicate that our traditional understandings of ideology and the construction of community identity are inadequate for studies of conflict. Ideology is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Bolstering up ideologies by the implementation of peace agreements is not the way forward. In Northern Ireland socio-ideological fantasy obfuscates, among other things, the horror of sectarianism and internal divisions within communities. We must avoid ideological explanations of conflict, like those upon which the Good Friday Agreement is premised. Rivalry over jouissance binds a community together and contributes to the reproduction of conflict. Lacanian analysis is an ideal tool for an examination of the unconscious dynamics of conflict. NOTES

1

2 3 4 5

Young notes the existence of various types of psychoanalytic literature including clinical studies, psychoanalytic studies of the arts, works on feminist theory, literature, sexual identity and orientation, and culture. (Robert Young, ‘What does psychoanalysis have to offer to newly democratising countries?’ www.human-nature.com). Psychoanalytic works on politics include writings by Zˇizˇek, Stavrakakis, Althusser, Elliott and Jameson, as well as seminal work by Adorno and Marcuse, and adaptations of Lacanian theory by Laclau and Mouffe. Anthony Elliott, Social Theory and Psychoanalysis in Transition: Self and Society from Freud to Kristeva (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 2–3. Sean Homer, ‘Psychoanalysis and the politics of postmodernity: a conversation between Sean Homer and Anthony Elliott’, PS, 2:2, (1999), p. 56. Anthony Elliott (ed.), The Blackwell Reader in Contemporary Social Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), p. 6. Elliott, Social Theory and Psychoanalysis in Transition, p. 2.

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Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict 6

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7

8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30 31

Jacques-Alain Miller (ed.), The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis (London: Penguin Books, 1994), p. 127. Lacanian psychoanalysis is best accounted for in the following texts: Miller (ed.), The Four Fundamental Concepts, Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection, (London: Routledge, 1993), Jacques-Alain Miller (ed.), The Ethics of Psychoanalysis: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VII, 1959–60 (London: Routledge, 1992), Jacques-Alain Miller (ed.), The Psychoses: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III (London: Routledge, 1993), J. Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis (London: Karnac Books, 1988), John P. Muller and William J. Richardson, Lacan and Language: A Reader’s Guide to Ecrits (New York: International Universities Press, INC., 1994), Bruce Fink, The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), and by the same author, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), Darian Leader and Judy Groves, Lacan for Beginners (Cambridge: Icon Books Ltd, 1995) and Malcolm Bowie, Lacan (London: Fontana Modern Masters, Fontana Press, 1991). Howard Richards, ‘Of paranoia and metanoia: lessons for peacemakers from the teachings of Jacques Lacan’, www.human-nature.com, p. 90. Miller (ed.), The Four Fundamental Concepts, p. 11. For a detailed discussion of the Symbolic, Imaginary and Real orders see ‘The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis’, Lacan, Ecrits, pp. 30–113 and ‘On the possible treatment of psychosis’, ibid., pp. 179–225. See Lacan, ‘The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience’, ibid., pp. 1–7 and ‘Aggressivity in psychoanalysis’, ibid., pp. 8–29. For Lacan, the symptom is simply a metaphor. For discussion, see ‘The agency of the letter in the unconscious or reason since Freud’, ibid., pp. 146–78. For a discussion of jouissance, see ‘The subversion of the subject and dialectic of desire’, ibid., pp. 292–324 Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis, p. 111. Ibid., p. 51. Lacan, Ecrits, p. 21. Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis, p. 89. Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Zˇizˇek, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left (London: Verso, 2000), p. 253. Sherry Turkle, Psychoanalytic Politics (London: Burnett Books, 1979), p. 76. Miller, (ed.), The Four Fundamental Concepts, p. 22. Ibid., p. 60. Ibid., p. 49. Slavoj Zˇizˇek, For They Know Not What They Do (London: Verso, 1991), p. 196. Lacan, Ecrits, p. 7. Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., p. 11. See Henry McDonald and Jim Cusack, UDA: Inside the Heart of Loyalist Terror (fully updated edition) (Dublin: Penguin Ireland, 2005), Chapters 12–15 on the fear of loyalist violence in the Catholic community. Anthony Wilden, System and Structure: Essays in Communication and Exchange (London: Tavistock Publications, 1972), p. 481. For a discussion of these, see Laplanche and Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis, pp. 349–55. Ibid., p. 352. Lacan refers to projection in the context of Freud’s belle âme who is engaged in ‘throwing back on to the world the disorder of which his being is composed’. Lacan, Ecrits, p. 20.

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32 This dynamic can be applied to all relationships with others and for Brennan it underpins the relations between men and women in which woman is the denigrated or pacified Other. Teresa Brennan, History After Lacan (London: Routledge, 1993). 33 Anika Lemaire, Jacques Lacan (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 64. 34 Lacan, Ecrits, p. 42. 35 Butler, Laclau and Zˇizˇek, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality, p. 125. 36 Miller (ed.), The Four Fundamental Concepts, p. 89. 37 Lacan, Ecrits, p. 166. 38 Fink, The Lacanian Subject, p. 215. 39 Sean Homer, ‘Psychoanalysis, post-Marxism and the subject: from the ethical to the political’, Journal of the Universities Association for Psychoanalytic Studies, 1, (1998), p. 22. 40 Miller (ed.), The Four Fundamental Concepts, p. 243. 41 Fink, The Lacanian Subject, p. 211. 42 Bowie, Lacan, pp. 15–16. 43 Fink, The Lacanian Subject, p. 67. 44 Even if the arbitrary nature of the sign is wrong as posited by Saussure, Lacan’s concepts are still useful, concerned as Lacanian theory is with fantasy and not reality. Julia Kristeva’s work attests to the relevance of Lacanian analysis even though she is critical of his exclusion of the pre-Oedipal mother’s role in the construction of meaning and culture. Cixous, Irigaray and Derrida also build on Lacanian ideas without accepting all of Lacan’s insights. For a critique of the Saussurean approach, see Craig Brandist, The Bakhtin Circle: Philosophy, Culture and Politics (London: Pluto Press, 2002). For critiques of Lacanian analysis, see Norman N. Holland, ‘The Trouble(s) with Lacan’, www. clas.ufl.edu/users/nnh/online.html#lacan and Ros Minsky, ‘Fragrant theory: the sweet scent of signifiers’, www.Human-nature.com/free-associations/minsky. Holland argues that Lacan ‘drops us out of speaking, out of understanding language . . . out of understanding one another, understanding oneself’ (Holland, The Trouble(s) with Lacan, p. 13). The reader can make his/her mind up on this having read the present work: I demonstrate that Lacanian theory helps us see the contradictions that pour out of people’s mouths as they square circles, justify themselves and fox us and themselves. Lacan is not into ‘understanding one another’ if this means uncritically accepting one another, and I do not find this problematic. Besides, Holland’s claim that the particular school of therapy (Freudian, Kleinian, etc.) applied in psychoanalytic research does not change the patient’s style if applied holistically would indicate that what matters is not whose theory you apply – even Lacan’s – but the holistic mode. See Holland, ‘Psychoanalysis as science’, Journal for the Psychological Study of the Arts, www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/ journal/2004_holland08.shtml#holland08, p. 10. 45 Lacan, Ecrits, p. 155. 46 Miller (ed.), The Psychoses, pp. 115–16. 47 Holland argues that ‘90% of our mental life is unconscious’ (‘Psychoanalysis as science’, p. 10), that ‘Anything a person says . . . expresses unconscious concerns and ultimately that person’s deepest themes’ (ibid., p. 10) and that the unconscious determines everything we do. 48 Laplanche and Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis, p. 390. 49 Miller (ed.), The Four Fundamental Concepts, p. 153. 50 Miller (ed.), The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, p. 231. 51 Ibid., p. 232. 52 Miller (ed.), The Psychoses, p. 164. 53 Miller (ed.), The Four Fundamental Concepts, p. 26.

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Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

80 81 82 83 84 85

Ibid., p. 25. Ibid., p. 25. Miller (ed.), The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, p. 73. Ibid., p. 24. Miller (ed.), The Four Fundamental Concepts, p. 40. Ibid., p. 34. Lacan, Ecrits, p. 137. Ibid., p. 15. Zˇizˇek (ed.), Mapping Ideology (London: Verso, 1994), p. 66. Ibid., p. 323. Ibid., p. 6. Sean Homer, ‘The Frankfurt School, the father and the social fantasy’, New Formations, 38 (1999), p. 89. Slovaj Zˇizˇek, The Plague of Fantasies (London: Verso, 1997), p. 52. Butler, Laclau and Zˇizˇek, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality, p. 103. Zˇizˇek (ed.), Mapping Ideology, p. 77. Butler, Laclau and Zˇizˇek, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality, p. 95. Homer, ‘The Frankfurt School, the father and the social fantasy’, p. 88. Zˇizˇek (ed.), Mapping Ideology, p. 6. For an interesting discussion of the repressed femaleness of fascist identity, see Homer, ‘The Frankfurt School, the father and the social fantasy’, pp. 81–2. Zˇizˇek (ed.), Mapping Ideology, p. 218. Ibid., p. 218. Homer, ‘The Frankfurt School, the father and the social fantasy’, p. 88. Miller (ed.), The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, p. 234. Ibid., p. 237. Miller (ed.), The Four Fundamental Concepts, p. 116. Zˇizˇek gives the example of the West’s hatred of nationalism in ex-Yugoslavia, which he views as a projection of the West’s hatred of nationalism at home that threatens liberal democracy. Homer, ‘The Frankfurt School, the father and the social fantasy’, p. 89. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London: Verso, 1989), p. 127. Miller (ed.), The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, p. 194. Ibid., p. 184. Ibid., p. 194. Butler, Laclau and Zˇizˇek, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality, p. 28.

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2

Conflict resolution

Traditional approaches to conflict resolution Lederach Lederach is a leading proponent of transformation type conflict resolution who contends that conflict tends to occur where there are ethnic, regional and religious differences and arises over ‘long-standing animosities rooted in a perceived threat to identity and survival’1 and thus armed conflict has security as its goal. In such contexts the leitmotif ‘If we do not dominate, we will be dominated’ is created by astute propagandists and political manipulation, which all play on the presence of an enemy and the desire for survival.2 For Lederach peace-building is about transforming ‘conflict towards more sustainable, peaceful relationships’.3 This involves the ‘restoration and rebuilding of relationships’4 and the ‘redefinition . . . of relationships’5 based on a ‘profound reconciliation’6 that addresses ‘the root causes of enmity before they regenerate destabilizing tensions’.7 He recognises that understanding and process alone do not resolve conflict: animosity, fear and stereotyping cannot be changed by rational and mechanical attitudes to conflict resolution. Instead, one needs to work at the restoration and rebuilding of relationships by addressing ‘the experiential and subjective realities shaping people’s perspectives and needs’.8 The focus on relationships leads Lederach to argue that the concerns of peace-building are people’s emotions, prejudice, perceptions and the spiritual dimension. He suggests that people ‘encounter’ and ‘share’ in groups with the goal of ‘creating new perceptions and a new shared experience’.9 For Lederach, peace-building is a matter of redefining relationships, envisioning interdependent working together, and changing how people structure and conduct relationships. Conflict resolution approaches need 29

Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict

to be integrative, comprehensive and analytical and address the needs of grassroots, middle and top level actors while addressing wider system (e.g. inequities etc.) and immediate issues. Recognition of the Other, inclusion and coordination are important in these approaches.

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CRITIQUE OF LEDERACH

From a Lacanian perspective redefinition is basically the construction of new fantasies. But this will not work. Lacan rails against collusion with the ego. The task of our age is to avoid such collusion. ‘Profound reconciliation’ is also an illusion. It is a hindrance to a healthier society because it gets us stuck. Reconciliation – people articulating their past pain and envisioning their interdependent future, overcoming differences, healing, analysing the situation – does not occur in any society and should not be a prerequisite for ‘sustainable’ peace. Reflection on the root causes of enmity too will not in itself deliver a healthier society, however much one supplements this with reference to people’s experience and their subjective needs. Nor is it enough that people simply tell their stories and listen to one another. The articulation of pain is something my interviewees do. In conflict situations, the articulation of pain is an integral part of the list of ‘positives’ groups have of themselves. It does not in itself help create peace. One does not articulate pain in conflict resolution – it slips out, finally, in spite of the subject’s desire to bury it. Likewise, while Lederach’s focus on sustainable relationships is interesting, the goal of conflict resolution for him, namely peaceful relationships, is also an illusion. Antagonism is a feature of all social life. To some this might sound like stating the obvious and be of no significance to a discussion of conflict resolution. However, to argue that peaceful relationships consist in the absence of armed conflict is hardly conflict resolution. In Northern Ireland where ceasefires are in place, periodic violence continues and destabilising tensions persist. Rather than speak of ‘resolving conflict’ or ‘peace-building’ we need to speak of dealing with unconscious aggression and whatever fantasies motivate this because only this will bring about significant change. Idealising concepts does not help one to deal with conflict. Having laid out his stall, Lederach notes that oftentimes it is exhaustion on the part of participants to a conflict that leads to peace, and not ‘innovative, planned transformation’.10 This opinion would indicate that his transformation plan is not where it is at. What exhaustion drives people to do is to replace one fantasy with another. However, what it also indicates is that people change when they want to, and one way of getting them to this point is to examine unconscious desire, not to revisit the past 30

Conflict resolution

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or envision a shared future, or wait around for the possibility of people getting exhausted of violence. Dealing with conflict needs in part to be about learning to deal with unconscious aggression. Healthier relationships can result from this. The problem is people believe what they want about themselves. They see what they want, ignoring their paranoia, their propensity for rationalisation, the negative consequences of their behaviour, their unconscious enjoyment, etc. They don’t problematise their own behaviour. They listen to others to have their own ideal views of themselves confirmed. In other words, the problem is that people, however enlightened they feel they are, however moderate they perceive themselves to be, rationalise their lack, and this habit needs to be continually brought into question. The emphasis on relationship in Lederach’s analysis suffers from a lack of understanding of the split nature of the subject and the tendency to idealise the other in conflict resolution practice. As Zˇizˇek states, ‘prejudice’ reduction simply leaves us as victims of our so-called prejudices as it is based on the false notion of an undiscovered ideal Other – as if we could decide who others really are.11 Thus, if one were to discover that Catholics are as loyalists typically describe them, e.g. hypocrites taking the half-crown but not the Crown, pan-nationalists who support the IRA unreservedly, backward, etc., this still would not have anything to do with the real roots of anti-Catholicism. Why? Because the real roots of such anti-Catholicism have to do with the trauma or deadlock that loyalists unconsciously experience in themselves. The fact that people behave in a particular way does not explain why a subject hates or resents them. Participants to the conflict in Northern Ireland are called to recognise their paranoid constructions in order to identify the way in which the ideological figures of others are constructed to stitch up the inconsistency of one’s own ideological system. Mature social relations will involve one confronting the antagonism or lack within the subject. A theory of conflict management needs to talk of aggression, not peace, of enmity, not profound reconciliation. And its exploration of enmity does not need to be historical, as Lederach would have it, but rather it must explore the unconscious operations of enmity. Conflict is best dealt with by concerning ourselves with the theory of the subject that suggests that the subject is by his/her construction conflicted, and that change is possible when the subject desires it. A Lacanian reading of armed conflict suggests that what participants to conflict want is not control of their lives but control of the Other, a desire that is driven by the insecurity that armed conflict helps produce. The sense of fragmentation at the root of identity construction drives the desire for stability, which is ultimately satisfied by control of the Other. The desire 31

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Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict

for security is an unconscious desire to dominate. It is a rationalisation. People need to become aware of their sense of fragmentation and the unconscious enjoyment it provides. To fail to do so is to cede to the desire to dominate. Lederach, as noted above, claims that conflict is a matter of longstanding animosities rooted in a perceived threat to identity and survival. From a Lacanian perspective, conflict does not arise because the subject is threatened but because the subject unconsciously wants to dominate the Other. The question one needs to ask is why distrust, fear and paranoia arise in the first instance, rather than, as Lederach asks, why these lead to violence, which leads to more hatred and fear.12 They arise because they are fundamental to identity formation. They do not always lead to violence. People choose violent conflict. This is important to recognise. Lederach seems to downplay this, seeing psychological states as inevitably leading to conflict. Thus, the traditional approach in conflict resolution of getting the Other to change or getting the subject to change his/her perception of the Other is not the way to success. The desire for domination may well remain unchanged. The challenge is to traverse the unconscious fantasy that drives the desire for domination. The issue of perception in conflict resolution is typically psychologised and proves a distraction. Lederach speaks of perceived threats. The discussion around threats should not be about whether they are imagined or not, but about the fantasy that underlies the perception. Much of conflict resolution discussion is wasted on the matter of whether threats are perceived or real, with the status this claim receives affecting the resolution. The focus in conflict resolution needs to be on the self and not the Other. Subjects need to come to see why they perceive events as they do and how they act out of their perception. Lacanian analysis suggests that we need to examine the fantasies behind the animosities that are rooted in a perceived threat to identity and survival. Lederach says that because of the animosity and the immediacy of the enemy, conflicts are driven by ‘social-psychological perceptions, emotions, and subjective experiences’13 and that the originating issues take a back seat in this context. His point here is that conflict analysis needs to go beyond subjectivity to examine the originating issues. However, a Lacanian approach argues that these perceptions etc. are the key to what is really driving the conflict, the key to an examination of unconscious socio-ideological fantasy. Lederach puts the reproduction or prolongation of conflict down to astute propagandists and political manipulation. No doubt these contribute to conflict but if, as Lederach argues, people are manipulated, one must ask if people in fact choose to be controlled. The position of Slave brings 32

Conflict resolution

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its own pleasure. The blanket claim that people are manipulated in conflict overlooks the individual’s ability to choose a different way of relating. Lederach seems to offer no ethical challenge to the individual caught up in conflict. It is not enough to reduce a person’s choice to use violence to a matter of self-defence, i.e. Lederach’s ‘If we do not dominate, we will be dominated’. This excuses the individual’s free will and overlooks the ethical choice that domination involves. One dominates because it is part of our unconscious make-up. It is not peculiar to war. Cohesion is seen as a desired goal of conflict by Lederach, and the irony, according to Lederach, is that the existence of division contributes to this desire. But cohesion, in Lacanian analysis, is a mirage. Besides, the fact that the existence of division contributes to the desire for conflict is only ironic if one sees the eradication of division as the goal of conflict resolution. If conflict resolution is not about eradicating division but about persuading people to deal with their fantasies that have negative consequences for themselves and others, this would suggest Lederach is looking in the wrong place. Following the logic of Lederach’s reflection on the relationship between division and cohesion, one would need to ask why anyone would give up on division when it contributes to the desire for such cohesion and security. Lederach does not ask this question. Lacan’s answer might well be because they unconsciously enjoy division. Lederach’s assertion that the psycho-social, cultural and psychological elements drive and sustain conflicts more than substantive issues do is correct. This can be seen from the interviews analysed for the current research. However, Lederach makes a further claim in this regard namely that when people are caught up in a war it is both difficult for them to see that it is oppressive to all involved and to put an end to it. In other words, wars persist because people are too emotionally involved to put an end to violence that otherwise, in the cold light of day, they would apply their reason to and stop. The problem with this assumption from a Lacanian perspective is that conflict cannot be resolved by intellectual understanding, which is what Lederach’s claim amounts to. Besides, war is not driven by emotions: the emotions are symptomatic of something else, i.e. unconscious desire. People engage in war in spite of the serious consequences for them because it is unconsciously attractive. War is not a fight for survival alone, it is also about unconscious pleasure – pleasure in pain, domination and inflicting pain etc. As noted earlier, Lederach recognises that rational attitudes to conflict resolution will not work unless one first addresses the experiential and subjective realities shaping people’s perspectives and needs. The problem with this approach is that one ends up tinkering with the effects of the socioideological fantasy rather than dealing with the fantasy itself. Addressing 33

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Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict

subjective realities and experience might be a huge advance on the statist approach to conflict resolution, i.e. the examination of substantive issues, but by ignoring the unconscious dimension of a subject’s ‘reality’, we are going nowhere. People are shaped more by the unconscious than by their experience, and it is the unconscious that shapes their needs and perspectives. To ignore the unconscious while examining subjective realities is to psychologise conflict. Conflict resolution theory also needs to take its focus off relationships. This focus leads Lederach to view change in terms of reconciliation, and here we enter Lederach’s minefield of people’s emotions, prejudice, perceptions and the spiritual dimension. He claims that focusing on relationships leads us beyond impasse, that grieving the past (or reflecting on the past) is building the future, and that envisioning a common future helps us deal with the past. But how does sharing bring about reconciliation? Reflecting on the past need not advance anything. And why do we privilege shared experience as a basis for a peaceful future? For all its economic advances for some European Union (EU) citizens, has a new European identity done anything other than create injustice and economic hardship for non-EU members worldwide? New fantasies are not the answer to the world’s problems. Can one say that in Northern Ireland Initiative ‘92 helped people build a future? Did it not, rather, confirm people’s beliefs? People get stuck and all the sharing in the world will not necessarily bring them forward. The Good Friday Agreement was a shared accord, it seemed, and then proved highly contentious. A shared vision need not be a part of managing conflict. In fact, it may alienate people. And what if people do not want a shared future? What then? What if people do not want to participate in ‘the strategic social capacity to dream’14 and Lederach’s ‘dreamers’ are not forthcoming? If a community is stuck, one gets desire going by challenging it to grasp what is going on unconsciously and to take responsibility. Dreamers are not the answer. Lederach agrees that peace-building is a process and as such involves people playing various roles, mainly to do with cessation of violence and negotiation. It is noteworthy that twelve out of the thirteen roles Lederach says are involved in this process of peace-building have to do with the latter tasks, and as such the long-term problem of dealing with people’s attitudes and relationships is sidelined. This area, however, is where roles have to be developed to manage conflict. Through education and instruction, people need to be invited to traverse their socio-ideological fantasy. This is not a matter of dealing with emotions or grief or of building a shared future. And it involves all people, not just middle-range activists, as Lederach calls them. Lederach’s approach to transformation involves a lot of reflection for participants, with intervention occurring to bring about change at the 34

Conflict resolution

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personal, relational, structural and cultural levels. His is a tall order – change in the ‘psychological, spiritual, social, economic, political and military levels’.15 In situations of violent conflict, however, change needs primarily to be at the level of awareness and choice. Anything else absorbs time and money with little result. Unconscious desire is at the heart of conflict such that even the truism that everyone wants peace has to be questioned. Statements like this cover up the fact that people also enjoy killing and that wars have a symbolic purpose. Lederach notes that ‘[c]onflict is born in the world of human meaning and perception’,16 which tells us that language has everything to do with conflict and that Lacanian theory, which views the unconscious as being structured like language, can help us deal with this. Participants to a conflict must do more than analyse the situation or try to understand the other. Francis Diane Francis notes that conflict arises because injustice and oppression ‘characterise a substantial proportion of human relationships’.17 She places her emphasis on conflict resolution with active non-violence and highlights power and justice in this framework. If peace is to prevail worldwide a global realignment of power is required. Non-violence aims to overcome the structural violence of injustice while conflict resolution aims at overcoming armed violence. Together they are about transforming violent conflict into a constructive process of change. Overall both aspire to establishing ‘relationships of respect’.18 Non-violence is about people acting on their own behalf ‘while respecting the humanity and needs of those they oppose’.19 Conflict resolution is about recovery, healing, reconciliation, including redistribution of power and new laws and institutions. People must process resentments, hatreds and traumas. Conflict resolution also looks at peace-building after violent conflict and how to overcome ‘human destructiveness’.20 Francis sees peace-building as getting consensus and inclusion and then ensuring good governance. She notes that ‘the process of learning is in its infancy and the transformation of violent conflict is likely to present a challenge as far into the future as one can see’.21 CRITIQUE OF FRANCIS

There are various problems with this approach to the management of conflict. For example, why should one assume that people involved in Francis’ process will be any better at respecting the dominant Other than the Other is in relation to the victim – an assumption she makes? Conflict arises not because of injustice but because of the way we are constituted and the 35

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Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict

unconscious fantasy we live out of. There is no point in psychologising hatreds or trauma, which is what Francis means by processing them. We need to approach these psychoanalytically. Peace-building, a term Francis espouses, sounds philanthropic and fosters a dominance mentality. The notion of dealing with aggression, on the other hand, applies to everyone. One cannot, moreover, overcome what Francis terms ‘human destructiveness’, as we have seen. Power issues, besides, are matters of the ego. What is needed is a theory that explains our motivation. The challenge for participants to conflict is to understand their unconscious motivation and act to change their behaviour. This means handling differences differently. Burton For Burton, conflict is not caused by power rivalries or ideologies and interests but by needs and values. He highlights the centrality of identity, security and recognition to conflict. Conflict resolution is about developing analytical problem-solving processes or techniques that take as a priori people’s needs to have their inalienable or non-negotiable values or needs met. These needs are the kernel of the underlying issues that lead to violent conflict according to Burton. Burton’s list of basic needs include identity, security, recognition, to learn and political participation. He also mentions equitable income distribution, employment and no discrimination of race or gender. People fight for these no matter what the cost, thus they are inalienable. He argues that such needs can be met without the other being compromised because there is enough to go around everyone. For Burton, the source of conflict is ‘individual and national aggressiveness’22 around needs and values. It is the demands that institutions make that prevent people from having their basic needs met. He sees integration and assimilation as goals, and separation, when desired, as interim. Peace-building is based upon ‘value-free and neutral attitudes’.23 Change typically occurs as a last resort but he says people need to learn to change through education. People need to learn ‘how to think’ and then bring ‘the totality of knowledge’24 to public policy and social relations. Burton claims that people restrain themselves because they have a basic human need for ‘valued relationships’, which are ‘constantly and persistently sought’.25 Burton believes that ‘[i]t is a critical common-sensism that people do not normally seek to destroy each other and themselves’.26 Thus, people need to be shown that the cost of conflict is greater than the cost of peace and common-sense will lead people to opt for the latter. The common good they seek and Burton promotes is ‘the full development of the individual’.27 He believes in a ‘universal or human culture that favors reasoned attempts to 36

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contend with problems’.28 The problem with society is the ‘impersonalization of relationships’.29 In order to resolve conflict, Burton claims people need to look critically and analytically at their behaviour and then ‘choose satisfiers that are not a threat to others’.30 His point is that demands for land etc. are simply symptoms of the underlying needs for recognition and identity that can only be satisfied by distributive justice and valued relationships in the wider society. So the point of conflict resolution is to promote valued relationships. CRITIQUE OF BURTON

Burton’s claim that conflict is caused by needs and values is interesting in that values bring the symbolic to the fore in conflict resolution. However, he overlooks the imaginary dimension of such needs and values, which he deems inalienable because – in his words – people are willing to fight for them. Identity, recognition, security, etc. are not needs but the object of desire. Needs are demands in Lacanian analysis, demands for love and all demands are disappointed or dissatisfied and go hand in hand with the desire for domination. Burton thinks that needs are easy to resolve because ‘basic needs such as identity, security, and recognition are inexhaustible; they can be distributed without depriving others’.31 His claim that there is enough to go around, i.e. that everyone’s needs can be met, is an illusion: people are never satisfied, never happy and rivalry is always present. Burton notes that if you incorrectly define a conflict, you cannot resolve it.32 It is perhaps apt at this juncture to ask whether it is possible that conflict is traditionally ill-defined because people unconsciously enjoy it? A further question is why do we desire certain needs to be inalienable? Why do we invest in them so? Isn’t this driven by our experience of the fragmented self? And wouldn’t it make more sense to examine this self rather than bolster the fantasy? Besides, who decides what is ‘inalienable’? Burton says people pursue these needs ‘regardless of human costs and consequences’33 and that this is proof of their inalienability, but this is a form of obsession. People idealise needs. Burton’s ‘needs’ are really values and so are part of the problem rather than part of the solution. We do not need to idealise such needs, we need to challenge our deification of them. It is their beatification that causes problems for people and short-circuits analysis of conflict. Burton is correct to highlight the centrality of identity, security and recognition to conflict. This is good, and a vast improvement on the more traditional view of conflict as disturbance of the status quo, which can only be resolved via coercion. It also is good in that it shows the importance of the symbolic in conflict, whereas traditionally conflict was seen as arising out of a desire for material gain. The problem is that if the capacity for 37

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these needs to be satisfied is inexhaustible, so too are people’s propensity for insecurity, their desire for recognition and identity. Burton hits the nail on the head with his emphasis on aggressiveness and the individual. However, an examination of aggressiveness must be about more than needs. Burton’s provention and conflict resolution are based heavily on his belief that ‘[i]f we wish to make progress with problems of conflict within societies, we must have a valid conception of the human person, and especially the degree to which the person can be subordinated to the demands of society’.34 The priority given the conception of the human person is praiseworthy but this overlooks the unconscious and posits inalienable needs, though how he derives the status of these needs is not made explicit. His emphasis on subordination is also interesting, though limited. Lacan notes that people subordinate one another in their day-to-day relations. Institutions are not privileged purveyors of injustice. Burton’s belief in human goodness expressed in what he claims is people’s desire for the full development of the individual is too illusory for Lacan’s tastes. Burton, tellingly, admits that the desire for valued relationships that underpins this desire for the development of the individual does not stretch to include all others, and especially not others from other communities – and this, in my view, would tend to undermine his use of this theory to resolve conflict. Besides, this ‘flaw’, if you will, does not arise out of a lack of knowledge and incentive on the part of the subject in relation to others as he claims.35 Communities unconsciously rival with others over jouissance. And the Lacanian perspective also suggests that value-free and neutral attitudes are an illusion, and thus that peace-building, as Burton calls this, is destined for failure. In his rush to avoid a conception of the individual based on a ‘malign nature’36 that he says elites hold, Burton idealises the subject and overlooks the fact that the desire to dominate is in everyone. Burton is saying that if you look after needs, society will be harmonious. If you relate to others well and develop relationships, then people will stop themselves from deviating. But the problem is we unconsciously desire to deviate – to transgress. People may well like being reasonable, but the thought that this ideal predisposition is a ground for change and for the resolution of conflict is erroneous. For Lacan, reason is rationalisation, so peace-building based on such an ideal is doomed. The traditional view of conflict is that war happens because people are aggressive by nature. Burton’s view of conflict is that it arises because certain non-material needs are not met. This is fine in so far as it brings status and recognition of identity into the frame. It is an advance on the exclusivist view of the traditional interpretation that sees material needs 38

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as being the sole source of conflict. However, as stated above, Burton does not go far enough. In the Lacanian worldview people fight over both material and non-material resources. It is trite to say to people, as Burton appears to do, ‘you think you want jobs, but what you really want is recognition’. And, contrary to Burton’s claim, people are not aggressive by nature either, a view that suggests people are beyond change. If, as Burton remarks, change typically occurs in society as a last resort, surely one needs to ask why this is the case rather than pre-empt this through education as Burton suggests. People’s ability to resist change occurs precisely because of the fragmented subject that desires stability and rigidity. Change in society is typically the replacement of one fantasy with another, as appears to be the case post-Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. This has little to do with tiredness or desperation, as commentaries propose. Common-sense has little to do with why conflict is at a minimum in some societies either, as if people are predisposed to living in harmony, with the result that institutions are culpable, as Burton argues. Commonsense will not lead people to opt for peace. This is too idealistic. Lacanian analysis argues, as we have seen, that people do seek to destroy each other and themselves. Often people prefer their woes no matter what the costing. Costing is an appeal to self-interest, but other things militate against the decision not to enter into conflict – other interests and desires. Why do people kill each other? Because they unconsciously desire the destruction of the Other, and even of the self. Knowledge does not change people. People need to be educated about fantasy, i.e. how they construct themselves and the rationalisations this involves. They need to know how they create problems before they can contemplate choosing to deal with them. The traditional approach to conflict resolution in Northern Ireland Conflict resolution in Northern Ireland has been principally shaped by the cultural interpretation of the conflict that places cultural misunderstanding at the heart of the conflict.37 The conflict in Northern Ireland is said to arise out of the clash of two cultures over cultural differences in religion, language, media and sports. The people are said to absorb too much of their own culture and too little of the other community’s culture, leading to prejudice and mutual hatred. People are atavistic, i.e. caught up in the past or in their ancestors’ myths, and tribalistic, i.e. caught up in some historic barbarism and in need of enlightenment. The culturalist interpretation of the conflict promotes the notion of the ‘Two Traditions’ – proBritish and pro-Irish – divorced from the political. The past is viewed solely from a cultural point of view. The State identifies with this interpretation and its intervention generally has to do with promoting culturalist 39

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explanations and resolutions of the conflict in line with its belief that the problem is intolerance among communities within Northern Ireland. The solution to the conflict is multiculturalist in essence. It suggests people make attempts to increase their understanding of the other’s culture and this is said to be achievable if one brings people together and breaks down mutual misunderstanding over their differences. A celebration of independent community identities and differences has to be developed, focusing on mutual understanding, tolerance, pluralism, etc. instead of the previous focus upon cohesion and singularity. New conceptions of community need to be generated with enlightened perspectives. Individuals have to change, not society, not policies or institutions. From a Lacanian perspective it is clear that there are problems with the traditional multiculturalist approach to conflict. First, tolerance and mutual understanding are based on illusion. One has to avoid the humanistic approach to conflict resolution based on communication and therapy. One cannot eradicate intolerance and aggression. Besides, people might resist coming together because they are unconsciously happy with their dominance, or their grievances. Moreover, it is clear that understanding does not necessarily increase when people come together. Coming together can simply reinforce negative beliefs. And even when increased understanding does occur, this need not necessarily lead to change in attitudes or behaviour. And, of course, divorcing the individual from the structural/political/economic realm is anathema to Lacanian analysis, which situates the construction of subjectivity in the Other. Furthermore, the habit of reducing the conflict to personal prejudice overlooks the role of socioideological fantasy and amounts to psychologism, while viewing history solely from the cultural perspective leads to the depoliticisation of history which, as we have seen, is one of the functions of ideological fantasy, and thus instrumental in the unconscious reproduction of conflict. Furthermore, as Zˇizˇek points out, prejudice reduction is based on the false notion of an undiscovered ideal other, as if we could decide who others really are, i.e. good people.38 Moreover, multiculturalism’s calls for ‘new’ conceptions of community, the underlying assumption being that people are ignorant, flies in the face of Lacanian analysis, which argues that people unconsciously enjoy their ignorance, that change is not a matter of intellectual enlightenment and that new fantasies no more resolve the problems associated with community construction than they do the problems of the neurotic patient. Finally, in the realpolitik of Northern Ireland the fact that the State’s intervention generally has to do with promoting culturalist explanations and resolutions of the conflict and that many of the bodies it supports promote the culturalist view clearly has negative implications for ‘peace-building’. 40

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The approach to ‘peace-building’ in Northern Ireland has, in short, been therapeutic – focusing on what is positive (e.g. the ‘Two Traditions’, the desire for peace), helping people to see specific problems (e.g. typically sectarianism, conflicting nationalisms and paramilitary violence), offering immediate positive gains or happiness (i.e. peace/an end to violence). For the therapeutic approach, success is a matter of identifying problems on the basis of new insight and changing one’s behaviour as a result. A psychoanalytic approach to conflict is not like the therapeutic approach, which works on the premise that the more one knows about oneself, the happier and more successful one will be. Knowledge is bliss. Self-improvement is the name of the game. One of the problems with the therapeutic approach is that, as with psychological therapy, isolating one symptom may generate other symptoms. A psychoanalytic approach to conflict management does not isolate problems and work on these. It considers what drives these problems at the unconscious level. The isolation of symptoms has occurred in the Irish peace process with obvious negative results: the focus on decommissioning brought the fear for some that the Good Friday Agreement would collapse and heightened the anxiety around the belief that the Good Friday Agreement was the only show in town. The focus on parity of esteem leads to heightened anxiety for some around symbolic practices, e.g. Orange parades, and fears of alienation, if not extinction among sections of the Protestant community. A further problem with the therapeutic approach is that strengthening the ego is problematic. Knowledge is not enough. The insight into the unconscious must be put to work. Moreover, a curative result in the short term may itself have negative long-term consequences. The Good Friday Agreement, for example, while producing an historic agreement between two sides and a reduction in widespread ‘terrorist’ activity, has produced other problems that contradict the aims of the Agreement itself, not least a scepticism regarding the democratic process, widespread violence on the streets, and a schism within the mainstream unionist camp. Change in Northern Ireland will entail people acknowledging their rationalisations if they are to make the link between their beliefs and the perpetuation of antagonism. At the very least they will need to throw things into question. Structural change will not impact on the divisions and antagonisms that operate in conflict situations unless there is more fundamental change on the level of rationalisations that operate in the constitution of political identity and out of which structures develop. Below I consider change in Lacanian psychoanalysis.

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Lacanian change Psychoanalysis is concerned with social change. Freud saw the goal of psychoanalysis – the talking cure – as being to help people move on from intolerable distress to ordinary human happiness. Robert Young emphasises psychoanalysis’ moral dimension: it is ‘in the business of . . . increasing the emotional capacity for acting morally’39 in so far as it attempts to reduce the grip of neuroses on us, thus benefiting justice and peace. Foucault, for his part, argues that the goal of psychoanalysis as a moral therapy is to get people to take responsibility for their unconscious motivations, especially our inhumanity to others.40 For Lacan, the subject needs to talk in order to be freed ‘from an illness or an ignorance whose very limits he is unaware of’.41 He/she needs to be freed from the dubious satisfactions of neuroses. And the need for change is urgent because the so-called ‘emancipated’ modern ‘man’, in Lacan’s words an ‘irresponsible outlaw’,42 has a neurosis of self-punishment and a history of harm towards others that result in crime and failure and condemn humankind to ‘the most formidable social hell’43 wherein war is becoming the necessary midwife of all progress in our organisation. People must deal with the unconscious desires for dependence and domination that sustain identity construction, including the dependence on war that has, as Schneiderman remarks, ‘a social and symbolising function that is essential to the coherence of the group’.44 Unlike for Freud, for Lacan, the outcome of change in analysis is not happiness. Lacan claims that nothing is prepared for happiness,45 noting: ‘Happiness will always imply a place where miracles happen . . . .’46 He is not interested in the illusion of happiness. He notes that analysis cannot guarantee cure either. In answer to the question if the neurosis is cured at the end of analysis, Lacan concludes that ‘the question remains open’.47 Maybe it is cured, maybe it is not. Besides, the fact that analysis may lead toward a verbalisation of the unconscious does not mean that disappearance of symptoms (or changes in behaviour) will necessarily occur. This is not the aim of analysis. One simply sees the symptoms for what they are worth by a process of suspending the ego. There is, moreover, no ‘preestablished harmony’48 free of aggression that the reduction of symptoms in the patient will bring about. Lacan, Schneiderman claims, placed his work ‘in direct opposition to the ideological bias toward life, toward being, toward the flowing of an essential humanity’.49 World War II showed Lacan how hollow such talk was – talk which places sameness over otherness. Those engaged in dealing with socio-ideological conflict must learn from this. Lacan does not offer resolutions or solutions to social problems. Instead, he views psychoanalysis as a repeated encounter with the impossible, an 42

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impossible that was ‘not a counsel of despair’50 because for Lacan psychoanalysis produces results precisely because it ‘lets things happen outside itself, lets people exist’,51 as Schneiderman puts it. According to Lacan, in analysis the neurosis ‘becomes something else’,52 maybe a scar of the unconscious. Talk of cure is Freudian. Lacan welcomed cures but viewed them as a mere side effect of analysis. Instead of cure, Lacanian analysis offers insight leading to a break with the fundamental fantasy that structures the subject’s jouissance, but one never leaves the realm of fantasy. The fundamental fantasy is ‘distilled out of the whole network of fantasies that come to light in the course of analysis’.53 The goal is not to have people rid themselves of feelings of animosity, resentfulness, vengefulness, murderousness, etc. but to help them realise that the way things are is not the way things have to be, to learn to find less pleasure in dominance, aggression and submission. This is the Lacanian project of social transformation. Lacanian analysis contributes to such change by returning the subject to his or her repressed insufficiency by undoing the imaginary ideological fantasies that exist to fill out the subject’s void. One ‘hits’ the Real, upsetting the repetition it engenders and thus helping the subject shake up its fundamental fantasy in which it tries to repeat the experience of lost satisfaction that has been foreclosed. Touching the Real involves cutting oneself loose from the object through which an other or the Other keeps one in check. The subject must get out of the Other,54 confronting his/her deadlock, saying ‘I’ where ‘it’, the unconscious, was, in this way taking responsibility for it rather than demanding compensation for it from the Other, because people actually agree to making sacrifices to the Other. Taking responsibility means that the subject must acknowledge their attraction to whatever has been denied, their pleasure in this lost object, and the way in which they have enjoyed the denial of their desire and operated so as to obstruct its satisfaction. Subjects must identify the enjoyment they feel they have lost and come to see the way they fantasise their jouissance, i.e. the way, imagining others have it, they are unconsciously drawn to retrieve it through domination and violence; the way they unconsciously replace it with fantasies of wholeness and independence; the way they unconsciously avoid it by identifying with ideals that belie its presence and the way they unconsciously attain it in self-destruction or submission. Subjects need to see how they have given the Other what it wants and confront themselves with the way the ideological figure of the other has been invested with their unconscious desire. They also need to see how this involves hatred of the self, pleasure in pain, pleasure in dissatisfaction, and a desire for selfdestruction. In other words, they need to identify how they gain satisfaction from their symptoms. Changing one’s relationship to jouissance also involves identifying the why and wherefore of the symbolic constraints imposed 43

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upon satisfaction. Constraints might arise out of feelings of guilt, betrayal, a desire to punish the Other, fear of rejection or fear of failure among other things. Subjects must ultimately separate themselves from the Other’s desire, overcoming resistance to recognising where jouissance comes from, and move towards being the subject who enjoys whatever it is that is forbidden or deemed immoral or perverse. According to Fink it is the kind of desire that no longer cares what the Other wants or says.55 In the case of the interviewees, this might involve acknowledging what their political ideologies forbid such as their sectarian values, their guilt, disloyalty, speaking out, to live in peace, hatred of the Other, etc. and things interviewees condemn or judge negatively, for example whatever they hate or are jealous of in the other community such as unity, power, success, etc. Lacan writes that the whole point of analysis is not to deny people satisfaction but to provide them with ‘other ways, shorter ones for example’56 to attain this – ways that are less trouble to the subject. This does not mean people should come to altogether jettison the symbolic constraints on jouissance, but rather it means that they should come to accept in a new, radical way the type of satisfaction that they seek. What is important is that people come to accept that they desire these things. Once they become aware of it they can take responsibility for their enjoyment. When they recognise where jouissance comes from they can then stop inhibiting this at the unconscious level, as opposed to necessarily obtaining the object of their jouissance. They can adopt a different subject position to it. The aim is in part for the subject to be able to state what it is that does it for him/her, and acknowledging that while enjoying these things may or may not have consequences for self and others, not recognising this enjoyment has negative consequences for self and others. So, it is not so much about giving people what they desire or want as about removing the prohibition. It is not jouissance but its inhibition that has repercussions for fantasy, failure, neurotic behaviour, relationships, authority, dependence, emotions, the Other, the law, lies, etc. So, for example, the more sectarianism is prohibited, e.g. people are told they must become civilised etc. then the more it is found by some interviewees to be unconsciously attractive. By removing the prohibition, one can move towards more effective management of the conflict and construct a basis for dialogue and better community relations. Schneiderman speaks of change occurring when the analysand leaves analysis and assumes the desire of the Other in the knowledge that one’s desire lies elsewhere, i.e. somewhere other than in the Other. He speaks of how one reads the past and then closes the book, opting to get on with things.57 One moves on. One is no longer stuck with the dead but he/she is also no longer caught up in humanity or the life cycle. It is not, however, the knowledge one gains about the structure of one’s symptoms that 44

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guarantees change. One has to want to want something, not simply know it. And to want something on the basis of knowledge requires judgement. It is judgement that enables the subject act on the basis of having recognised one’s desire in the Other. This judgement is what gets a person from thinking – which is a postponement – to action. The analysand does not assimilate or integrate material from the unconscious but instead occupies the place of the Other. The material of the unconscious simply speaks and is heard. It is this process that enables the subject to face the Real and perhaps, according to Schneiderman, act according to one’s desire. Responsibility is key for Lacanian psychoanalysis. No matter what shapes one’s motivation, social, cultural, environmental or unconscious, people are called to answer for their behaviour when they have traversed their fundamental fantasy. They are called to assume responsibility. This is the ethical dimension of psychoanalysis. The challenge is to establish what the fundamental fantasy is and then transform it in order to attain satisfaction. Change in socio-ideological conflict Lacanian analysis is concerned with what it is that gets people stuck and how to bring people to tackle by themselves whatever it is that has them act neurotically or hysterically. For this reason, in a Lacanian approach to dealing with socio-ideological conflict it is important in the early stages of an analysis not to offer people a way forward – a resolution that would leave the analyst feeling good – but to put the time into the analysis and challenge them to face what it is that holds them back. One cannot deal with the source of neuroses by offering people learned explanations of their past, as Lacan notes.58 Their response will be one of anger for having their defences attacked. As the ego is paranoid, this approach only makes it more paranoid. Indeed, Schneiderman argues that psychoanalysis tries to break down whatever understanding the subject has already arrived at. The analyst does not have the answers, thus analysis seeks ‘to persuade the analysand to recognize things that he knows already and to act on his desire’.59 They have to discover the problem and its source for themselves in analysis. They discover this as they painfully come to see that they have constructed themselves in the Imaginary. Thus, analysts do not provide answers. The analyst plays dead, attempting to see to whom or about whom the communications were directed, i.e. some Other. In analysis, transference, the subject asking the questions ‘who am I for you?’ or ‘what do you want me to be?’, reveals what is hidden in the unconscious through repetition. When the subject tries to get the analyst to accept the truth of what he/she says, this is a part of transference. Analysts must resist this ‘truth’ because the mistake that the subject wishes to hide lies therein and instead 45

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‘suspend the subject’s certainties until their last mirages have been consumed’.60 Collusion with the subject’s ego is out of the question. According to Lacan, one needs to maintain a ‘conflict situation’.61 Analysands gradually come to symbolise whatever it is that troubles them, relinquishing their imaginary attachments that promise happiness. By refusing to feed the analysand’s transference, the analyst helps the analysand fan desire. The transference burns itself out and out of its ashes, out of an acceptance of where one’s jouissance lies, arises a desire – a ‘sense of purpose in life, of knowing what you want and of going out and getting it’.62 People become empowered perhaps in such a way as they can relate differently to what is happening around them. One comes into one’s own, recognising what does it for one. The desire must not be to adapt to social ideals of conformity for this would leave them out of touch with their ghosts. One must expect this process of learning to deal with the fantasies that drive conflict to be hampered by the reality that people do not want to know what is wrong, nor will they have a genuine desire for self-knowledge or to change. They unconsciously enjoy their woes. Their dissatisfaction brings satisfaction. Speaking of patients, Lacan writes, ‘everything they are, everything they experience, even their symptoms, involves satisfaction . . . They are not content with their state, but all the same, being in a state that gives so little content, they are content’.63 Indeed, it is probable that throughout their analysis people will blame others for their woes, renouncing responsibility. Thus, in the early stages of analysis people need to be offered a substitute, however vague, to engage their desire, like the promise of new ways of dealing with things, new ways of seeing things. Placing the emphasis on the fact that – not unlike a lottery – for a small individual input he/she is in with a chance to gain a lot at the level of community change could be used to engage subjects. You rarely hear people complain about what they lose on the lottery when the prize is substantial. People could be reminded that everyone is in this together. Viewed from the perspective of the unconscious, change is not about blame, sorting out the past, admitting wrongs, truth and reconciliation, or even about putting people in the dock. It is about recognising and taking responsibility for fantasies that hamper everyone’s ability to cope and make everyone more unhappy and complexed than they deserve to be. The value of everyone’s contribution might be emphasised as part of the process: everyone has an equally valuable role to play in dealing with conflict. To further instil confidence, instead of viewing the conflict as a local (or regional) problem, the division and antagonism there should be explained as part of the universal phenomenon of what it means to be human. Equally, the emphasis might be placed on celebrating what people have already achieved in terms of change in the conflict – ceasefires, decommis46

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sioning of arms, victim support groups, an active civil society, international goodwill, empowerment of local communities, a growing concern for children’s welfare, economic benefits, etc. The consequences on working on what is positive is that one can deal with what is wrong as one pushes the boundaries of the former to increase pleasure. The extent of what’s wrong need only come into focus little by little. Schneiderman claims that once ‘the members of a social group begin to show signs of neurosis with frequency’64 society has given up on symbolising what it is that troubles people. It has given up on myths and rituals that allow people to ‘make peace with the dead’.65 This alerts us to the need in the early stages of analysis for some type of ritual to symbolise pain and trauma. Schneiderman also notes that the time for dealing with neurotic problems is only ‘once the structures of discourse and society are re-established’.66 In the case of Northern Ireland one could argue that this is the function that the Good Friday Agreement serves. Howard Richard’s proposal for an application of Lacanian psychoanalysis to peace-building based on a reading of Willy Apollon’s work with psychotics provides some useful suggestions for this initial stage. Richards stresses the need to affirm people’s subjective worlds, affirm people’s body images, nurture the capacity for meaningful action before advocating any particular pattern of action, encourage the acceptance of limits by encouraging people to build community, strengthen norms of caring and sharing, implement gender equality, strive to replace war with peace, respect all living systems, and form social ties.67 Gradually, however, one has to come to express the internal, unconscious conflict that has allowed symptomatic relationships to develop. This is not in the first instance about seeing and understanding but about experiencing the feelings that are attached to the symptom – otherwise the symptom remains intact. Only then do people need to explore the ideational content of their internal conflict in an effort to understand their anxieties. People particularly need to recognise the place of resentment in their psyche, for resentment is central to how the neurotic desires to get back at the Other for the enjoyment they feel they have been forced to sacrifice. Conclusion Lacan’s approach to change in the socio-ideological fantasy goes much further than traditional approaches to conflict resolution and has important repercussions for change in situations of political conflict. For Lacan, the moral law, i.e. the good or the desire for pleasure based on the belief that pleasure is good, holds us back from destruction but it also blocks jouissance, overlooks power, rivalry, jealousy, aggression, cruelty and the death 47

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drive. For this reason, appeals to morality in the shape of civility and good behaviour as resolutions to conflict are inadequate. Besides, Lacan notes that people may not want the good – ‘the most perfect recognition of the conditions of the good will never prevent anyone from dashing into its opposite’.68 So, conflict resolution, it can be assumed, requires more than a set of well-meaning guidelines or prescriptions. Talk of common ground, reconciliation, consensus, security, a pre-established harmony, the totality of knowledge, common-sense, value-free and neutral attitudes – the language of traditional approaches to conflict resolution – are illusions that make the task of dealing with conflict ever more difficult. The analytical experience changes one’s relation to the good by identifying the paths to the good as alibis wherein power is born as people deny others goods in the process of exercising control over one’s own goods. In analysis, people come to see in what way identification with the moral order is destructive for them and for others and come to see how the way in which they impose restrictions on their pleasure contributes to their suffering. In spite of claims to the contrary,69 Lacanian psychoanalysis is, as we can see, far from pessimistic in the domain of change. Radical overhaul is possible for Lacan even while there is a limit to resignification. According to Zˇizˇek, it is the lack in the Other that provides the subject with a space to act and not simply to be the product of discursive domination and ideological interpellation. Indeed, Zˇizˇek claims that Lacanian theory allows for more than a simple resignification of the symbolic coordinates that give the subject his/her identity. It ultimately aims at ‘the radical transformation of the very universal structuring “principle” of the existing symbolic order’.70 By focusing on the Real, Lacan reveals the changeability, fragility and contingency of every symbolic constellation that pretends to serve as the a priori horizon of the process of symbolisation. The subject has ultimate and radical freedom to change. NOTES

1

Jean-Paul Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1997), p. 17. 2 Ibid., p. 15. 3 Ibid., p. x. 4 Ibid., p. ix. 5 Ibid., p. x. 6 Ibid., p. ix. 7 Ibid., p. xi. 8 Ibid., p. 24. 9 Ibid., p. 30. 10 Ibid., p. 52. 11 Slavoj Zˇizˇek (ed.), Mapping Ideology (London: Verso, 1994), p. 326. 12 Lederach, Building Peace, p. 13.

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13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

Ibid., pp. 14–15. Ibid., p. 117. Ibid., p. 75. Ibid., p. 63. Diane Francis, People, Peace and Power: Conflict Transformation in Action (London: Pluto Press, 2002), p. 41. Ibid., p. 40. Ibid., p. 40. Ibid., p. 47. Ibid., p. 47. John W. Burton, Conflict Resolution and Provention (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990), p. 25. Ibid., p. 169. Ibid., p. 256. Ibid., p. 154. Ibid., p. 256. Ibid., p. 157. Ibid., p. 206. Ibid., p. 155. Ibid., p. 205. John W. Burton, Resolving Deep-rooted Conflict: A Handbook (New York: University of America, 1987), p. 23. Ibid., p. 21. Ibid., p. 23. Burton, Conflict Resolution and Provention, p. 147. Ibid., p. 159. Ibid., p. 80. For a discussion of this theme see D. Bell, ‘Modernising history: the Real Politik of heritage and cultural tradition in Northern Ireland’, in David Miller (ed.), Rethinking Northern Ireland: Culture, Ideology and Colonialism (London: Longman, 1998), pp. 228–52, and B. Rolston,. ‘What’s wrong with multiculturalism? Liberalism and the Irish conflict’, in ibid., pp. 253–74. Zˇizˇek (ed.), Mapping Ideology, p. 326. Robert Young, ‘What does psychoanalysis have to offer to newly democratising countries?’, www.human-nature.com, p. 5. Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization (London: Routledge, 1997). Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection, (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 12. Ibid., p. 29. Ibid., p. 29. Stuart Schneiderman, Jacques Lacan, the Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 56. Jacques-Alain Miller (ed.), The Ethics of Psychoanalysis: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book VII, 1959–60 (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 13. Ibid., p. 303. Ibid., p. 22. Lacan, Ecrits, p. 24. Schneiderman, Jacques Lacan, p. 181. Ibid., p. 182. Ibid., p. 182. Miller (ed.), The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, p. 22.

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Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict 53 Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 70. 54 For a discussion of this, see Jacques-Alain Miller (ed.), The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis (London: Penguin Books, 1994), p. 188. 55 Bruce Fink, The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 206. 56 Miller (ed.), The Four Fundamental Concepts, p. 166. 57 Schneiderman, Jacques Lacan, p. 83. 58 Lacan, Ecrits, p. 42. 59 Schneiderman, Jacques Lacan, p. 169. 60 Lacan, Ecrits, p. 43. 61 Miller (ed.), The Four Fundamental Concepts, p. 127. 62 Schneiderman, Jacques Lacan, p. 85. 63 Miller (ed.), The Four Fundamental Concepts, p. 166. 64 Schneiderman, Jacques Lacan, p. 113. 65 Ibid., p. 112. 66 Ibid., p. 176. 67 Howard Richards, ‘Of paranoia and metanoia: lessons for peacemakers from the teachings of Jacques Lacan’, www.human-nature.com. 68 Miller (ed.), The Four Fundamental Concepts, p. 234. 69 See Anthony Elliott, Social Theory and Psychoanalysis in Transition: Self and Society from Freud to Kristeva (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992). 70 Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Zˇizˇek, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left (London: Verso, 2000), p. 220.

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3

Explanations of the Northern Ireland conflict

Introduction While the literature on Northern Ireland is voluminous,1 in keeping with the Lacanian emphasis on the centrality of aggression in the construction of identity, in this chapter I examine the literature that explains the Northern Ireland conflict in terms of communal identity and, in this process, note the republican self-interpretation. I argue that the explanations offered are either inadequate or insufficient to effect significant change in the dynamics of the conflict and that a Lacanian psychoanalytic explanation of the conflict is required for this purpose. Loyalist identity is examined in Chapter 7. Very little has been written on the Catholic community before the 1980s and 1990s as such, and of the available literature, very little primary research deals with the self-interpretation of republicans.2 Secondary materials have been either journalistic, autobiographical or works dealing with particular events within the Catholic community.3 The literature that offers the best insight into the construction of republican identity comprises surveys on attitudes of Protestants and Catholics,4 books on high politics,5 history literature,6 ecumenism literature,7 works dealing with specific issues and periods such as the hunger strike and civil rights movement and psychoanalytic literature.8 However, even these are limited in their exploration of the community dimension of the conflict and the role of the republican community in particular. The three substantial works that therefore best serve our interests are those that see the communities as being central to the conflict. These are John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1995), Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd, The Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland: Power, Conflict and Emancipation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) and Fionnuala O Connor, In Search of a State: Catholics in Northern 51

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Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff Press,1993). The works by McGarry and O’Leary, Ruane and Todd, and O Connor are more thorough in their examination of the Catholic community than anything that has gone before or since on the Catholic or nationalist community. McGarry and O’Leary’s work has the added value of showing us the shortcomings of the narrower political science approach, which fails to account for the deeper meanings of political identity. Particular conceptual categories that Ruane and Todd use such as oppositional differences, the cultural, religious and political treatment of the conflict, and the redemptive resolution of the conflict also make Ruane and Todd highly relevant. O Connor’s work is relevant on the grounds that while it deals exclusively and highly effectively with the Catholic community, its journalistic approach also enables us to identify the need for a strong methodology in an examination of political identity. Combined, these three works demonstrate that while political identity is at the heart of antagonism in Northern Ireland, only a Lacanian psychoanalytic approach can effect significant change in the reproduction of the conflict. McGarry and O’Leary: Explaining Northern Ireland In their book Explaining Northern Ireland, John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary provide an in-depth analysis of the reasons for political violence, political stalemate and political antagonism in Northern Ireland, which are at the core of conflict there. Although they do not provide a definition of identities and communities, their analysis offers us an insight into how they view the Catholic and Protestant communities. The nature of the conflict McGarry and O’Leary’s argument is that religion and culture are not central to the conflict in Northern Ireland. Instead it is a conflict between two ethnic groups which clash over different national aspirations in the one territory the boundaries of which have been perpetually contested. Thus, for the authors, the politics of antagonism stem from perceived, and rationally perceived, constitutional and political insecurity in both communities. It is the structural context that fosters conflict, and not religion or culture. The conflict has both endogenous and exogenous dimensions. The endogenous dimension of the conflict is the desire of ethnic groups for a shared origin and shared experiences, which serve as a basis for recognising members and non-members. In other words, the need to belong is what drives the ethnic aspect of ethno-nationalism. The exogenous dimension of the conflict acknowledges that external agents and the external 52

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environment have also shaped the conflict.9 The authors believe that ethnic groups enter into conflict when they are politically mobilised, at which point ‘[t]erritory, sovereignty and national esteem are their media. Land, power, and recognition are their bloody issues.’10 In short, for the authors, nationalist ideology, the suppression of economic, political and cultural rights and the belief that force can work are sufficient explanation for republican violence. As a means of resolution of the conflict they suggest a ‘double protection’ model based on the synthesis of these accounts of political antagonism. Religion In relation to matters of religious motivations, McGarry and O’Leary hold that these are not primary for nationalists or unionists, republican or loyalist paramilitaries. Religion is a key ethnic marker or boundary-marker, no more.11 The authors argue that religion is not at the root of political conflict and stalemate in Northern Ireland on a number of grounds: 1 2 3

4 5 6 7

There is no noticeable correlation between religious convictions and the areas most affected by conflict. Political activists in Northern Ireland do not for the most part use religious labels in terms of their party names and values. Individual politicians who are Catholic either display secular attitudes or roundly criticise the Roman Catholic Church and on occasions people at large appear to embrace untheological values. The IRA and loyalist paramilitaries do not target religious personnel. Catholic churches have remained relatively inviolate. National preferences are autonomous of religious beliefs. People in Northern Ireland made it clear in a 1986 opinion poll that religion is virtually insignificant as a reason for conflict. Culture

In their examination of arguments that place cultural differences at the heart of the conflict, McGarry and O’Leary repudiate cultural stereotypes such as that of the ‘fighting Irish’ and argue that in the light of the fact that Catholic culture in the United States has not served as a catalyst of political violence Townshend’s explanation of the conflict in terms of a Catholic ‘culture of resistance’ and shared communal assumptions does not apply. For the authors, paramilitaries have political goals. They are not victims of cultural forces. Political violence, then, is both the consequence and cause of violence. It is the fear of extinction or subordination in each 53

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community that operates in such a violent society that dictates that peace talks must in the final analysis make each national community equally secure, recognised and expressed. The following analysis shows that the arguments above are seriously flawed. The narrow political science explanation of the conflict needs to be replaced and, given its dominance, this is an urgent issue.

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Critique of McGarry and O’Leary’s explanation of the conflict RELIGION

Regarding point (1) above that there is no noticeable correlation between religious convictions and the areas most affected by conflict, McGarry and O’Leary arrive at this view on the basis of their interpretation of religious conviction in terms of church attendance. They point out that violence is high in areas where the fall in church attendance is significant such as in West Belfast. In other words, the conflict is not primarily a religious one because violence is not uniformly correlated with church attendance. Measuring the relationship between violence and religious conviction as expressed through church attendance is unreliable for various reasons. First, attending church is not necessarily a dependable measure of religious conviction. Many people in Ireland who have religious convictions of one kind or another do not attend churches. Besides, taking the approach of the devil’s advocate, I might also argue that measuring the relationship between violence and religious conviction as expressed through church attendance is no more testable than the proposition that people in Northern Ireland are in denial of a religious Jihad, a proposition that the authors find ‘neither plausible not testable’.12 If the authors cannot prove or disprove the possibility of denial in relation to people’s perception that religious belief is not relevant to the conflict, then can one reasonably expect them to be able to demonstrate that people believe that religious belief is relevant to the conflict? Could it not be the case that people are in denial about this? A Lacanian analysis indicates that denial is operative in this area. The connection between religious conviction and violence can, of course, be measured, though not by church attendance. Instead this can be measured through a careful analysis of people’s opinions about their own religious convictions and the convictions of others and an examination of their propensity for denial of this relationship. In the course of this book, I present several examples of this phenomenon. Added to McGarry and O’Leary’s arguments about the irrelevance of religious belief to levels of violence there is the question of interview reliability. What church-goer is going to view her/his religious convictions as 54

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a source of conflict? And what interviewees are – as the authors recognise occurs in relation to other related issues – likely to present their religious convictions as a source of conflict to an interviewer? Finally, as the authors suggest that paramilitaries evolve out of a response to an experience of injustice and the bleak realities of life in Northern Ireland then church attendance – in so far as paramilitaries are, according to the authors themselves, a minority of church-goers – is more an indication of the attitudes of the wider community than of those responsible for violence. In other words, one would not expect there to be a direct correlation between religion and violence because those who use violence are a tiny minority of church-goers. Regarding point (2) that political activists in Northern Ireland do not for the most part use religious labels in terms of their party names and values, I would argue that what might be true for political parties need not be and, indeed, is not a reflection of the significance of religion as a source of conflict for ‘ordinary people’. In support of point (3) that individual politicians who are Catholic either display secular attitudes or roundly criticise the Roman Catholic Church and on occasions people at large appear to embrace untheological values, the authors cite the criticism directed at the Roman Catholic Church by Bernadette Devlin (ex-MP) and the electoral support Bobby Sands received while on hunger strike in spite of the distinctly untheological nature of his actions. As I indicated in relation to political parties, the attitudes of strategists to the Church are not necessarily a reliable indication of what the wider community feels. Besides, while the Church is viewed by Bernadette Devlin as a collaborator with the British it could equally be seen by others as a victim of the British (e.g. the lack of funding for Catholic schools). Indeed, it is not too difficult to imagine a single individual holding both these views simultaneously. People compartmentalise attitudes and feelings to deal with complexity, as psychoanalysis attests. Likewise, on the issue of voting patterns, it is not hard to believe that people prioritised their goals and set the election of Bobby Sands to Parliament above any particular theological view they may or may not have had on the hunger strike itself. So the relevance of these examples to the authors’ defence of their thesis that religion is not the source of the conflict in Northern Ireland is questionable. While the reality might be that the IRA and Loyalist paramilitaries do not target religious personnel (point (4)), this is not necessarily an indication that religion is not at the source of the conflict in Northern Ireland.13 The relative lack of murders of religious personnel is not in itself a significant indication that religion is not at the root of the conflict. The authors’ argument appears to me to be as weak as the argument that political unrest is not at the source of the conflict because so few politicians have been killed 55

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or even targeted. The authors themselves clearly would not accept this argument. Point (5) suggests that as Catholic churches have remained relatively inviolate, the notion that religion is the source of the conflict does not stand up to examination. Such attacks are an inadequate measure of religion in the conflict – attacks which, besides, have been on the increase in recent years. In the light of all the violations of church property since the publication of the authors’ work one might, on the contrary, validly argue that religion is indeed at the source of the conflict. But this is no more an indication or religious motivation for violence than the authors’ argument that the scarcity of attacks on churches indicates that the conflict has little to do with religion. One does not measure religious influence on the conflict by attacks on church property but by an analysis of what people hide and its contribution to the reproduction of the conflict. In relation to point (6) I would disagree with the authors’ opinion that national preferences are autonomous of religious beliefs. These are in fact connected as one’s church allegiance in part influences a community’s resistance to State structures. This is so particularly when these states are viewed as confessional, Protestant in the case of Northern Ireland and Catholic in the case of the Republic of Ireland.14 And I do not believe that these views are held by supporters of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) alone, as the authors believe, but also by so-called ‘moderates’ in both communities. Finally, in relation to point (7), the idea that people in Northern Ireland have made it clear in a 1986 opinion poll that religion is virtually insignificant as a reason for conflict is one I would contest. Already by situating the conflict in the context of the late 1960s the interviewers were likely to turn people’s minds to issues of discrimination, attitudes and socio-economics, i.e. the issues in terms of which the late 1960s are typically depicted in Northern Ireland rather than religion. Moreover, even if opinion poll data is an adequate source of what people think is the source of conflict (and this is itself questionable),15 it is not a valid indication of the source of conflict as the divergent views among interviewees themselves indicate in the above poll.16 It is of no surprise that while using ideological language to describe their position and worldview nationalists at a deeper level cling to religious prejudice and fears as a significant point of conflict with their neighbours. People’s opinions are rationalisations to bolster their ideal selfinterpretation, and contradictions in our interviews prove this. So, it is clear from the above critique that the authors’ defence of their claim that religion is not at the root of the conflict is weak. The role of religion as a source of political violence cannot be ascertained to any significant degree from an examination of figures for church attendance or from opinion polls.17 However, something of its importance as a source of conflict 56

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can be gained from a Lacanian reading of the interviews I have conducted for the purposes of my research. Religious conviction is important as an indicator of what people feel about themselves and others and it requires careful listening for it to be heard and careful reading for its significance to be understood. Churches after all abhor violence so it is unlikely that people will be in touch with what they really feel about their convictions let alone readily reveal this to others. Besides, such convictions cannot be viewed in isolation but must be viewed in the context of other convictions such as political convictions. Finally, any genuine examination of the relationship of religion to violence must be seen in the context of the broader divided community beyond the experience of both church-goers and paramilitaries. On a broader note, as can be seen from the above examination, the manner in which the authors highlight individual strategists, use arguments in one place but refuse to apply the same criteria elsewhere and make tenuous assumptions makes it clear to me that a new approach to analysis is required in relation to conflict in Northern Ireland. The way the literature generally approaches the conflict is actually flawed and so poses a significant problem for socio-political research itself. The narrower political perspective is insufficient for a resolution of the conflict. As my research shows, while religion is not the primary root of conflict in Northern Ireland, it is nonetheless very significant. This does not mean that people are in part in conflict over conscious theological differences. Yet neither is religion simply an ethnic boundary-marker as the authors believe. In the case of Catholics, my research demonstrates that a number of my interviewees do feel hatred for Protestants in part because of the religious affiliations of the latter and that these feelings find a violent expression in the wider interaction between the nationalist and unionist communities. The same is also true in the opposite direction. Now, to argue that the conflict does have a significant religious dimension does not mean that political agents are absolved of political responsibility for adding to the conflict. Political agents are indeed in part responsible for the differences in economic and political power that exist between the two Northern communities. However, the fact remains that the perception of both communities of each other is significantly coloured by fear, bigotry and mistrust based around their experience of organised religion and their interpretation of the wider reality through a religious lens. This experience reinforces feelings of inferiority and alienation that lead in turn to violent expression. One can only really measure the religious input to the conflict if you measure the denial that people work out of. People for the most part repress their bigotry, as my interviews prove. The present research shows that religion is a part of the conflict for Catholics and Protestants. 57

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Culture The authors’ argument that communal assumptions are not relevant to an explanation of the conflict in Northern Ireland on the basis that they do not occur in the United States is a weak argument for the simple reason that the same conditions do not apply in the United States as in Northern Ireland: communal cultural assumptions may play a crucial role in generating conflict only in certain structural contexts, i.e. in the necessary and sufficient conditions of conflict. There are numerous assumptions about the Other that come into play in the conflict in Northern Ireland. Catholic interviewees by and large assume that Protestants and the Brits are morally and politically inferior to them and that they are a threat. The assumptions republicans have against Britain and Protestants cannot, therefore, be as easily dismissed as the authors suggest. To argue, as the authors also do, that proof that the conflict arises out of disagreement over political and constitutional questions can be adduced from the fact no such conflict arises in the Republic of Ireland or in Britain where similar religious and cultural habits exist is too simplistic. Political insecurity over issues of sovereignty and boundaries is an insufficient reason for a conflict that has been going on for centuries. Indeed, the authors themselves believe that boundaries and sovereignty were not a serious issue for Michael Collins and republicans in 1922. In so far as the legitimacy of the State is relevant, it is only valid as part of the bigger picture about how people more generally see themselves and others. It is the experience of the Other and the relationship to the Other within the political, social and economic culture in Northern Ireland that leads to division, antagonism and violence. It is simplistic to point to proof of the argument that violence occurs in Northern Ireland because nationalists do not recognise the legitimacy of the State by means of an analogy with the Republic of Ireland where, the authors argue, similar conditions exist and where there is peace because the people recognise the legitimacy of that State. The authors work with a narrow political concept of legitimacy. Where legitimacy is effective, in real terms, it resonates with communal and cultural assumptions: it is ‘lived’ legitimacy, not a political-constitutional belief. And such ‘lived’ legitimacy is culturally created: so initial doubts as to the legitimacy of the Southern State were overcome, not by political-constitutional beliefs but by cultural consensus. In the Republic of Ireland, the control operated by the Roman Catholic Church and the State has generally contributed to a society without violent conflict in recent years. Censorship, political oppression of republicanism, the propagation of negative feelings toward expressions of republican violence, the equating of republican violence with nationalist politics, the identification with Britain, fear of loyalism, 58

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identification with Europe and the growth of revisionism have contributed to a culture of ‘peace’ in the Republic of Ireland as much as an acceptance that the State is legitimate and have indeed formed and refined the concepts of legitimacy. To argue that because people claim they are happy to tolerate the other community’s religion and national culture, political institutions and sovereignty must be at the heart of the conflict in Northern Ireland appears to me to be a weak argument. My research demonstrates that people are keen to give the impression they are happy to tolerate the other’s religion and culture, whereas in reality they do not. The authors’ notion of identity/belonging is too shallow. For the authors, belonging to a community is fundamentally about ‘belonging to a group which will protect you from domination and violence, it requires no deeper cultural identification than that; conversely, hostility to a group requires no more than the belief that they are a danger to your security, it requires no more profound cultural antagonism’.18 They suggest that because the issues of sovereignty and boundaries are at the root of political insecurity, belonging to a group that will defend you is paramount and is the deepest cultural identification. Viewed psychoanalytically, this proposition stands the other way around: belonging is an expression of the ego, of identity construction, and thus also, in Lacanian terms, of defence, and fear or insecurity. The desire to belong leads to insecurity, and not the other way around. The fact, however, is that we are not hostile towards others and fearful of domination because of political insecurity but because of the nature of the self, which is divided. Thus the cultural identification of which the authors speak, i.e. of belonging to a group, is neither simple nor of secondary importance. The construction of the self creates opportunities for conflict that are to some extent ignited by the abuse of power within the socio-political structural context. It is the desire and need to belong, or more simply to be, that leads to group differences in society and this can give rise to a situation of conflict and the desire for protection. Belonging, therefore, can be a source of conflict because by definition it indulges in denial and repression and because it sets up boundaries, which posit an other that does not belong. There is then a communal tension within as a community attempts to hold itself together as a community of shared beliefs etc. and an opposition with others that easily turns into conflict in situations where political power is abused. The access to political power, the irrational perception of self and others, and the experience of injustice and abuse affect the intensity of the conflict. This explains why the issues in a conflict can change substantially over time while the conflict remains unresolved. One needs to address the dynamics that underlie these externals – dynamics that have their roots in an innate insecurity or paranoia. 59

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CONCLUSION

McGarry and O’Leary suggest that political insecurity (over boundaries and sovereignty) leads to violent conflict and political antagonism and stalemate between communities in Northern Ireland. I would stand this model on its head and say that the constitution of communities leads to conflict over issues (such as boundaries and sovereignty), which may in turn result in political antagonism, stalemate and violence. Overall, McGarry and O’Leary appear to present people as having distinct capacities for filtering their experience of the political, the religious and the cultural, and as having an experience of the political as being the most fundamental in their list of traumas. However, one might well ask whether or not issues of religion and culture do not to some extent affect how people feel about issues of sovereignty and the boundaries of the State, or to what extent people are conscious of any of these as points of conflict. Lacanian psychoanalysis shows mental compartmentalisation for what it is – rationalisation. People live in conceptual jumbles and are unconsciously motivated. Conflict cannot be resolved without reference to the unconscious. The argument that I put forward here is that what matters in understanding the nature of the conflict is precisely an examination of how people articulate their experiences. An examination of how people articulate their experience allows one to go beyond a mere photo-fit of Protestants or Catholics as presented by others or by themselves, opening up the whole area of unconscious desire, i.e. what they repress or deny. It is this that informs how people wish to see themselves and present themselves to others. Besides, as the authors point out, as information is normally gathered through surveys that serve as cues to predictable answers, this basically prejudices the process of gathering information regarding what people feel or believe.19 A Lacanian analysis starts from the viewpoint that all language is prejudiced in so far as language involves rationalisation of experience. Such an analysis enables one to get closer to what is really going on, and therefore closer to a resolution of conflict. The fact that Catholics are the (unexamined) Other of unionists, as the authors claim, is not an aside but, as I shall demonstrate in this book, a central dynamic to the conflict. While I agree with the authors that the two communities use territory, sovereignty and national esteem to fight their battle, their battle is about more than land, power or recognition. Power and recognition only really matter when understood as dynamics of the ego’s drive for domination and dependence. A purely rational approach to nationalist or unionist thinking, like that of the McGarry and O’Leary, does not do the participants in the conflict 60

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sufficient justice. The analysis of the conflict requires one to examine the rationalisations that political positions involve rather than counter-arguments to these positions. A resolution of the conflict that fails to engage participants at this broader level will not succeed because it cannot deal with what shapes and underpins these positions, namely unconscious desire. The case for such an examination is strengthened by the obvious weaknesses in McGarry and O’Leary’s arguments that religion and culture are not central to the conflict. The conflict in Northern Ireland is more than a simple matter of a clash over political aspirations. It is a matter of community identity and as such can benefit from the application of Lacanian theory on the construction of identity. The present research differs radically from the work of McGarry and O’Leary. The latter assume that the two communities in Northern Ireland work out of their historical worldview in a predictable and coherent way whereas it is my belief that an agreed interpretation of the Northern Ireland conflict, let alone the validity of this worldview, is not something that readily impinges on people’s lives in any real functional sense. The near universal acceptance of an explanation of the conflict in terms of a given understanding or misunderstanding of reality does not in itself give rise to political change that can lead to the resolution of conflict. What goes on in people’s heads at an intellectual level, no matter how ‘right’ we get it, is neither a reflection of reality nor a cure for conflict. Mc Garry and O’Leary deal exclusively with people’s rational motivations and with strategies. It is a cerebral approach to the problem of conflict that itself is anything but cerebral. I believe that while Explaining Northern Ireland is correct in emphasising the importance of political aspects of reality, it misses the mark in that it overlooks the complexity of the human person’s method of making sense of their reality. The ethno-national interpretation of the conflict is an insufficiently powerful model for the resolution of the conflict. Even with all the checks and balances of the ‘double protection’ model, division and antagonism will remain in Northern Ireland unless one unearths and deals with the unconscious desires that underpin the rivalry that exists between the two communities there. McGarry and O’Leary rightly point out that there is a ‘meta-conflict’ in relation to Northern Ireland, i.e. ‘a conflict about what the conflict is about’.20 What is significant about this is not so much that such conflicting views exist but that they involve rationalisation. The real questions that need to be addressed are what these rationalisations are and why these are created. How and why, for example, did Sir Patrick Mayhew, ex-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, when interviewed by Brendan O’Leary, say that there effectively was no conflict in Northern Ireland but instead that 61

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there was a mismatch? McGarry and O’Leary criticise such views but fail to analyse them. If a strategy for resolution of the conflict is to be found it must consider (1) how people experience themselves as group members, (2) how they experience others, (3) how they experience the political and how they process this, and (4) how they experience violent conflict. Much of this is unconscious. Only a critique of the sum of these experiences will put us in touch with the problems that have to be handled even after violent conflict has ended. Finally, research on the conflict needs to focus on ‘ordinary’ interviewees, not political strategists. It must, furthermore, remain aware of the dynamics of interviews, which often present views that are intended to be palatable. What interviewees feel and believe is at least as important as what they say they think. When the authors do critique the traditional interpretations I find their methodology lacking not just for the above reason but because they use the literature – which is often stereotypical – or interviews with politicians as a basis for their final solution. The corpus does not account for human complexity – for the fact that people are not rational political beings who act like strategists do. The political science approach presented by McGarry and O’Leary does not work as a resolution of the conflict because it fails to account for all the relevant dynamics of the conflict. Ruane and Todd: The Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland The nature of the conflict Ruane and Todd move away from the traditional view of the conflict in Northern Ireland as either one of identity, i.e. conflicting nationalisms, allegiances and ‘myths and fears’, or of structural relationships, i.e. political and economic inequality, and instead combine these two approaches placing the former within the latter. Identity, ideology and constructs of self and Other develop within actual experiences rooted in unequal social and structural relationships. Thus, according to the authors, the conflict is essentially a matter of historic communal division based on constructs of self and Other between Catholics and Protestants who conflict over economic, political and cultural interests under conditions of an uneven and changing balance of power. Relationships are marked by dimensions of difference, structures of dominance, dependence and inequality and a tendency towards communal polarisation. There are five dimensions of difference at play in the conflict. These are ethnic (Gaelic-Irish/Scottish), religious (Calvinism and Roman Catholicism), colonialist (settler and native), progressiveness/backwardness 62

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(Catholics and Protestants) and national identity/allegiance (nationalists and unionists). All, bar ethnic differences, are oppositional and so constitute particular points of conflict. The structure of dominance – principally a matter of Northern Protestant dominance over Northern Catholics – creates communal division as it defends its interests and the communal division intensifies the difference on which the structure of dominance rests. Dependence chiefly refers to Northern Protestant dependence on the British State. Communal polarisation is aided by the fact that, according to the authors, most people in Northern Ireland find security in communal membership, while members of both the Protestant and Catholic communities avoid confronting internal divisions. As a result, people tend to see others as representative members of communities. The authors also note that individual and social differences, violence, structural inequality and cultural patterns are all given representative communal meaning and problems are defined and solutions sought in a communal frame of reference. Communal interpretation is all-pervasive. The authors correctly emphasise the role of ideologies – viewed as complex conceptual systems developed from meanings in daily life – in people’s construct of self and its ability to reinforce communal polarisation. People use ideologies as a ready-made set of assumptions to justify their actions. However, the authors also, tellingly, note: ‘Ideologies operate at a level removed from daily experience and seldom reflect the ambiguous, mixed and often contradictory beliefs of ordinary people.’21 Similarly, while the authors correctly emphasise the role of meanings and their multi-determination in their examination of such terms as ‘British’, ‘Irish’, ‘unionist’ and ‘nationalist’, they also note that there were other ‘depths, subtleties and conditionalities of meaning’22 that became apparent to them in interviews, though they failed to consider these. Finally, the authors also speak of people’s ‘deepest sense of self’23 where they claim oppositional differences overlap around a sense of communal belonging such as to create fear in the subject, leading people to interpret others through a communal lens. The authors propose an emancipatory resolution of the conflict. Oppositional differences must be moderated by (1) greater ecumenism, (2) a search for cultural commonalities, and (3) the development of a more inclusive sense of national identity. Dominance, dependence and inequality must be worked on, and they need to be worked on together if people are not to be left feeling vulnerable in a process of positive change. Critique of Ruane and Todd’s explanation of the conflict The authors have developed an empirical analysis that focuses on the conflict’s relational aspects, bringing together the interplay of both the 63

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structural and the cultural. In this sense they present an analysis that involves both identity and the issue of power in the form of domination and dependence. As issues of identity and power are central in Lacanian analysis to the construction of the unconscious and the ego, the general thrust of Ruane and Todd’s analysis is in keeping with a Lacanian perspective on the conflict. However, an approach to a solution to the conflict cannot rest on the construction of common ground, which is the goal of an emancipatory approach. Of interest to the present research is to ascertain the ambiguous, mixed and often contradictory beliefs of ordinary people that the authors point out lie beneath ideology, something that the authors fail to do. Whole layers of experience are being ignored even in the best literature on the conflict. It is in this direction that I attempt to take the analysis forward beyond the realm of ideology. I argue that only such an approach can progress the resolution of the conflict. Concerned with what words signify, a Lacanian analysis also allows one to unpack the depths, subtleties and conditionalities of meaning mentioned above that the authors were unable to investigate. A Lacanian analysis also allows one to explore the interviewees’ deepest sense of self, mentioned above, in this instance a type of communal self. Although the authors recognise the difficulty people will experience in unearthing the deeply internalised assumptions they carry about themselves and others, they do not state precisely what moderation of oppositional differences might involve. I believe that this process needs to involve consideration of the following at the unconscious level: • • •

the function of illusion and idealisation in how people see themselves; the function of jouissance and paranoia in how people see others; the function of ideals in how people think others (and the Other) see them.

As a way of dealing with communal interpretation, the immediate challenge would appear to be to gain a greater awareness of how subjects construct communal meaning rather than greater individualisation and cross-community networking, as the authors propose. It is also important to become aware of how others perceive or experience one’s interpretation of reality and in time to soften the community boundaries that interfere with people’s ability to empathise and take responsibility for their actions. However, all of this requires that one first engage desire. The present research attempts to identify some of the rationalisations that underpin typical nationalist and loyalist communal meanings. If the Protestant and Catholic communities in Northern Ireland are to reduce the oppositional differences and antagonism that exist between them they will 64

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need to face their rationalisations, neuroses and unconscious desires in the context of the necessary structural and material changes that the authors suggest. Ruane and Todd are correct in their emphasis on the need for a process of differentiation and moderation: the deeper levels need to be tackled otherwise peace will be frittered away with ensuing redoubled animosity. Rather than commonalities and inclusion, however, people need to build upon a healthy respect for those differences that are not oppositional. They also need to desensitise differences that are oppositional. Relationships need not be about common ground but mutual healthy respect, an attitude the authors recommend in relation to differences. The authors state that the goal of the emancipatory approach is ‘to break with the destructive pattern of the past and to build a new future based on co-operation and agreement’.24 They suggest that if this process is too radical, too open-ended or too long, those involved would be naive to expect it to be otherwise. Lacanian analysis would also aim for a break from destructive patterns of the past based on taking responsibility for the unconscious dynamics of the conflict. Overall, the emphasis in the emancipatory approach on what things mean to a solution of the conflict, the overlapping and interconnectedness of experiences and interpretations, and the emphasis on the contradictory forces that are at play in the communities within a structural dimension of dominance, dependence and inequality are excellent. These aspects of Ruane and Todd’s analysis are valuable because they reflect the world beyond the highly conceptual domain of ideology while still remaining in touch with the real issues of power. In this world, meaning is often unclear or ambiguous; people at one and the same time say what they mean and what they do not mean; people remain complex speaking subjects who oftentimes live in a conceptual jumble shaped by their evolving experience and prone to contradiction. The challenge is to find a resolution to the conflict in such a reality, and the emancipatory approach whereby change must occur on both sides simultaneously and where the balance of power must be equal and Protestants’ vital interests must be secured during a transition to peace goes some way towards this. On the political, economic and cultural dynamics of the conflict Ruane and Todd’s treatment of the political, economic and cultural dynamics of the conflict is an excellent summary of the forces that have underpinned the conflict and an insightful analysis as to why these are sources of conflict. The authors refrain from giving primacy to either the political, cultural or economic dimensions of the conflict because of the interpenetration of material, symbolic and strategic meanings. This is in 65

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keeping with their belief that people fail to differentiate differences and reflects how people see the world anyhow – a view with which I concur. Desire – though the authors do not see it in these terms – dominates the landscape.

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CULTURE

Culture serves as political currency in the battle to survive. Cultural inequality has practical, symbolic and strategic meanings. In the view of the authors, Catholics have few benefits in any of these domains: they experience discrimination in jobs in part because they are not seen as sharing in the ‘Protestant work ethic’; they are the historical losers and as such have little experience of success and, consequently, limited possibility of publicly expressing any success they have experienced; they do not have the power in Northern Ireland to give expression to their Irish identity. In the early years of the State, the authors remark, Catholics’ culture was low in self-esteem, defensive, vulnerable, silent and resentful rather than rebellious. On the whole, the cultural experience of the Catholic community has been one of defeat although in recent years the community has become more rebellious and more self-confident. The contemporary expression of the Northern nationalist community is united more around issues of culture than of politics. Contemporary nationalism is much more open to Britishness than in the past and sees domination of one community over another as unacceptable and a block to peace. However, new nationalism remains ambiguous about much else – territorial questions, the question of a United Ireland, etc. The authors note that nationalists today appear to have more problems with loyalists and unionists than they do with Britain. While more self-confident than in the past, new nationalism still retains a strong sense of its own vulnerability and although it desires to let go of the past, it also clings to it. Both communities often use cultural celebrations to put down the other community by reminding them of what they wish to forget. Significant change can only occur in the Catholic community’s colonial reading of the conflict when the structure of dominance, dependence and inequality is tackled and this will only happen when vital interests are secure. People know what their prejudices and myths are but are unwilling to change lest they leave themselves vulnerable in the context of the wider communal struggle and division. Likewise, ‘[e]ven the most universalistic and altruistic ideology presupposes – or is slow to criticise – unsaid communal understandings and oppositions, which may in turn be the condition of the influence or support it enjoys’.25 The implication is that so long as much is left unsaid, change is unlikely. I would expand the unsaid to include what people are unaware of in the unconscious. 66

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POLITICS

The balance of communal power remains crucial for the both the Catholic community and the Protestant community. The authors remark that power has many meanings in the context of the conflict – power in terms of immediate material benefits; the symbolic strength of power which for Catholics would constitute a redemption of past defeat; and for Catholics power is also a matter of justice. The struggle for power is at the heart of the political conflict – practical, symbolic and strategic power. Only such power gives one the upper hand. ECONOMICS

In the authors’ analysis of the economic dynamic of the conflict they contend that what is particularly problematic is the inequality of condition in the structural, political and cultural realms that the Catholic community senses rather than the specific economic inequality. So, the inequality is important on a symbolic level. This sense is apparent in the political and moral readings that each community assigns the economic dimension: for Protestants economic inequality is a sign of their greater achievement while for Catholics it is a sign of Catholic defeat. For Catholics, economic equality is a means to redemption of their community. Conclusion In their cultural exploration of the conflict the authors admirably demonstrate the significance of cultural inequalities. In becoming an additional part of the baggage that the Catholic community carries, culture compounds the Catholic community’s sense of alienation, defeat and powerlessness that Catholics feel in the economic, and to a lesser extent, political domains. For all their sense of holding their own and sometimes being on top in the conflict, Catholics do undoubtedly take on board much of the negative stereotyping that Protestants partake in and that the State with all its Protestant trappings explicitly and implicitly reinforces.26 Protestants have defined Catholics and created their limits. Catholics, however, use this to their political advantage. When people are relatively powerless they learn to build on the very thing that disempowers them. Their use of violence maximises their view of themselves as victim. The power of violence is substituted for the power that they do not experience in Northern Ireland. It is a power that attempts to disempower the Protestant community, though it is imaged as a struggle against the British presence in Ireland. Through this process, nobodies become somebodies. It is a communal phenomenon. 67

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The present research examines further the sense of ‘inequality of condition’ that pervades the Catholic and Protestant communities. It is expressed through identification with the position of victim. People may or may not experience real inequality. They also will refuse to take on board the experience of inequality or suffering in the other community. What preoccupies the two communities is not the power the other has but their own sense of powerlessness. Victimhood brings unconscious pleasure. As well as being in denial of their relative defeat and their feelings about their negative stereotyping by Protestants, Catholics also demonise Protestants in order to compensate for their feelings of powerlessness: Protestants have only themselves to blame for whatever hardship they experience because Protestants are bigots one and all. This community that forever harps about ‘being proud to be Protestant’ has, besides, in the opinion of my interviewees, nothing to be proud of. Protestants are ‘never happy’. ‘You can’t please them!’27 They are, to use words employed by some Protestants in a positive meaning, the ‘not an inch’ people who, as this expression indicates for Catholics, are incapable of change. In the opinion of some of my interviewees, being perverse, Protestants take great pleasure in creating trouble for Catholics, making sure the latter will never have their way. This, ultimately, is, according to Northern Catholics, the Protestant raison d’être – victimising Catholics. From the authors’ analysis of the experience of the Catholic community it is clear that members of that community have typically had feelings of displacement and subordination, inadequacy, defeat, isolation and rejection, vulnerability and fear. In the present research I demonstrate to what extent such feelings still persist in the Catholic community and how members of that community handle these. In saying this, I accept, as the authors point out, that the Catholic community is more self-confident than ever. I would, moreover, suggest that just as the authors note that people view their identity in terms of the most pressing political realities rather than a deep sense of cultural identity, so too people view what they feel in the light of such realities. As a result, their deeper negative feelings and the effect of these on how they see themselves and others requires a deeper kind of trawling such that one gets below the ideological surface. In this context it is of particular interest to me to note what interviewees feel about the way they are stereotyped by others and to what extent they act out of these feelings. How interviewees feel about others is also relevant. The authors are right to emphasise that, contrary to the beliefs of many commentators who suggest that people in Northern Ireland are trapped in the past and nothing essentially changes because they do not think, people there do reflect on their situation. As the authors assert, there is a high level of reflection in both communities. The lack of significant change, they 68

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argue, is not therefore because of a lack of reflection but because the structure of dominance, dependence and inequality has not changed significantly. The authors believe that the ‘open-ended self-critical ideological exploration’28 that is required for change can occur only when the structures of dominance, dependence and inequality are dismantled. I would agree with the authors that structural changes can bring about significant change in the conflict, but not necessarily so. Only action based on judgement of the unconscious dynamics of the conflict will guarantee significant change because, as Lacan notes, the ego or identity is ‘a means of the speech addressed to you from the subject’s unconscious, a weapon to resist its recognition’.29 The function of the ego is to block recognition of the unconscious thus guaranteeing identity the comfort to be found in mirroring and controlling others and in illusion and idealisation. The problem then is not whether people are stuck because they reflect or not but that they are stuck because they fail to address the machinations of the ego, which blocks unconscious desire. What is required is not an ideological exploration but an exploration of unconscious motivation. Judgement is vital in the process of change because people can reflect forever. No matter how much intellectual reflection is done even under ideal circumstances, there will be no substantial change unless people become aware of what they (and others) rationalise. If one can bring this to the fore, one can begin to recognise the Other as the subject posits this and with this the ‘complex strategies involved in the creation of social division’.30 As people continually make conscious what is unconscious they are in a position to go beyond their resistances even though inner chaos and conflict will still persist. Ruane and Todd’s work is important in that it raises fundamental questions about identity and self-interpretation that the present research attempts to explore in the context of Northern republicans and loyalists. The overlapping and interpenetration of political, economic and cultural meanings in Northern Ireland, be these practical, symbolic or strategic, which the authors identify, clearly need to be further disentangled. In the exploration of O Connor’s work that follows, I demonstrate that in order to do this a thorough research methodology is required. Fionnuala O Connor: In Search of a State: Catholics in Northern Ireland Introduction In her book In Search of a State: Catholics in Northern Ireland, Fionnuala O Connor gives us a perceptive account of the Northern Catholic community.31 The strength of her work lies in part in the way she bases her 69

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analysis on interviews. The interview approach is the ideal method for getting down to the heart and truth of the matter of identity. The fact that many of her interviews are with people who are not strategists renders this operation all the more fruitful in that this offers the reader the chance to discover how ‘ordinary’ people feel about who they are and how they feel about relevant others. This helps one to steer clear of the expression of ideological positions that strategists tend to reproduce in interview situations. O Connor’s interviews demonstrate perfectly well the type of ambiguities, nuances and contradictions that Ruane and Todd say people feel below the ideological surface. They also put flesh on Ruane and Todd’s belief that the oppositions and differences people experience need to be moderated and differentiated and that a resolution of the conflict needs to be multi-stranded and multi-levelled. O Connor also points out some important methodological insights, highlighting, for example, the significance for research of remaining aware of the complexity of people’s thought processes. It is clear that people live in and out of complex inner worlds and one cannot hope to sufficiently understand the dynamics of the conflict in Northern Ireland unless one recognises this and puts order on that inner world. She also notes the hazards interviewers face when gathering data in the light of a person’s inner complexity in the respect that interviewers can tend to be unaware of their own bias. O Connor adds that there is a need for researchers to keep in mind that ‘journalists and political scientists filter reality, where they don’t fictionalise it, by formalising and verbalising human reactions from the perspective of their own prejudices and often very different backgrounds’.32 This is an excellent insight but unfortunately O Connor herself fails to put this into operation in her examination of the Catholic community. On occasion, analysis is usurped by what I consider to be unexamined prejudice. This is understandable given that the author does not apply any particular methodology in her approach to the material. Instead her approach is generally journalistic. The result is that at times she rushes in too quickly with the moral critique that is confined to the conscious content of the interview. Indeed, at times she misreads her interviewees or even rewrites what they say. The ultimate challenge is to identify the categories and structures in terms of which the interviewees respond to the world or their experience. O Connor is not always able to achieve this because of the lack of an analytical framework. The author’s interview with Sinead is an excellent example both of a person’s inner complexity and of the need to approach it methodically. The interview is both raw and revealing. We see a woman try to figure out what it is she feels about IRA violence, express how she feels her attitudes 70

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have changed and attempt to understand for herself why it is that she feels as she feels. However, the author’s examination of this material falls short of really revealing what Sinead feels and believes because she overlooks the deeper meanings that Sinead’s utterances, often unconsciously, reveal. Hence, she can only draw superficial social and political conclusions. I consider the interview with Sinead later. First, I examine the author’s presentation of the Catholic community’s identity. The Catholic community’s identity According to the author, Protestants figure significantly in the Catholic worldview even though Catholics say they feel they have no real problems with the Protestant community as such but with the State. Catholics, the author points out, refer to themselves as Northern nationalists, which signifies anti-unionism and non-British rather than anti-Protestant or pro the rest of Ireland but O Connor rightly notes that Catholics in fact mistrust the Protestant community and are prejudiced against Protestants over their religion. Republicans are sectarian and, as some of her examples and interviews reveal, sometimes they are viciously so. The author’s depiction of the Catholic community’s view of itself is also interesting. She points to the existence of a folk memory of shared disadvantage and awareness of continuing prejudice. For Catholics near the top of the social ladder the author remarks that the memory of shared disadvantage is fading but that such people also deny or mute this memory. She is surprised, however, about the extent to which even people high up the social ladder encounter and resent Protestant prejudice. O Connor also notes that republicans in particular use the view of themselves as victims to block out their own guilt for violence and have a pure, distilled Catholic victimhood that is, however, gradually on the wane as discrimination is reduced. She claims that Catholics indulge in a mythology regarding republican violence that takes on a romantic or emotional character and that they have a selective memory and so indulge in ‘whataboutery’. Republicans, in fact, according to the author, feel relish at their ability to kill the enemy. O Connor concludes that Catholics are to some extent unreflective and are attached to nationalist umbilical cords. They also indulge in emotional ambiguity and self-deception in relation to IRA violence and are unwilling to deal logically with the reality of ‘the Troubles’. O Connor concludes that only one thing can pull the Catholic community back from this tendency to indulge in a mythology of violence – personal witness, but this is a flawed approach, as we shall see later. The author’s insight into how people organise reality is valuable. Reflecting upon an interview she held with Mairead, O Connor points out 71

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that people in Northern Ireland do not have a neatly packaged view of reality. Attitudes do not come neatly sliced and separated.

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Critique of the Catholic community identity On the subject of Catholics’ relations with Protestants the author correctly highlights the phenomenon of Catholic focus on the Protestant community. As the author remarks, Catholics believe that Protestants are virulently anti-Catholic. As my research shows, this worldview leaves Catholics feeling good about themselves because they associate religious motivations for the conflict with a lack of principle and moral value. In other words, Protestants lack political rationale and justification for their position and their violence. They are immoral.33 Catholics feel little sympathy for Protestant fears. O Connor’s interviews highlight this Catholic hatred for Protestants in a forceful way. This is an excellent insight. O Connor brings out very well the contradiction between what Catholics say they feel about Protestants and what they in fact feel. In this process, the author also successfully shows how Catholic motivations for such readings of the Protestant community are also wrapped up in the Catholic desire to present themselves in the best possible way. The author’s insight as to the extent of the Catholic community’s folk memory of shared disadvantage and awareness of continuing prejudice is important. Their sense of disadvantage is widespread and it is not predicated on first-hand experience. In its essence such a memory is akin to the ‘inequality of condition’ that Ruane and Todd say Catholics experience and live out of. This is a vital aspect of the nationalist psyche. It shapes how they feel about themselves and others. Memory is as important as the actual experience of real disadvantage. Indeed, I argue that some Catholics desire disadvantage. The problem with the journalistic analyses of conflict is that they rely heavily on the psychological approach, an approach that works from the premise that violence (normally paramilitary) is abhorrent and that people are forced to support it when they are economically disadvantaged and thus prone to coercion and renege on it whenever they are exposed to personal experience of violence, distancing themselves from the IRA. It also means that the conflict is a predominately Catholic working-class phenomenon and the middle classes do not participate in the drama. According to this analysis, the political, historical and socio-cultural has little to do with the conflict. The uneducated working/workless class are sustained on a diet of myth, some real experience of suffering and a denial of the suffering of others. 72

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The beauty of this analysis for its proponents is that they know where the problem lies and they know how to correct it: the problem is elsewhere and all that is required is that people correct their biases. In such an analysis those who express opinions that are supportive of paramilitary violence are not accorded the moral position that a person’s professed belief in the absence of violence – or absence of violence against the State – is accorded. This only serves to hinder the analysis of self-interpretation. In order to avoid this pitfall one needs a methodology that systematically examines attitudes whether they are pro or anti a particular social view or view of the author. Lacanian analysis acknowledges that everyone is caught up in rationalisations and the consequences of these shape conflict. The author’s methodology relies heavily on notions of personal witness, selective memory and the requirements of logic to explain the conflict. The argument goes that people will no longer support violence once they have experienced it. It is as if the author expects one’s emotional reaction, typically revulsion, to dictate one’s moral judgement. However, personal witness to violence does not cancel out selective memory, as the author proposes, making people less ambiguous about violence. It is no surprise that emotional revulsion can persist side by side with a desire for the use of violence. Close identification with one’s community influences one’s desire for violence, thus ideology remains important in conflict because it gives violence meaning. Sinead finds herself enormously qualifying the killing of two British soldiers by the IRA. This ambivalence is interpreted by the author as ambiguity and as an indication that Catholics feel guilty as they ought to. So, critics typically conclude, nationalists should do the right thing – abandon their hypocrisy and face the truth about the illegitimacy of IRA violence. Normally researchers imply that, all else failing, their feelings of abhorrence ought to lead nationalists to this moral conviction. Reading Sinead, O Connor concludes that Sinead is confused about what she feels about IRA violence and that the Catholic community is confused about IRA violence. However, what needs to be asked is what lies behind Sinead’s ambivalence and contradictions?34 What does her language cover up? The reality is, as Lacanian theory points out, people everywhere • • •

are consciously aware of only some of what they want; always want more or something different, whatever they get; say what they mean and what they do not mean simultaneously.

The Lacanian framework serves as a tool to pick up on the actual dynamic and meaning of what is being said as opposed to what the researcher might otherwise assume is being said. It also picks up on what it is the interviewee wishes to present and thus also what the interviewee 73

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wishes to deny. A Lacanian framework enables one to unravel the deeper meanings that interviewees present. One needs to ask what it is the subject wishes to say at a conscious level, i.e. at the level of ego-talk. In other words, how does he/she wish to be seen or wish to see him/herself?35 More importantly, one also needs to ask what rationalisations or denial this involves. What, in other words, are the subject’s unconscious motivations? On the basis of these two questions and their answers one can then determine the political significance of what the subject says. Contradictions must not be interpreted morally but instead must be examined for what it is they conceal. They indicate the presence of rationalisation as do guilt and shame, an attempt to keep up an ideal self-image. The author indirectly acknowledges that contradictions come tumbling out from the mouths of people in republican areas but not, it seems, in others.36 However, Lacanian analysis recognises that contradictions are part and parcel of the construction of all identities. So, more broadly speaking, it is not just journalists and political scientists who filter, formalise and fictionalise reality from their own perspective, as O Connor believes, but everyone, including ‘ordinary people’ and politicians. Everyone craves cohesiveness and completeness to escape the split at the heart of the individual. They project their incompleteness, i.e. that which is unpleasurable, on to others. The desire for an ideal self-image also involves an internal aggression that propels people into conflict with others. So people develop a paranoid worldview that puts people into boxes, as it were, with hard boundaries.37 This gives people security.38 Thus, the price of overlooking the strife and inner conflict that is the lot of the individual is the demonisation of the Other. By its ability to highlight and explore the ploy that is speech, whose purpose it is to block pain, a Lacanian analysis helps bring to light what lies behind the contradictory desires that people experience, thus revealing where they are stuck. Conclusion For O Connor, Sinead, who qualifies the killing of two British soldiers by the IRA, is cured since she has been rescued from running away from self-doubt. Sinead, unlike the wider community, which O Connor believes prefers to indulge in selective memory and ‘whataboutery’, questions herself. However, the problem with his interpretation is that this is a rational approach to a conflict that is not sustained by rationality. Sinead’s feelings are part of her gift to the interviewer: they are what she thinks she felt or what she should feel in order to be what it is she thinks the Other wants her to be or she herself wants to be for the Other. So, we need to look to see where the rationalisations are in her speech and what they hide. The interviewer generally fails to see the interviewee’s contradictions 74

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and rationalisations and those that the interviewer does recognise are viewed as proof that Sinead is ‘confused’ and, consequently, that the Catholic community is confused. The Catholic community is not unreflective or attached to a nationalist ‘umbilical cord’, as the author suggests. The Catholic community is not unwilling to be logical. The IRA and the Catholic community are caught up in the flow of desire and thus also in the Other. It is the Protestant community that the nationalist umbilical cord attaches to. O Connor takes a psychological interpretation of Sinead’s interview. The psychological approach leads O Connor to conclude that Sinead is a changed person – her behaviour is affected by what she sees and so she does not support the IRA as she once did. It is highly convenient that this change should correspond with the author’s view and that of the wider society that IRA violence is immoral. Others, the author concludes, could learn from personal witness, though O Connor acknowledges that some do not. There is no exploration as to why this is. This demonstrates the weakness of a partial application of a psychological methodology to the conflict. Summary In this chapter I have argued the need for an analysis of socio-ideological fantasy that takes into consideration the unconscious meanings that subjects articulate in their everyday speech.39 McGarry and O’Leary’s work is proof that the narrower political science approach to the Northern Ireland conflict cannot account for its reproduction. Ruane and Todd’s work show that an analysis that goes beyond ideology is required. O Connor’s work proves that any examination of the conflict must take the shape of a systematic investigation. Synthesis In the light of my examination of the literature on the Northern Ireland conflict I can now propose a typology and explanation for the conflict in Northern Ireland. Typology of the conflict The conflict is primarily a matter of how political identity is constituted in the context of the overlapping of the Symbolic, Imaginary and Real orders and the consequences this has for the relations between the two dominant communities in Northern Ireland. How people see themselves in the context of the Real, the Symbolic and the Imaginary is crucial. In other words, 75

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where pain lies for people, how they extract pleasure from this, what they repress and what they imagine themselves to be and the consequences their illusions have for their relationships with others are all significant dynamics in the conflict. The conflict in Northern Ireland has its roots in how individuals, especially non-strategists, interpret themselves as group members and relate out of this self-understanding in an attempt to maintain their identity and status. Interests, be these matters of religion, colonialism, issues of moral and cultural worth or national identity, say something about a group’s ego, worth, sense of self and relative power. These interests become a focus of violent conflict as the satisfaction of the desire to dominate and control, possess or exclude is sought. Explanation of the conflict The reason why the conflict has developed as it has is because of the successful reproduction of oppositional differences between the two communities in the wake of the Plantation of Ulster. These differences or negative identifications involve rationalisations that serve to block that which participants to the conflict find unpleasurable in themselves. This ‘success’ has in large part been due to the institutionalisation of these differences, which include religious and cultural identity as well as differences pertaining to community status and national identity. NOTES

1

2

3

John Whyte provides a thorough list of references for material up to 1990 in Interpreting Northern Ireland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). After 1990 the fullest possible bibliography on the subject is provided in Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd, The Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland: Power, Conflict and Emancipation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). The best of the primary research includes Fionnuala O Connor, In Search of a State: Catholics in Northern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1993), Sally Belfrage, The Crack, a Belfast Year (London: Deutsch, 1987) and Anthony McIntyre, ‘Modern Irish republicanism: the product of state strategies’, Irish Political Studies, 10, (1995), 97–121. The best of these works are as follows: journalistic works include Kevin Toolis, Rebel Hearts (London: Picador, 1995), John Conroy, War as a Way of Life: a Belfast Diary (London: Heinemann, 1988). Works dealing with particular events include Padraig O’Malley, Biting at the Grave: the Irish Hunger Strikes and the Politics of Despair (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1990), David Beresford, Ten Men Dead: The Story of the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike (London: Grafton, 1987), Brian Campbell, Laurence McKeown and Felim O’Hagan (eds) Nor Meekly Serve My Time: The H-Block Struggle 1976–1981 (Belfast: Beyond the Pale Publications, 1994) and Desmond Wilson, Democracy Denied (Dublin: Mercier Press, 1997). Autobiographical works include Gerry Adams, Before the Dawn (London: Heinemann, 1996). Eamonn McCann, War and an Irish Town (London: Pluto Press, 1993). Desmond Wilson, An End to Silence (Dublin: Mercier Press, 1985). Ciarán

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4

5

6

De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (Dublin: Aisling Publishers, 1989), Michael McKeown, The Greening of a Nationalist (Dublin: Murlough Press, 1986), Denis Donoghue, Warrenpoint (New York: Knopf Inc., 1990), Patrick Shea, Voices and the Sound of Drums (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1981), Seamus Deane, Reading in the Dark (London: Jonathan Cape, 1990), Maurice Hayes, Black Pudding and Slim: A Downpatrick Boyhood (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1996) and by the same author, Sweet Killough: Let Go Your Anchor (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1994). Surveys can be unreliable and somewhat sanitised in that they fail to account for how interviewees wish to image themselves or what underpins particular attitudinal changes. For example, Boal et al. note that how respondents perceive issues relating to others is sometimes determined by the feeling of threat or paranoia, which is not accounted for in questionnaires, W. Frederick Boal, Margaret C. Keane and David N. Livingstone (eds), Them and Us? Attitudinal Variation Among Churchgoers in Belfast (The Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University, Belfast, 1997), p. 156. Gallagher suggests that the ideal image that respondents wish to present of themselves helps explain why it is that while respondents wish the British Government to encourage more mixed schools, other sources suggest that few wish their own children to attend such institutions. Again, the survey that Gallagher analyses fails to pick up on how people’s responses are shaped by their ideal self-image. See Richard Breen, Paula Devine and Gillian Robinson (eds) Social Attitudes in Northern Ireland: The Fifth Report 1995–1996 (Belfast: The Appletree Press Ltd, 1996), pp. 18–19. Useful survey materials include Peter Stringer and Gillian Robinson (eds), Social Attitudes in Northern Ireland: The Second Report – 1991–1992 (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1992), and by the same editors, Social Attitudes in Northern Ireland: The Third Report 1992–1993 (1993), and Richard Breen, Paula Devine and Gillian Robinson (eds), Social Attitudes in Northern Ireland: The Fourth Report 1994–1995 (Belfast: The Appletree Press Ltd, 1995), and Richard Breen, Paula Devine and Lizanne Dowds, Social Attitudes in Northern Ireland: The Fifth Report 1995–1996 and Social Attitudes in Northern Ireland: The Sixth Report 1996–1997. For an examination of the attitudes of church-goers see Boal, Keane and Livingstone Them and Us?. For attitudes to violence see Fortnight, September 1984, April 1985 and October 1985. Survey materials account for regional differences in political attitudes and prove that some of the attitudes that I came across are typical or at least noted elsewhere in the literature. They also prove that attitudes do not always vary. The works on high politics are not particularly relevant to the present research. However, among the more important works on political actors see Henry Patterson, The Politics of Illusion: Republicanism and Socialism in Modern Ireland (London: Hutchinson, 1989) and Richard English, Radicals and the Republic: Socialist Republicanism in the Irish Free State 1925–1937 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), and by the same author, Ernie O Malley: IRA Intellectual (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). The strength of Patterson’s work lies in its excellent contextualisation of the IRA’s tradition of physical force republicanism within the development of socialism in Ireland. However, it lacks interview materials and is thus radically different from the approach of the present research. The histories are not strictly political works but they provide some kind of indication of political traditions and differences within the Catholic community at various times in the past. They are also among the best works on the Catholic community, though taking the historical perspective they are not central to this research. Among these are Eamon Phoenix, Nationalist Politics, Partition and the Catholic Minority in Northern Ireland, 1890–1940 (Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation, 1994), Michael Farrell, Northern

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7

8

9

10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Ireland: the Orange State (London: Pluto Press, 1980), Mary Harris, The Catholic Church and the Foundation of the Northern State (Cork: Cork University Press, 1993), Bob Purdie, Politics in the Streets: The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1990) and J. Bowyer Bell (ed.), The Secret Army: The IRA (Dublin: The Academy Press, 1979). Ecumenist literature is too specialised for the present research. However, among the more important works in this field are John Dunlop, A Precarious Belonging: Presbyterians and the Conflict in Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1995), and Terence McCaughey, Memory and Redemption: Church, Politics and Prophetic Theology in Ireland (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1993). There is very little psychoanalytic literature on the conflict in Northern Ireland or the matter of community identity there. However, works in this category include Allen Feldman, Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), John D. Cash, Identity, Ideology and Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Relevant from a comparative perspective is Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (London: Penguin, 1963). For the authors these are Britain’s interests, the support of co-nationals in Britain and the Republic of Ireland for one or other of the two Northern communities, and the effect of the behaviour of the British and Irish states on the communities as they pursued their state and nation-building projects. John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1995), p. 355. Richard English notes that sectarianism in Ireland pre-dates Partition. Richard English, Armed Struggle: A History of the IRA (London: Macmillan, 2003), p. 68. McGarry and O’Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland, p. 196. If the killing of religious personnel were in part an indication that religion was at the source of the conflict, as the authors seem to suggest in their analysis, then it is interesting to note that while they accept Rose’s assertion that loyalist attacks are mainly on lay members of the Catholic community (ibid., p. 468, footnote 122), they do not see this as serving the argument that religion lies behind the conflict in the case of loyalist violence. For discussion, see John Fulton, The Tragedy of Belief: Division, Politics and Religion in Ireland (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991). For discussion of why this proposition is debatable see Whyte, Interpreting Northern Ireland. McGarry and O’Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland, p. 195. In his study of the IRA’s use of the military instrument Smith notes the unreliability of opinion polls remarking that they are ‘ambiguous rather than conclusive’ (M. L. R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland? The Military Strategy of the Irish Republican Movement (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 185). McGarry and O’Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland, pp. 244–5. Ibid., p. 198. Ibid., p. 1. Ruane and Todd, The Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland, p. 6. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., p. 308. Ibid., p. 316. Ibid., p. 108.

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26 Toolis comments that one of his interviewees, the sister of an IRA man shot dead by the SAS, acted as if her ‘only defence was to provoke those [British] enemies by embracing their judgement of her’ (Toolis, Rebel Hearts, p. 47). Her family ‘would always be Roman Catholics, always subversives, always rebels, always guilty. They would always be the kerne, the Defender, the terrorist, who had to be suppressed’ (ibid., p. 47) and she would act out of this interpretation that the security forces applied to her family. 27 This attitude is also mirrored by Protestants in relation to the Catholic community. 28 Ruane and Todd, The Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland, p. 107. 29 Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 137. 30 Aletta Norval, ‘Thinking identities: against a theory of ethnicity’, in Kathryn Woodward (ed.), Identity and Difference (London: Sage, 1997). 31 Among the best journalistic type works which deal specifically with republicans are Patrick Bishop and Eamonn Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London: Heinemann, 1987), Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA, Completely Revised New Edition (London: Harper Collins, 1995) and Malachi O’Doherty, The Trouble with Guns (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1998). The former two works are basically narrative histories generally devoid of interview materials with non-strategists and lacking in a strict methodological approach to their material. Thus they are of limited value in terms of their ability to reveal anything significant about the republican self-interpretation. Where Bishop and Mallie do use interview material it works well (see The Provisional IRA, pp. 139–40). Coogan also uses interview materials sparingly but nonetheless well (see The IRA, p. 223 for his interview with Ruairi Brugha and p. 380 for his interview with an ‘IRA apologist’). While much more revealing about the republican mind-set, The Trouble with Guns also shares the shortcomings of the above two works. Many of the author’s insights are merely personal opinions and lack explanation or justification. O’Doherty’s understanding of republicans in terms of their image is nonetheless interesting – see p. 4 on how republicans see themselves as purposeful and politically astute, p. 15 for an explanation of how republicans choose goals that cannot be met, p. 21 on Gerry Adams’ fantastical interpretation of his community, p. 22 on how republicans value death and thereby negate failure, p. 25 on Catholic bigotry, pp. 40–9 for rationalisations of violence and the habit of republicans of blaming Protestants for the conflict, pp. 70–80 on victimhood and the republican desire for vengeance, p. 144 on how republicans are selfaffirming, p. 170 on republican paranoia and p. 200 on how republicans absolve themselves. Many of these views are confirmed in the current work. 32 O Connor, In Search of a State, p. 134. 33 Conor Cruise O’Brien also presents this as the view that Catholics take of Protestants (O’Brien, States of Ireland (St Alban’s, Panther, 1974). 34 See Adrian Millar, ‘The constitution of republican identity in Belfast: a Lacanian psychoanalysis’, Ph.D. dissertation, University College Dublin, 1999, Chapter 2. 35 Lionel Shriver, reviewing the work of the The Opsahl Report on Northern Ireland, notes that the Opsahl Commission may have been given a sanitised version of both the Protestant and Catholic communities by those contributing to the Commission. She argues against taking the ‘pervading solicitude and reasonableness’ of some of the testimonies too seriously (Andy Pollak (ed.), A Citizens’ Enquiry: The Opsahl Report on Northern Ireland (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1992), p. 422). 36 O Connor, In Search of a State, p. 136. 37 Conor Cruise O’Brien notes that the prime realities of the Northern Ireland conflict are the communities indicated by the terms ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’ (O’Brien, States of Ireland, p. 16).

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38 Burton speaks of the importance of the phenomenon of ‘telling’ in Belfast whereby people quickly try to establish the identity of others in order to know where they themselves stand (Frank Burton, The Politics of Legitimacy: Struggles in a Belfast Community (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978). 39 On the final word on the Opsahl Report, Shriver notes that it is important to get behind what it is that people wish us to see, i.e. the sanitised version, to what it is they wish to hide (Pollak, A Citizens’ Enquiry, p. 422).

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4

The republican Real

Introduction The Real is detectable in pain, loss, lack, confusion, fear, fragmentation, etc., examples of which we have already seen. The wider Catholic community’s experience of the Real is evident in the literature. In Them and Us?: Attitudinal Variation Among Churchgoers in Belfast, the writers note that over two-thirds of church-goers who support Sinn Fein have had someone close to them killed or injured in the conflict.1 These statistics provide us with some indication of the experience of pain of the republican community. The authors also remark that the pain of the wider Catholic church-going community is greater than that of the Protestant church-going population: ‘Among churchgoers, Catholics are three times more likely to have been intimidated and twice as likely to have had their homes bombed as Protestants.’2 Catholic church-goers are also twice as likely as Protestant church-goers to have had a friend, relative or neighbour killed or seriously injured in the conflict. Discrimination in employment also remains a significant problem for Catholics. Hayes mentions various events that served to alienate the Catholic community over the past thirty years:3 the population movement in 1971 as people were forced out of their homes in Belfast, which affected one Catholic family in five and one Protestant family in ten and which he claims burned deeply into the psyche of working-class Belfast; the ‘siege of the Falls’ in July 1970; internment without trial in August 1971; Bloody Sunday in January 1972; and the abuse of human rights by the Government and the security forces in the courts and in detention centres.4 Moloney notes that in the British Government’s commission of inquiry into the events of July–September 1969 at the outbreak of the conflict, Lord Scarman recorded that over fifteen hundred Catholic families were forced from their homes.5 81

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My interviewees make it clear that they had all suffered as a result of their being caught up in conflict. A number of the men and women I interviewed had spent periods in jail. In some cases interviewees’ spouses had completed jail sentences. Three of the interviewees had children imprisoned. Several interviewees had close family members or friends killed through violence or seriously injured in gun attacks. Harassment by the security forces, house raids, arrests and interrogation were common experiences for many of the interviewees. First-hand experience of violence was common to all of them – from shootings and riots to bombs and ambushes. Fear was a constant companion for many years. Some experienced discrimination at work and vilification in the press.6 Below, I look at how people avoid the Real. All denials of the Real contribute to the perpetuation of the dynamics of the conflict because others are blamed, one’s own are justified, the ‘negative’ is repressed. Interviewee 4 hints at pain while discussing her arrest and detention in Castlereagh Holding Centre. She acknowledges that she felt bad that she had failed to take responsibility for her child in the respect that he would be brought in the pram with rifles to serve as a decoy during her attacks on the security forces and hints at regret about the pain she inflicted on others. She explains that she was afraid during her detention. The effect of the Castlereagh experience in terms of its being a major turning-point in her IRA activities is somewhat understated for fear that she show herself to be weaker than the Brits or the RUC and because the effect of Castlereagh was so destabilising for her that she actually finds it too difficult to speak about. As she feared what would happen to her there she took her first child with her hoping that she would be released on his account. She was ‘afraid’; the experience was ‘scary’ and to this day it continues to haunt her: ‘I, [re-take] it was, it’s, it’s in my brain, Adrian, I hated it. I hated it. Aye, it’s scary. God, Adrian, it scared the life out of me. I never hardly stayed on my own after it because I was afraid because I knew I had [dead-end].’ The dead-end in the above quote suggests that she is unable to face the reality that she had, in her own opinion, done some awful things in the name of republicanism. The Castlereagh Holding Centre experience broke her like a China cup, an analogy she uses for other women who were arrested with her and who broke and signed confessions incriminating themselves, but as she does not wish us to see this pain, which would imply guilt or regret, she tries to maintain a belief that she was almost fooled into believing she did the things her interrogators accused her of. However, the reference to ‘Fuck, they know that was me!’ in the following quote indicates that the RUC hit upon the truth during interrogation, which she tries to subsequently hide from me with a reference to what they must have thought as opposed to what they knew: 82

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Do you know what I mean? If you were stupid you’d have sh. . . shook and said, ‘Fuck, they know that was me! What am I going to do here?’ Or ‘They must have thought I . . . I . . . [dead-end]. Fuck! I’m . . .’ Scare the fuck out of you. You’d believe the things yourself! Here’s me ‘Fuck! Did I?’ Half the things I said, ‘Fuck! Did I do it?’ Fuck, I’m trying to remember [during the interrogation] and saying ‘Sure, fuck, I never.’

In her account of how her home was taken over by members of the IRA who then made a bomb there interviewee 3’s capacity for taking in the pain of the take-over is marked by a neurotic focus on the fact that the two IRA men who initiated the take-over helped themselves to food while in the house: These two boyos that were in here [in the kitchen] had made themselves a feed. Never asked, ‘Can we have a tin of beans here, missus?’ or ‘Can we have a tin of soup?’ They had just fucking helped themselves. It would have been all the same if we had have been starving. The cunt probably opened that cupboard door and went ‘Oh, fuck, they’ve plenty of stuff in there. I’ll help myself!’

When her husband met IRA members to complain about the take-over the interviewee says he ‘kicked up a stink. Said about the two boys opening up tins of beans and tins of soup and all and helping themselves. “Oh, that will be looked into, that’ll be looked into.” Here was me, “It’ll never be fucking looked into, the same boys.”’ By diverting her attention to the beans the interviewee could bite of a piece of reality that she could face. The fact that they could all have been killed is more difficult to face. She says at one point that what she found difficult about the take-over was that her two children were asleep in the room next to where the bomb was made up and that she was in part responsible for letting it happen. She felt it would not have been so bad had the IRA men allowed them to bring the children downstairs: But it was just the very fact that my children were in the room. Instead of coming up and saying to us, ‘Look would you bring the youngsters down, take the youngsters out of bed.’ I let them two youngsters sleep in that and they were making a fucking, priming a bomb in the room next to them. Well, that fucking done me like!

It is obvious that even this expression of regret and anger involves a rationalisation of the danger they were in because bringing the children downstairs would have made very little difference in the event of an explosion. It is also clear that she leaves responsibility for the children’s safety with the IRA men – they are meant to take the initiative. This too is a denial of her own feelings of guilt. 83

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The analysis of the interviews would appear to bear out the reality that people need conflict for a variety of reasons. IRA violence liberates members of the Catholic community from obscurity. It gives them an identity and the recognition of others. It gives them a sense of being a force to be reckoned with. They unconsciously want to be the victim. They unconsciously enjoy it. So long as they are the victims, everyone else is held in check for everyone else is responsible for Catholic pain and suffering and Catholics are responsible for nothing. Interviewee 7 is clearly excited by her account of her suffering. Speaking of a loyalist attack on her neighbourhood she says, ‘Yep, I will tell you a better one.’7 The number of references to near misses – i.e. where she or members of her family were nearly killed – in her interview also indicates the degree to which the interviewee feels she is significant because of her experience of the conflict. Her references to how ‘the Troubles’ have affected her health also give her a sense of importance as a victim. Conclusion There is tragedy, fear, moral confusion, pain and fragmentation at the heart of the interviewees’ self-interpretations. How people interpret this Real is of enormous importance.8 A number of the interviewees try to make sense of hurt and pain by blaming others for what they experience as negative. Against this backdrop, victimhood is what offers the interviewees wholeness. This is where pleasure is to be found. Given their experience of pain, it is little wonder that people rationalise the Real as they do. NOTES

1

2 3 4

5

Frederick W. Boal, Margaret C. Keane and David N. Livingstone (eds), Them and Us? Attitudinal Variation Among Churchgoers in Belfast (The Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University, Belfast, 1997), p. 60. Ibid., p. 155. Maurice Hayes, Minority Verdict (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1995). McDonald and Jim Cusack document in detail collusion between loyalists and the security forces resulting in Catholic deaths. (Henry McDonald and Jim Cusack, UDA: Inside the Heart of Loyalist Terror (fully updated edition) (Dublin: Penguin Ireland, 2005), pp. 127, 139–40, 143, 199, 232 and 310). A. M. Gallagher notes that survey evidence demonstrates that Catholics believe that there is less equality of treatment in the operations of the security apparatus in Northern Ireland than there is in employment (A. M. Gallagher, ‘Equality, Contact and Pluralism: Attitudes to Community Relations’, in Richard Breen, Paula Devine and Gillian Robinson (eds), Social Attitudes in Northern Ireland, The Fourth Report 1994–1995, (Belfast, The Appletree Press Ltd, 1995), pp. 13–32). See also Michael Farrell, Northern Ireland: The Orange State (London: Pluto Press, 1980), particularly Chapters 10–12. Ed Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA (London: Penguin, 2002), p. 68.

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6

7

8

A comparative analysis of surveys carried out in 1991 and 1993 demonstrated that 8 per cent more Catholics felt that relations with Protestants had got worse and 7 per cent more than in 1991 felt it would get worse between 1993 and 1998 (A. M. Gallagher, ‘Equality, Contact and Pluralism, pp. 13–32). The propensity of members of the Catholic community to identify with the suffering of others is said by Gerry Adams to have occurred among the general nationalist community in relation to Bobby Sands’ struggle, which he claims they saw as their own (Gerry Adams, Before the Dawn (London: Heinemann, 1996), p. 296). Todd points out that this type of identification with the individual – which she views as an expression of communalism – better explains how Catholics reacted to events such as Bloody Sunday or the hunger strikes than support for the IRA military campaign or for Sinn Fein does (Jennifer Todd, ‘Northern Irish Nationalist Political Culture’, Irish Political Studies, 5, (1990), 31–44). Phoenix notes that the bafflement, verging on hostility that Irish people felt in relation to the rebels in the 1916 uprising quickly turned to resentment at their fate and admiration for their cause after their execution by British forces (Eamon Phoenix, Nationalist Politics, Partition and the Catholic Minority in Northern Ireland, 1890–1940 (Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation, 1994), p. 19). Cardinal O Fiaich remarked that the clergy’s identification with the ‘Manchester Martyrs’ brought them closer to the Fenians (Mary Harris, The Catholic Church and the Foundation of the Northern State (Cork: Cork University Press, 1993), p. 4. Such projective identifications with individuals would appear to be triggered by an inherent sense of rivalry with the Other – in each of these cases the British or English. It is this focus on the Other that underpins communalism generally. This type of identification requires working through if the dynamics of the conflict are to be altered. In this sense, the argument that the rise in violent civilian deaths accounts for the hardening of attitudes between the two communities is only partly true (A. M. Gallagher, ‘Equality, Contact and Pluralism, pp. 27–9)

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The republican Imaginary

Introduction Using interview material, in this chapter I examine the rationalisations involved in the imaginary dimension of republican relations with socially and politically significant others,1 principally members of the Protestant community,2 and in so doing demonstrate the power of a Lacanian model for conflict analysis. Imaginary relations are revealed in the primary operations of the ego, namely negation (where whatever is repressed may make its way into consciousness on condition that it is denied), projection and splitting, all of which operations I discussed in Chapter 1. Otherwise, imaginary relations are revealed in contradictions, jokes, mistakes, absences, silence, re-takes, hesitation, cuts in the text, etc. Negation Religious identity It is typical of the interviewees to represent the religion of ‘the other side’ as being a non-issue, a matter of indifference. Bigotry in relation to Protestants, which is consciously denied by republican interviewees, surfaces in this way in imaginary relations. Interviewee 1 admits to having a negative view of Protestants in the socio-political sphere but denies that he otherwise feels negative about Protestants. However, when asked if his father was Catholic or Protestant he replies ‘No, Catholic’, a negation that implies that he has a problem with the idea of his father being a Protestant. When I ask him next if his father’s side of his family was Protestant he says ‘I don’t know, no, it was all Catholics they married into.’ A few moments later he adds ‘and again whether they were, whether they were Protestants or not, I couldn’t tell you. I mean they might have been Protestant, but I never questioned their 86

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religion.’ So, having emphatically stated they are not Protestant he says he does not know whether they are Protestant or not. The claim that he does not know their religion is an illusion that is meant to negate his problem with their religion. Interviewee 9 is another example of someone who wishes to believe that Protestants were never an issue for her. She denies any negative feelings about Protestants. As I began the interview she mentioned that she was not brought up in a republican family and so Protestants were not an issue for her. However, the breakages in her comments (three ‘ems’) indicate that she has let slip something she did not intend, namely that republicans hate Protestants:3 ‘Em, I wasn’t sort of brought up in a republican family, em, I think my mother and father voted Labour all their lives and em, to me Protestants were just the people who lived on the Shankill Road.’ In the following quote she starts off by presenting Protestants as peaceloving people like herself who do not understand why there is so much conflict and who desire give and take on both sides of the divide. However, what she actually says is that Protestants need to understand that there has to be conflict and that Protestants do not understand the need for give and take. In other words this peace-loving woman supports conflict with Protestants: ‘We have met a lot of Protestant people who I honestly think just maybe feel the same as me, you know, em, they don’t understand why there has to be all the conflict that there is and [they don’t understand] that there has to be give and take on both sides, you know.’ Her image of herself does not square with her desire, and her positive presentation of Protestants hides her negative view of them. Here, hatred returns as love, which explains the contradiction. Interviewee 2’s understanding of Protestants is also basically negative. She accepts the self-interpretation of a Protestant male acquaintance as being an ordinary person but the context of this reference reveals that for her he is an ordinary person in spite of being a Protestant. The truth slips out: ‘He [the Protestant man] was saying like, sort of what he was saying, he was just an ordinary person. He might have been brought up Protestant and all, well that’s his faith.’ The silence indicated in the following quote suggests interviewee 4 is in denial of negative feelings in relation to Protestants: And I remember us bringing Protestant wee girls in [to my home] and them seeing the [republican] records and wanting to hear them and all and we let them sure. Sure, because we never [silence] A: Never what? E: We never thought nothing because my daddy just said they were blinded Irish people. So like he never called them Orange. He said ‘They’re blind.’

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The ‘sure’ in ‘we let them sure’ implies they shouldn’t have let the girls hear the music because they were Protestants and the repetition of this word suggests an attempt to cover up what has just slipped out. Add to this the fact that for the interviewee there is no irony in calling Protestants ‘blind’, which for her is not a discriminatory or offensive term, unlike Orange, and the truth about her feelings for Protestants emerge, a truth that is a far cry from her claim that she thought nothing unusual about their being Protestants. The belief that Protestants are ‘blinded Irish people’ is presented by interviewee 4 as being an innocent comment that displays no prejudice even though the difference is clearly oppositional. In an argument that totally falls apart later, interviewee 8 is eager to suggest that he was not aware of being different from anyone else when he was young because he grew up in an insular Catholic community.4 He had no sense of being different because his parents did not teach their children sectarianism or to insult Protestants, points that themselves imply that for him difference is negative. As an example of his lack of awareness of differences with Protestants, he views a loyalist riot, which he witnesses as a young boy, as merely ‘trouble at a football match’, and this in spite of the fact that he recalls that his aunt, through whose street the loyalists passed breaking windows in Catholic homes, called the rioters ‘Orange bastards’. He also remembers being unusually quiet as a child visiting the home of a Protestant aunt and in the interview he at first puts this down to the respect children were to have for older relatives. However, he then adds on reflection that his parents would also be unusually quiet there too and then it transpires that he and his family felt ill at ease there because ‘I mean, it was like going to the landlord’s table in some ways.’ This was in part because the aunt in question was a Protestant. This anecdote pinpoints exactly what the interviewee felt about Protestants, i.e. that they made you feel ‘uncomfortable’ and therefore ‘inferior’. While he insists he does not recall his parents telling him ‘Now, don’t be saying anything because this woman is, is a thing’, i.e. a Protestant, he does remember a story being told about a Protestant aunt of his that obviously implied that Protestants were different from Catholics and that in Protestant thinking Catholics were somehow inferior to Protestants. I give this account below: It’s just that, eh, I actually remember the, the, about one of the mixed marriages, about this tale being told about . . . her husband was buried in a Protestant cemetery, where he had actually been born a Catholic and he had no religion but that what they had done, whether this was strictly true or not, but it sticks in my mind, what they [i.e. the interviewee’s family] had done was actually place the soil, the sod, a consecrated sod, under his shoulder,

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underneath the body so he was lying on consecrated ground and they had a sort of bit of a sub. . . [breakage], satisfaction about this.

Conscious of how he had begun the interview claiming that he was unaware of differences with Protestants as a child, he then states that stories like the one quoted above were only told to him and his siblings by his parents at a stage when they were ‘old enough and mature enough’ but he gradually reveals that he had heard ‘millions of these stories’ as a child. However, he adds that such stories were not ‘forced’ on him by others, the implication being that Protestants drum prejudice into their children. The contradictions in his account suggest he is keen not to implicate himself or his family as bigots. This would only disturb his image as victim in the conflict. This is again hatred returning as love. Basically he is saying ‘we love Protestants in my family’ when the opposite is true. Several of the interviewees were keen to demonstrate that for all their criticism of Protestants in the socio-political, moral and behavioural realms they have nothing against Protestants per se, i.e. for being Protestants. Interviewee 8 intends to say that he would have been happy with contact with Protestants as a child but the second dead-end below implies in particular that this is not so.5 Besides, how can the interviewee want contact with Protestants when he claims he is unaware of their existence? He is lying: The fact [of their physical presence] made you aware of, that there was some difference. Prior to that of course you wouldn’t have [dead-end] because, I mean, you went to a Catholic school, you went to a Catholic Chapel. You played on Catholic streets, you’d no, eh, contact [absence], not because you wouldn’t [dead-end], because, it was just that that was the environment that you were brought up in.6

In spite of all interviewee 2’s remarks resenting Protestants for being bigoted and hateful (see section on projection on pp. 99–103), she believes she has no problems with Protestants but the re-take in the following hints at something else going on:7 ‘Our neighbours and all was Protestants. We had friends Protestants and I worked with Protestants all my life.8 I’ve no [re-take], nothing against them.’9 I think it safe to conclude that the opposite of what the interviewee intends is slipping out from the unconscious, namely that she has problems with Protestants, and perhaps even has no Protestant friends. Interviewee 7 explains that she has a lot of Protestant friends and that they are the best of friends because they ‘never bring it up or anything’, ‘it’ being a euphemism for the divisions that exist between Protestants and Catholics. The fact that conflict is euphemistically referred to is typical of people’s efforts to play down oppositional difference. She also claims that 89

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she and a Protestant friend get along because they avoid speaking about what divides them but agree to say ‘isn’t that awful, them killings, it is desperate?’ to each other as if by way of greeting one another. This image might serve as a parody for Catholic–Protestant relations in Northern Ireland in so far as they exist. They avoid difficult issues. What she really feels about Protestants or about the republican input to the conflict is not discussed with her friend, presumably because this would in fact preclude their being friends in any real sense.10 Yet, of the Protestants who run her local Spar she says, ‘I wouldn’t give them the money, I wouldn’t’, meaning that she would not shop there because they are Protestant. Interviewee 2 wants us to believe that her parents were not bigoted about Protestants but she lets slip that her father was unhappy when he saw her returning from Sunday School having won prizes there for answering questions correctly. The implication of this slip is that her father resented the fact that she mixed with Protestants at Sunday School. She then explains that she was never brought up to hate Protestants and that it was the British she had problems with. In an interesting slip, however, she says that she was told by her parents that the British were the problem but she then tries to bury this and instead says that she just picked this understanding up from her environment: But we were, that was one thing, we were never brought up to hate Protestants, never. We were always told it was, well you weren’t as much told it as what you grew up with it that emmh, it was the British. That’s what our . . ., where your problems lie, the British. As you grew up you understood that yourself anyway.

This notion that Catholics just see the world as it is is a rationalisation of the fact that they too pass on values and viewpoints to one another, consciously as well as unconsciously. The ultimate justification of interviewee 2’s hatred of the RUC is summed up in the fact that even her 7-year-old son knows from experience that the RUC are bad and that Protestants are good. The first break in the utterance below suggests that she is burying her negativity (which the term ‘no qualms’ infers). What she is denying here is her son’s interpretation of Protestants as bad because he learned this from her: Even now like there’s my son, and if you were to say, say to him about Catholics and Protestants, he would have no qualms in [break], but if you ask what does the Peelers [i.e. police] do, what are they [break], you know, he would tell you. He doesn’t like them like and he’ll say ‘Mummy, isn’t that bad?’ or ‘Look at what they’re doing!’

We are also asked by interviewee 3 to believe that her children do not pick up her prejudices because she does not express them to her children. 90

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The dead-end in the following text suggests that the interviewee is not convinced of her rationalisation herself. She is in denial: I know that if you ever see anybody with a Rangers top on they’re an Orange bastard, but I wouldn’t turn around and say to the youngsters ‘It’s only Orangies wear them.’ We don’t [dead-end], I think they [i.e. Protestants] are brought up like that, you know, ‘Rangers is the only team. Celtic’s are Fenian bastards.’

The interviewee offers the fact that her son did not even know what a ‘Fenian bastard’ was when a Protestant called his brother by that term as a sign that Catholics do not bring their children up to be bigoted, which, of course, it does not prove. She is also angry that any Catholic should be close to Protestants given the refusal of Protestants to visit their Catholic neighbours during the two weeks of the ‘Twelfth of July’ celebrations to mark the victory of William of Orange at the Boyne in 1690. For the interviewee, the truth is Protestants are beyond the pale and Catholics should not tolerate them. When discussing her relations with Protestants at the local Spar, interviewee 7 tells me that she used to go into the Spar ‘all the time’ but stopped because she ‘never liked them [Protestants]’ because of their bigoted attitudes. When I suggest to her that the fact that she went in there so much suggests she did not have a problem with them for a long time she says that she always had ‘problem’ with them. The breakage here where a plural form could be expected points to the contradiction at the heart of her presentation of herself as being tolerant when in fact she isn’t. (To have had ‘problems’ would have made her assertion of a time in the past where she had no issues with the Protestants in the shop more difficult to maintain.) This contradiction is clear from the fact that no sooner has she stated that she has always had a problem with the Protestants in the local Spar than she says that she has not always had a problem with the Protestants in the local Spar (indicated by ‘no’ in the following): A: But you used to go in there and you didn’t have any problem with it and then? H: No, I always found problem [breakage] with it, no, eh [hesitation], before, you see the other ones that were in there before them, they were alright, they were brilliant like, but these ones no. No, they’re really hateful. Nobody goes into them. Nobody goes into them at all.

Interviewee 7’s attitude to Protestants is also clear from remarks she makes in the context of a description of a period she spent in the Ulster Hospital in Dundonald, just outside Belfast. She wishes to present Protestants as threatening and prejudiced but unconsciously reveals her own 91

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prejudice. She alludes to the fact that because usually Protestants attend the Ulster Hospital she felt she was in a really ‘bad spot’ and had to get out of it. When this comment slips out there is a breakage in the text marking the point where she backtracks lest she appear prejudiced or bigoted by mentioning the fact that Catholics do in fact go there too: ‘I had to get out of there [i.e. the hospital]. Especially I was in a bad spot anyway because I mean, it is usually Protestants that usually go to that hospital anyw. . . [breakage]. I know it is Catholics and all like.’ She tries to justify her negative claim about the hospital being in a bad spot, i.e. a Protestant area, by explaining that the reason why it is in a bad area is because a doctor there made what she considered to be a bigoted remark: ‘I mean, it is in a bad area, so it is, because I remember one time I was in and I had to go through an operation and one of the doctors had turned around and said to me “Suffer it for Ulster!” That was supposed to have been a joke. That was supposed to have been a joke.’ The tenuous nature of the connection again suggests that she is trying to patch up her own bigoted remarks and paranoia. Her confusion is indicative of her desire to repress her bigotry. One of interviewee 12’s problems with the Protestant community is that certain violent incidents are manipulated by the media to the advantage of the Protestant community. There is clearly rivalry and jealousy here over the perceived value placed on Protestant suffering. The negation and joke in the excerpt below demonstrate this. He is of the opinion that the way in which Gordon Wilson’s grief was portrayed in the media after the bomb at Enniskillen, the way in which Gordon Wilson himself was party to this, and the very presentation of his daughter, Marie, left something to be desired. He jokes that he (i.e. the interviewee) was not made a senator in Seannad Eireann after his own son was shot: Marie Wilson wasn’t the only person killed in these troubles and I often asked myself [dead-end]. Em, there was a book written about her and she was a sort of Florence Nightingale figure, em, all this sort of thing. There was a picture of her which showed her to be a very nice looking girl, very gentle, eh, you know, looking girl, kind face, fine eyes, em, but you wonder what was going on around that, that whole scene. Now don’t misunderstand me, I’m not for a second questioning Gordon Wilson’s sincerity [negation], absolutely not, absolutely not, that’s not the point I’m making at all, but I wonder why certain circumstances are highlighted, I mean, whenever my son was on the television . . . you know the way . . . his circumstances were being highlighted, eh, you know . . . I mean, I don’t think that they are going to make me a senator in Seanad Eireann as a result mind you, but at the same time, you know, at the same time, you know, obviously Gordon Wilson was plummeted into . . . .

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Although he also says that he regrets that middle-class people are papering over the cracks of sectarianism by not discussing it and thus not dealing with it, it slips out that he regrets the fact that sectarianism is on the wane. He is unconsciously happy for Catholics to be victims of sectarianism. In the following joke that occurs in a confusing context, which itself indicates his desire to repress the truth that the joke reveals, we see that he wishes us to see that H, a Protestant manager, goes out and brings ‘a token Negro’ on business to the company because he finds it difficult to discriminate against Catholics as they are now so numerous in the company. The manager’s behaviour amounts to papering over the reality that Protestants want to discriminate against Catholics. However, what the joke also shows is the interviewee’s bias against Protestants and even that the interviewee himself unconsciously wants discrimination against Catholics to continue. He projects this desire onto the Protestant manager. This can be deduced in part from the contradiction in his claim that there is less discrimination in his workplace now because the ratio of Catholics to Protestants has levelled out and his claim that sectarianism is being papered over. The ‘levelling out’ is the problem, which is why he uses the word ‘but’ in the phrase ‘but there is a confidence’ and why the dead-ends subsequently occur as the ego tries to defend the slip.11 The joke follows: M: The other thing is that, I mean, I had a joke with a friend of mine, a Protestant friend of mine some weeks ago. One of our sales people had a visitor from Ethiopia and I said to B, ‘Did you notice’, I says, ‘there are so many Fenians around here now in the company that H has had to bring in a token Negro?’ B laughed, you know, and you know the [dead-end], in our company there is a, there is a levelling out [euphemism] to some extent. A: In terms of religious mix? M: Yes, yes, eh, but there is a confidence, I suppose, among people or there is a sharing of the fact that they’re [dead-end], what is bothering them [deadend], or what is important to them is the job.

A further problem the interviewee has is that people’s jobs, as he later mentions, are so important to them that ‘the tribalism is being impinged upon by this other thing [i.e. middle-class, company goals].’ It is not that discussion of tribalism suffers, as he intends to say, but that tribalism itself suffers and is ‘impinged upon’. Pain is clearly desirable for the interviewee in the context of rivalry with the Protestant community because it shames Protestants.12 Likewise, the use of the phrase ‘chopped out’ in the following quote (as opposed, for example, to ‘churned out’) is a mistake which means that whereas he intends to give us examples of how tribalism is alive and well in Northern Ireland, he in fact is preoccupied by the way in which it is being eroded. He claims that tribalism (i.e. sectarianism) is given regular 93

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expression in the press and on the radio but yet he says by mistake that it is ‘chopped out’:13 A: And you think the tribalism is being whittled away because of this [emphasis on jobs]?

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M: In some situations, yes, but in some situations it is very strong, I mean all you have to do is to read some of the letters in the paper or listen to ‘Talkback’ on the radio and it is just the old thing chopped out [mistake] time and time again.

Conclusion Members of the Catholic community wish to believe that Protestantism is not an issue for them in contrast with Protestants whom they wish to present as being obsessed with Catholicism, fearful of this and bigoted against Catholics to the extent that they instil this bigotry into their children. Claims that subjects were not even aware that Protestants existed are false. An admission of awareness of differences with Protestants is synonymous with an admission of one’s unconscious hatred. These are rationalisations on the part of republicans who are unconsciously bigoted against Protestants. The notion that republicanism precludes sectarianism and bigotry is an illusion.14 The perception of Protestants is that they are inherently bent on discrimination, a claim that reinforces victimhood and conceals the unconscious desire to be the eternal Slave. Change is resisted. Rivalry is a common unconscious theme in the interviews, particularly over suffering. The focus of conflict resolution needs to be on the self, not the Other. What people say about the Other tells us nothing essential about themselves beyond their perception, which is bolstered by rationalisation. The challenge for conflict resolution is not to change how people view others but how people view themselves. The goal needs to be to show people how they idealise themselves (and in doing so project that which they dislike in themselves on to others). Otherwise conflict resolution is reduced to intellectual arguments. Conflict resolution needs to be able to confront subjects with their lies. The above analysis also makes it evident that people say one thing but mean another. Thus while, as we shall see in the next section (p. 99–113), the conscious object of republican hatred is the Brits, the unconscious object of their hatred is Protestants. When one also sees opinions being contradicted by the same subject one realises that in conflict resolution opinions are of themselves distractions from the real work of resolution. It is therefore important for those engaged in conflict resolution to establish what participants in conflict unconsciously mean if one is to correctly identify the problems that are driving the conflict. 94

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Morality Interviewee 12 stresses that he has a problem with the liberal Protestant interpretation of equating individuals or communities in terms of their wrongdoing or contribution to the conflict, for example Denis Faul and Ian Paisley. He says Protestants evade responsibility in this way but then says Protestants ‘properly’ apportion blame, a mistake that indicates the opposite of what he consciously means. This contradiction suggests he unconsciously feels guilty over the Catholic community’s role in the conflict. The interviewee unconsciously believes that Catholics evade their responsibilities. This interpretation is strengthened by the fact that his defence of his belief that the two communities are not equally responsible because they do not hold equal power actually conceals his unconscious belief that the Catholic community is not responsible at all because, as he states elsewhere, it does not have power at all.15 Claims that Protestants are evading their responsibilities are a case of projection. In order to prove his case that Protestants are wrong to apportion blame for the conflict equally between the two communities, the interviewee presents an example from Catholic moral theology to show that the Catholic understanding of sin is more thorough than the Protestant understanding of sin. However, his argument is actually undermined by a contradiction showing that his own morals are lacking (by his own calculation) and when he realises his slip, a breakage occurs and he laughs. His contradiction is proof that he is rationalising here – he is stitching the Other up in an attempt to evade his guilt. And so, as he tries to further defend himself, his argument regarding Catholic innocence and Protestant guilt subsequently completely loses any sense of coherence and he ends up unconsciously demonising Protestants though his intention was the opposite:16 You know, you know, and if I, if I, misbehave myself with a girl, the fact that she is single and I’m single is not the same thing if I misbehave myself with a married woman. The notion that I shou. . . [breakage], of course, I shouldn’t be misbehaving myself at all [laughter], but, you know, but, [hesitation] it’s graduated.

Interviewee 1 is determined to assign the responsibility for the deaths of two British soldiers at the funeral of an IRA volunteer in Belfast in 1988 to the security forces even though they were killed by IRA members. He maintains that soldiers at Thiepval Barracks, headquarters of British Intelligence in Northern Ireland, knew that the two men being attacked at the funeral were two of their officers but failed to intervene to save them. However the interviewee makes a slip that suggests he accepts that the authorities might not have known who they were after all. So, his copperfastened case falls apart. The slip is made in the context of a reference to 95

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the fact that he believes the authorities at Thiepval might have thought the attackers were loyalists. The euphemism for ‘killed’, i.e. ‘being dead’, indicates the contradiction in his account, a contradiction that serves as proof that he is stitching up the Brits in an effort to deal with unconscious guilt: ‘Thiepval knew that there was two people being dragged out and that probably would end up being dead [euphemism], even if they were loyalists, but they were prepared to sit back, you know.’ Interviewee 6 wishes to blame the British for some of the hardship she experiences while in the IRA. She holds the Brits responsible for the fact that she spent hours holed up in houses when all she had wanted to do was go out and enjoy herself. She idealises herself as a person who only wanted to enjoy life and her view of her hardship thus diverts attention from the matter of her responsibility and the morality of her actions in the IRA. The repeated ‘I mean’ shows that she is rationalising here: [I was] always having to be careful [to avoid detection] and it was just a hard time. I mean I didn’t want to be doing that [i.e. to be holed up on IRA jobs], you know. I wanted to be out enjoying myself. I mean, I did beforehand go out, you know that, I mean, I didn’t want to be stuck in some house for hours on end, you know, you’d have preferred to have been living a normal life, being out, enjoying yourself.

The Brits are also said to have made her husband, an IRA volunteer, who he was. She comments: ‘I mean, they made him what he was, you know, without a doubt like.’ The implication is that they – and not he – are responsible for who he became, as, indeed, they were for her too. According to interviewee 1, everyone wants peace except the British as the first quote below indicates. However, only a few moments later the interviewee contradicts himself, saying that the British do want peace, as is clear from the second quote below. Once again it is evident that the interviewee wishes to present the British in a bad light as his contradictory opinions demonstrate. He is rationalising his own position here: The IRA want peace. The republican movement want peace. The Catholics, the Protestants want peace. The loyalists want peace. I mean the Free State, S. . . [breakage] everybody wants peace. It seems to me that the British Government don’t want peace. [and] I think there, there, I think there’s a desire for peace, they [the British] want peace.

If the enemy is stitched up so too is anyone who challenges the republican movement. However, that such demonisation involves rationalisation is clear from the following quote where interviewee 1 means to say 96

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he finds the Peace People insincere but instead says he believes they are sincere, but remains unaware of his mistake: – You know, they [the Peace People] allowed themselves to be manipulated,17 and I mean, they, they, they, were, were [repetition] sincere [mistake] in what they were doing, you know. Because had they have been [sincere], well then, I mean their convictions, their principles would have overseen this and, know what I mean, they would have sort of way levelled themselves out and gotten involved in serious, eh, peace.

Interviewee 1 also tries to cover up differences within the republican movement by scapegoating the British.18 In the following quote he claims that the fact that certain people within the republican movement do not desire conflict has created dissension within the movement, which he inadvertently reveals some republicans have tried to hide. In an effort to bury this revelation he immediately suggests in a highly confused re-take that it is the Brits who have denied republicans the right to express their desire for an end to conflict. In the end he concludes that the republican movement has never wanted military conflict. They are absolved of all desire to kill because Britain is responsible for dragging the IRA into a conflict that the IRA does not want to be in.19 This is a good example of how in the moral field republicans idealise their innocence: I think, I mean, it is again, the, eh, I mean the fact of life is, which has never been allowed to surface within the republican movement, the Brits never allow . . . [breakage] allowed [absence] to surface . . ., the republican movement don’t want conflict. The Rep. . . when I say they don’t want conflict, they don’t want military conflict. They don’t want dead bodies. They don’t want towns bombed. They never have. They were forced into a military campaign.

Interviewee 2 notes that British soldiers held her and her family in respect. She describes how one particular soldier remarks upon how good her son was, thereby validating her, her values and her interpretation of the conflict. The illusion is that republicans have something that the enemy wants: Sure even when we moved in here [to this house] I wasn’t here [one day]. I was at the shops and I came back from there and the Peelers [i.e. police] had been in here and the soldiers raiding. They broke in and my son couldn’t understand them, ‘But why mummy, why are they doing this?’ And one of the Brits actually turned around and said to me, ‘You’ve brought him up right and well.’ Here he [the Brit] is, ‘No matter what, no matter what we feel about one another, I see you haven’t brought it into the child.’ Because my son was always like that so, and my son says ‘Why are yous in my house, me and my mummy weren’t in?’ And he [i.e. my son] couldn’t understand it but the soldier must have seen he just wasn’t trailed up, he was well reared.

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She unconsciously wants the recognition of the Master, of the one republicans want to kill. This is a form of dependency that has negative consequences for conflict. The existence of the enemy is itself unconsciously desired – another expression of dependency. The interviewee is confident that the Brits will never beat the republican community because republicans will always protest against British injustice. She is convinced that British injustice will continue, which suggests that she unconsciously desires this. British injustice gives republicans meaning, and thus unconscious pleasure. She wants to have something to fight against. It is the Slave who wants the Master to be Master. This is an expression of how Catholics unconsciously want to be the Slave. Conclusion It is clear from the above examination of morality that evasion of responsibility is a significant problem for conflict resolution. This is true for combatants and non-combatants alike. The evasion of responsibility and the prolongation of the blame-game is a neurosis that reproduces the conditions for conflict. The blame-game is a type of paranoia. The Other is attributed more power than they in fact have. This fantasy of the all-powerful Other allows republicans to obsess from the position of Slave about not being beaten. Particular issues, whether these are historical or political, are less significant in this context. Blaming the Other allows self-idealisation to persist and in the moral sphere this amounts to seeing oneself as innocent or victim. The Slave believes he/she has no moral responsibility for the conflict or their use of violence. In this sense, it is an unconsciously pleasurable position to be in. It is the British who are in the dock. Conflict resolution needs to move participants and communities to accept responsibility for the use of violence or for its support. Without this, there is no significant change in the conditions for conflict. What is also interesting in the blame-game is not that one hurts the one one loves but that one loves the one one hurts. The one one opposes in conflict situations is the one one loves. Blaming the Other is an unconscious desire for love or recognition. The more one indulges in blame, the more one sees oneself in illusory terms – total, whole, independent – and the more one ignores what contradicts this, namely one’s dependency on the Other for recognition. Unconscious dependency is rife in situations of political conflict. In conflict resolution it is critical to identify dependency and its debilitating effects. One needs to recognise how one unconsciously desires the recognition of the Master and how failure to acknowledge this locks one into the position of Slave with all its negative consequences. Unconscious dependency keeps one in the blame-game and the belief that 98

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the only solution to one’s unfulfilled desire is to control or subjugate the Other. Unconscious guilt is also clearly an issue for republicans and needs also to be addressed in conflict resolution. The less this too is acknowledged, the more the blame-game persists. Republicans stitch up the enemy. Blame is an avoidance that allows people to bask in a false sense of self. This hampers change. The enemy is guilty of robbing republicans of their enjoyment. They have robbed them of their way of life, even their right to choose, and in this sense their superior morality, which has been taken from them when the Brits forced them to use violence against their will. The enemy also wants what republicans have and the latter unconsciously fear this. This vision of the self as being morally powerless unconsciously feeds resentment and is a difficulty that must be surmounted in situations of conflict. Republicans unconsciously enjoy the position of Slave in the area of morality. They scapegoat the Brits in particular. Conflict resolution involves uncovering what it is that parties to conflict rationalise in the moral domain. Projection Projection, the attribution to another of qualities, wishes or feelings that one refuses to recognise in oneself is frequently present in conflict situations where paranoia is rife. Typically, where interviewees knock others for being bigoted they are in fact projecting their feelings of bigotry onto them. Protestant ethnic identity Interviewee 2 begins her interview with a description of the evening of 11 July when she was dropped off on the Shankill Road with her children after a group holiday for loyalist and republican prisoners’ families. She remarks upon the ‘bitterness’ (i.e. bigotry) of the Protestants on the bus with her and explains that the bus-driver deliberately left them on the Shankill Road where she is convinced people know to look at them that they are Catholics: ‘And you nearly know they can spot ye from Adam. It’s wild.’ Her account suggests that Protestants have an inherent and instinctive disdain for Catholics that enables them to pick them out as well as a desire to root them out. When I asked the interviewee if she could spot Protestants in the same way, her reaction was interesting: A: Can you spot them, I wonder? You said they can spot you. C: Oh I think they [i.e. Protestants] would know. Not one of them [taxi drivers] would take us.

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It is as if she does not hear the question. She hears what she wants to, proof that she is in denial about her bias, which she projects on to all Protestants. The ‘telling’ phenomenon whereby people in conflict claim the enemy can recognise them even though they have no obvious differences applies to one community only. She says she knew the Protestants on the bus were ‘bitter’ because of their reaction when she sang ‘The Sash’, a ‘Protestant’ song. However, she contradicts herself by saying that they are ‘bitter’ because she and her friends sang songs that were not ‘Protestant’ songs: ‘They wanted us to sing, because it was coming up to the 11th they thought we should have sung, you know, their songs.’ This error in her account would indicate that it is the interviewee who is ‘bitter’ but that she projects this on to the Protestants on the bus. Indeed, according to the interviewee, ‘bitterness’ is an integral part of what it means to be Protestant: ‘It [inevitably] comes out like in them.’ To be ‘bitter’ is to be Protestant. The ‘bitterness’ is ‘bred into them’ (i.e. Protestants) by their parents: ‘they’re brought up, I mean, to really hate the Catholics, that way’.20 Interviewee 3 says: ‘I think they have beat it into the youngsters.’ This hatred of Catholics is attributed to the Protestant faith: ‘Their Protestant faith, the way they’re brought up, they hate Catholics, which I don’t understand.’ It is a view that interviewee 12 also shares. This view of the Protestant faith is rooted in paranoia. Protestants are out to get Catholics really means that Catholics are out to get Protestants but these feelings are projected onto Protestants. And the republican belief that it is something that is totally foreign to the Catholic community is an illusion.21 Yet the bigoted attitudes of republican interviewees of which they remain in denial are proof of bigotry in that community. In interviewee 3’s anger over Orangemen she belittles the whole notion of Protestant tradition and the notion that they have a just cause. She implies they are a people without a logic and full of contradictions. Her own contradictions are unacknowledged: Why can’t we [nationalists] walk down our own road when they [i.e. Orangemen] are saying about their road and they have been walking, this is their tradition. Tradition, my hole and then you get a fucking . . . They [i.e. Protestants] have fuck all to fight for. That’s what is wrong with them. For God and Queen! And then they are shooting the Peelers [i.e. police] and shooting the fucking Brits themselves like and who are they working for only the Queen so how can they [i.e. Protestants] be doing it for God and Queen? They are stupid, just stupid. Thick people like.

She wishes for the maximum pain for the Protestant community as her following joke reveals: ‘Did James Molyneaux retire or something? He’ll 100

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be a big loss to the community . . . . Probably fall off his horse the way Faulkner done. [May] Paisley and McCrea and them uns follow fucking suit!’ Her hatred is unacknowledged. Protestants deserve to suffer because they are bigoted. The joke hides her hatred from herself. Interviewee 5 wants to portray Protestants as bigoted towards Catholics and as potentially vicious. The interviewee claims that the Protestants among whom she found herself by accident with her father at a Twelfth parade called them derogatory sectarian names for crossing the path of the parade. However, this depiction of Protestants breaks down. She simply imagines the crowd calls her names. It is an illusion. This claim would have meant that the onlookers knew that she and her father were Catholics whereas they had no such knowledge for they had not heard her father’s Southern accent which, in the eyes of the interviewee, would have given them away. Her claim is lies. Her hatred for Protestants enables her then to project onto them whatever negativity she feels. When she realises her slip, i.e. that her bias and hatred are apparent, she backtracks. The re-take, breakage and the dead-end in the following quote indicate this point: You could imagine some of the comments [they were saying], ‘Who do you think you are you ‘ffing [Catholics]’ [re-take] what [breakage] lucky enough they didn’t, [dead-end], she hadn’t opened her mouth as such and I was saying ‘Daddy don’t say nothing! Ignore them!’ I think they were more or less, ‘he must be some sort of an eejit, how dare he, to go walking through our . . .’ because it’s a thing you’re not allowed to do, is break the ranks. But they would never have [brief stop] believed it was two Catholics standing you know.22

The interviewee is determined, however, to make her initial point that Protestants are bigoted and she points this out in the next utterance after the above where she projects her sectarianism onto the Protestants around her whom she says would have beaten herself and her father to death for being Catholics. This is what she wants us to believe. It is also what she had hoped to convince us of above but had to abandon. This new assertion serves now to take the focus off her own bigotry, which slipped out above and which no doubt she felt would have shown her in a bad light: ‘And here’s me to my daddy “Don’t open your mouth, Don’t open your mouth.” Because if they had have heard his [Southern] accent, we’d probably got beat to death, the both of us.’ In the following quote the absence marks the point where interviewee 7 is about to let slip that the Catholics in her district came armed to confront a group of three or four hundred Protestants who attacked the homes in her street on their way back from a football match. As I am left somewhat 101

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uncertain as a result of the absence about who was armed with petrol bombs etc. I seek clarification and she answers that it was the Protestants. That this is a lie is clear from the text because she has already stated that the Protestants were coming from a football match and not from clubs in her district. This is a good example of how an interviewee wishes to present a positive, though untrue, picture of the Catholic community and is willing to project on to others that which she wishes to hide or deny about her own community: H: Em, there was murder [i.e. mayhem]. The [Catholic] fellas came from every club in the district. They came [absence] bricks, bottles, petrol bombs, you name it. A: Every club in the Protestant district? H: Yep, came down and [brief stop] flags of course. I run over to get the kids out.

Interviewees are often at pains to exonerate themselves or their communities. That she is eager to vilify Protestants is also clear from her remarks about their throwing petrol bombs over a ‘peace wall’ into her street. When I asked her were they still doing this in the wake of the ceasefires she says they were not. However, she then says that she does not know whether it has stopped or not and then she once again reverts back to her position that it has stopped. The suggestion that she does not know when she has just said she does know is a contradiction that points to the fact that she wishes to intimate that Protestants are so ‘bitter’ that they did not respect the ceasefires even though she finally settles for the presentation that they have stopped throwing missiles at Catholics: A: Do Protestants still throw over? H: No, they don’t now. A: It is all gone now. So things changed do you think? H: Well for that, it has, of course, I mean, I don’t know now, I mean, I don’t live there now but I think because I never hear my friends talking about them throwing or anything like that. I mean, they didn’t [dead-end], whenever the wall was up there they did throw for a while but then it all stopped.

One of interviewee 7’s comments regarding the RUC, which she views as biased in favour of the Protestant community, is particularly revealing of the extent to which the interviewee desires to knock others. The RUC are said to be ‘unlucky bastards’ in that they always bring bad luck to her family home. That this is a rationalisation of the interviewee’s propensity for attracting the RUC to her home because of her behaviour or because 102

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of the behaviour of her family is evident in the fact that she actually refers to the RUC initially as ‘lucky bastards’ but remains unaware of her slip. This slip means that the RUC are lucky in that they have a habit of finding her – and others – out. Thus the interviewee is projecting here. Weakness is denied. Interviewee 11 knocks Protestants. They lack principles and convictions. He believes that Protestants do not have a political identity as such. Protestants have no political principles, so much so that they would unite with the (Catholic) South if they thought it economically beneficial. They are loyal only to the Queen on the pound note whereas Catholics will never be bought off with British money. They are ignorant and blinkered as well as irreligious – Protestants are not Protestants – and would sell out to the Irish Government if the price were right as the following quote is meant to demonstrate:23 I believe if you bring it down to the economics that you will find that a lot of Protestants who, without [my] meaning it as a slur [negation], they are not Protestants, they just don’t practice. Maybe born on that side of the fence, like, but just because they have been born to a Protestant woman and a Protestant man – they have never been to church in their lives – doesn’t make them Protestants so they are just working class people, you know, who probably read the only newspaper delivered to the shop, you know, and, and, listening to all this crap that is being talked about at night in the pub, and maybe they just don’t know anything different, so they are loyalist, Protestant, unionist, they’re this or that or the other, but when it gets down to the nitty gritty, they need a £100 per week to live, so you can get £50 off the British Government, £50 off the Irish Government, ‘So, right, where’s that paper?’ [to sign for the money from the Irish Government].

So the anti-Catholic, anti-nationalist and anti-United Ireland stance of Protestants is rooted in pure self-interest. This bigoted view of Protestants goes unacknowledged.24 For him, the only resolution of Ireland’s ills is for the Protestants who see themselves as British to get out of Ireland – to go home to Liverpool or whatever part of Britain they want – for the Catholic community will never give up its struggle against Protestant sectarian oppression. If Protestants decide to stay in Ireland then they should be denied a vote because they are British. Those who disagree with republicans are written off. Interviewee 12 views Protestant bigotry in terms of Protestants’ fear of Catholicism as a faith and a religious system (for ‘theological, tribal and all sorts of reasons’) whereas he claims that Catholics are not afraid of the Protestant faith or religious system. Protestants are paranoid about ‘Fenianism’ – a conglomeration of Sinn Fein, the SDLP, the Catholic Church, the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), etc. – which they think are 103

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‘all going to roll over them’. This is a projection of the Catholic community’s paranoia about the Protestant community. Several interviewees refer to Protestant intolerance for members of their own community who have contact with Catholics. Interviewee 2 tells the story of the Protestant man working in her community and whose Protestant neighbours want to put him out of his home because they object to his mixing with Catholics. For interviewee 11, Protestants are bigots who burn out fellow Protestants25 rather than allow Catholics move into their homes.26 The lie is that Catholics are happy to work and live with Protestants. The notion that Catholics are better than Protestants, more innocent and more victimised than Protestants is also taken up in the following set of comparisons. Victimisation is buttressed by denial and paranoia.27 A loyalist acquaintance complains to interviewee 2 about the RUC treatment of loyalists28 and the interviewee explains to her that republicans get it harder than loyalists: C: And here’s me, ‘I know but it’s different. Yous can go to a certain extent, but we can’t. We can’t do nothing. And, well anyway . . . .’ A: What do you mean they can go to a certain extent? C: Well, like the Peelers [i.e. police] give them uns leeway. Do you know what I mean? They [i.e. police] know what they [i.e. loyalists] are doing and what they’re not doing. In fact, they even work with them.29

Interviewee 2 concludes that Protestants are ‘taken by the hand’ by the State authorities.30 Speaking from personal experience of arrest and imprisonment she claims that Catholics get stiffer prison sentences than Protestants who are charged with similar offences. In her case she claims that, because of the fact that two of her relatives were connected with Sinn Fein, she was given a sentence that was far stiffer than that which a loyalist received at that time for a more serious charge. However, it later slips out that she felt she might have got a suspended sentence had she not been charged with intent, a hypothesis that contradicts her belief that she got a longer sentence than a loyalist simply on the grounds that her family was a strong republican family.31 The following is a description of a confrontation that takes place between interviewee 4 and a group of Orangemen. The interviewee taunts the Orangemen over the killing of two men by republicans on the Ormeau Road and takes pleasure in the suffering of the victims who are presented as cowards. What is interesting here is that Protestants are presented as the aggressors while Catholics are the defenders as indicated by her final comment, ‘I’m not going to let them uns walk over me.’ Her aggression is denied and projected. The bottom line for the interviewee is that she gets 104

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the better of the Orangemen whenever and whatever the cost because her view is that Orangemen are out to walk over Catholics: E: And I run out there and I shouted everything at them [i.e. the Orangemen]. [The Orangemen were] shouting ‘We won [the right to march down] the Ormeau Road!’ I said ‘Yous won? What did Bratty win on the Ormeau Road for he never got no fucking medals for he was left lying! A: Who? E: Bratty, and Elder, know the way them two got killed. A: When? E: Way ages ago. They were 2 Orangemen, 2 real bad UVF men who killed all the Catholics. Here’s me, here he was, ‘Yous were all crying today on the Ormeau Road!’ I said ‘Bratty and Elder cried plenty. You want to heard the squeals of them!32 I wouldn’t run, I wouldn’t run away from them uns [i.e. the Orangemen]. I would have faced them uns. I would have beat them uns while there was beating in them. They might have beat me back. I might have got slayed but I didn’t care. I’m not going to let them uns walk over me.

Interviewee 4’s anger regarding television reporting of the conflict is significant and the BBC comes in for particular criticism. She criticises their portrayal of the bombing in Enniskillen. For all this, she also says that if people only watched the news they would see that the IRA did not intend to kill Protestants at Enniskillen – a reference perhaps to her argument that if you watched the news you would see that the uniformed people ‘hawking the bodies out’ from the debris of the Enniskillen bombing were the authorities for whom the bomb was meant. This contradiction, i.e. that the news is biased and yet that people (Protestants) should watch the news to get the truth, gives rise to the rationalisation that people will see the truth of the republican interpretation if they only suspend their prejudices as they should do. Her own prejudices that lead her to rationalise thus are projected onto others. The victims of the bomb, the media, Protestants are the problem, the baddies. Catholics are innocent victims. Their own questionable behaviour is airbrushed: See that news, that TV, I’d kick that, I swear to God, kick that TV many’s a night, Adrian, I feel like getting up and kicking it. Sometimes I turn it off because, I’m going to tell you, it’s very biased. See the BBC, British Broadcasting, that’s true. The British rule that. They, they don’t, they only tell you half the truth. They don’t even tell you half the truth. The bomb in Enniskillen – the IRA tried to blow up innocent people – what innocent people? See if you look, see if the people sit and just watch the news, they know fine rightly, they’d know fine rightly the IRA didn’t do that on purpose.

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This type of rationalisation occurs in several other interviews: there is only one truth and it is the possession of the Catholic community and Protestants would see it if they were not so biased, ‘bitter’ and perhaps even wicked. The media is the object of Catholic projection. When I ask interviewee 4 does she believe that the IRA kills Protestants she immediately hits out at the media for portraying the IRA as sectarian because she assumes that I have picked this view up through the media. It has to be a lie. Yet in spite of her rejection of this view, which her response implies, her laughter as she responds implies she believes they are in fact sectarian. A: Does the IRA kill Protestants? I hear people say they kill Protestants. C: No, they don’t. No, they don’t. Who told you that? A: You hear that all over the place. C: For fuck’s sake they don’t! See, that’s that that bloody fucking TV – God forgive me for cursing. That’s that TV. See everybody believes them bloody TVs. They don’t, Adrian. Don’t let anybody tell you that! The IRA is not sectarian.

IRA violence has its justification in a struggle for liberation and must never be seen as sectarian because that is what the enemy’s violence is – the ‘Any Taig [Catholic] Will Do’ philosophy of loyalism, so to speak. People rationalise violence in order to live with it. It is again a case of baddies and goodies. The retention of this illusion gives rise to paranoia, for the media is out to misrepresent the nationalist community. Rivalry33 The goodies project all that they find bad in themselves onto the baddies and then tell themselves that the baddies want to be like them. This is an illusion. Interviewee 2 demonstrates on numerous occasions throughout the interview that people on ‘the other side’ come to see that the Catholic community has the truth. This makes Protestants out to be bigoted and their worldview unconvincing. It is also meant to show Catholics as the community that has been wronged by others34 who are too ‘bitter’ to admit their viewpoint is mistaken.35 Thus, for example, those Protestants with whom she works come to see the folly of their ideas on their British identity, recognising that they are indeed Irish as the interviewee points out to them.36 Her partner’s father is described as an ordinary Protestant who eventually has his eyes open after his son is shot by the RUC, coming to realise that the republican reading of the conflict is the correct one, i.e. that the RUC and the British create the trouble in Northern Ireland. In this 106

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way the interviewee justifies her position. The Protestant movement towards ‘our way of thinking’ is presented as a type of quasi-religious experience: ‘You know, he’s starting to believe,’ and ‘People that believed in nothing, they were normal, eh, a normal people and then seeing the truth.’ Her partner’s Protestant sister is also another convert to reality. She is introduced as a woman who ‘wouldn’t agree with the Troubles at all’ and ‘She just wants to live and that’s the way she just wants to live like’ but she changes when she experiences RUC violence first hand, coming to see that Catholics see reality as it really is.37 The fact that projection results in an idealised view of the self also leads to jouissance. Protestants are accused of stealing various sources of Catholic pleasure. One such pleasure is that of victimhood. Interviewee 3 describes the way coverage of the bombs in Enniskillen and Warrington are used to the political advantage of Protestants. Protestants exaggerate their lot in the media. Catholic pain is overlooked: They [i.e. Protestants] keep harping on, they keep going back, no matter what happens, they constantly go back to Enniskillen and Warrington and the Shankill Bomb. They don’t go back to McGurk’s Bar and all the atrocities that happened on the Catholic side. It is always the Protestants. What happened to the Protestant side. It is never what happened to the Catholic side.38

She concludes: ‘Now things like that make my blood boil where people are so fucking bigoted and biased that they can’t see that.’ The ‘other side’ is portrayed as determined to outdo Catholics, overriding Catholic experience of atrocity and milking their experience as Protestant victims. The contradiction is that this is the very thing the interviewee wishes Catholics would do more of, i.e. highlight Catholic suffering to the exclusion of Protestant suffering. The media is a focus of rivalry in relations between the Protestant community and the Catholic community.39 Interviewee 4 complains that the media ‘sensationalised’ Enniskillen but not Greysteel where Catholics were the victims of loyalist violence. In reference to a loyalist bombing of a local pub frequented by Catholics she seems to suggest that people, presumably the media and Protestants, are to be criticised for their failure to ‘sensationalise’ that attack. It is as if she wants Catholic suffering to be sensationalised even though she is against the sensationalisation of Enniskillen. She wants what Protestants have.40 Emptying oneself of moral complexity and complex motivation enhances victim status. According to interviewee 3 Catholics are ‘seen constantly downtrodden’ and the murders they suffer are downplayed in the media because Catholics are valueless and people do not want to know. Only Protestants count: ‘We’re only Fenians [i.e. Catholics] anyway so it 107

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doesn’t make any difference like. Another one less of them [i.e. Catholics] to fucking worry about.’ The following account of interviewee 2’s time in prison for IRA activity suggests rivalry over jouissance. She resents being the object of the Other’s pleasure – in this case the British Government. When the first hunger strike involving women prisoners had come to an end in 1980 after various demands had been met by the British to the satisfaction of male IRA prisoners in Long Kesh, she still refused to clean up on the outer wings of Armagh Prison. She states that from her point of view, the ‘screws’ had won the day in the battle over the prisoners’ demands even though the republican movement claimed that the IRA had won the day. In her view, prisoners basically ended up doing activities that the prison authorities chose for them and so, even though the IRA argued that they had won their demands, she felt they hadn’t won anything. They were given rights, but they hadn’t won them. What matters, therefore, is not alleviating your suffering41 or getting what you want but thwarting the Master’s pleasure.42 She describes the situation in relation to classes within the prison as follows: But then they [i.e. the authorities] used the classes. You had to do then so many classes. I think my cell-mate done classes. She done well. You, I’m not saying . . ., people would have wanted all that, but the point was we didn’t get it really. You didn’t win it. That was the whole point – you didn’t win it. [. . .] You either worked or went to your class. So you were doing what you were told anyway. At the end of the day you were doing everything . . . . But you were doing what the screws wanted you to do and at the end of the day that’s what criminals done. Nobody says ‘Well here’s the political prisoners and this is their wing and this is what they do,’ you know.

This desire to obstruct the Master’s desire is a driving force in relations between republicans and the British, preventing the latter from ‘getting off’ on them. It has driven violent republicanism. Thus, for example, this, rather than the execution of the Easter Rising rebels,43 is what shaped the identification with republicanism on the part of the wider population in 1916. The British propensity for creating sympathy for the IRA where they aim to undermine the latter is not, therefore, a ‘persistent . . . theme in British responses to Irish republicanism’.44 Instead, the unconscious desire to obstruct the Master’s pleasure is the persistent theme in republican responses to Britain. This is the basis of the identification with the rebels, which is why there was no outcry from the wider population when both Collins and later De Valera had republicans executed. Sacrifice, which is how both the Easter Rebellion and the 1981 hunger strike are framed, is the ultimate robbery or denial of the Master’s pleasure.45 And it hides the unconscious pleasure in pain. The unconscious desire to thwart the 108

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Master’s desire rendered the deaths significant and produced the rationalisation of self-sacrifice that the wider population identified with. Protestant political identity For interview 4 Protestants are like Catholics in that they are Irish but unlike Catholics in that they are blind to this identity:46 ‘But I knew the difference between Protestants and Catholics and my daddy would have said they were blinded, they’re blinded Irishmen. They’re blind to the fact that they’re Irish.’ She believes that Protestants are less politically aware and politically active than Catholics. Their political interpretation of their identity is rubbished and dismissed: ‘They [i.e. Protestants], they haven’t a clue. They’re not political like us. The Protestant people, on the whole, couldn’t hold a candle to the, the nationalist people or the Catholic people . . . see the Catholic population, they’re far more in tune with politics than the Protestant people.’ The extent to which the interviewee is willing to rationalise in an effort to present a negative image of Protestant political identity is clear from the following account in which she claims that Protestants are only now getting into politics because Protestants are in the economic position that Catholics are in, i.e. a weak position.47 The implication is that Protestants are getting a taste of Catholic suffering. This comparison appears to founder because it is contradictory to say that Protestants are just like Catholics and then say that Catholics are better off economically,48 which is what the interviewee in fact says: ‘Now the Protestant people is only getting into politics. Know why? Because they’re just like us. We’re overtaking them uns. We’re getting the good education. We’re getting the good jobs. They’re on the buroo [i.e. social welfare benefits].’ A further contradiction is that if the Catholic community is thriving economically the image as victim conflicts with reality. Interviewee 8’s present understanding of Protestants can be gauged from the following two quotes. He perceives Protestants as always having the attitude to Catholics of, ‘We’re better than them. We’re better,’ or more explicitly still: ‘That’s, that’s, like that’s the bottom line . . . that they believed that the Taigs were kind of, I mean, this is a wrong, a wrong thing to use, but they believed that we were, eh, white Negroes. Do you know what I mean? That was their thing, right, and, and they needed to feel that wee bit of superiority.’49 The problem would appear to be that Protestants make Catholics aware of their second-class status as ‘Taigs’,50 which was the interviewee’s experience as he moved out to work in Protestant areas. In other words, the interviewee’s view is that Protestants are not the problem for Catholics but 109

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how Protestants view Catholics is in so far as this forms the Protestant grounds for resistance to a United Ireland. And we might note here again that it has nothing to do with how Catholics view Protestants – which is not problematic – nor has it anything to do with Catholic attitudes or actions. The interviewee’s ‘sophisticated’ version of this interpretation is that the Protestant community created the Northern conflict in large part by its failure to bring Catholics into full social, economic, cultural and political integration within Northern Ireland. For all this, we are meant to believe that the interviewee and his fellow Catholics feel no negativity towards Protestants.51 The desire to dominate is projected on to superior Protestants. Catholics are unconsciously happy to be seen as inferior in a relationship with a community they prefer to see as superior. Conclusion Highlighting projection in conflict resolution allows one to critically approach the matter of perception in conflict situations. It also allows one to challenge subjects to take responsibility for what they dislike in themselves. The paranoia that feeds projection drives animosity and division. The paranoic projects outwards what he or she hates and it returns as reproaches. What he or she wants is relief from internal strife. Projection shows that negative opinions of others need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Self-idealisation goes hand in hand with projection: when one fails to acknowledge one’s own contradictions one wholesale knocks the Other. Such false images of self hamper change and reproduce division and conflict. Subjects become obsessed with the Other. Relationships are fraught with defensiveness. Distrust is widespread. When people project all that they find unpleasurable in their make-up they do not feel the need to change and a type of fundamentalism develops. The rivalry that dominates conflict is about jouissance. It has an imaginary basis. In this context, conflict resolution needs to treat even positive identifications as suspect. Wanting to be like someone conceals an unconscious desire to dominate, while the perception that others want to be like us gives rise to paranoia. Conflict resolution should recognise the attraction of the imaginary dimension of domination, how perception drives conflicts, how the past can put positive changes into the shade, how people to some extent sustain the conditions for their grievances. Protestant morality For interview 4, Protestants are ‘wicked’. And the reason why Protestants are so wicked is because they do not have consciences, unlike Catholics: 110

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I wouldn’t like them uns [i.e. Protestants] to get me. They’re awful wicked. See I think we’re not as wicked because we’re Catholics, because we know si . . . [breakage], things are sins. We have a conscience. I don’t know whether they [i.e. Protestants] have a conscience. I don’t think so.52 [and] Know the way them Orangemen [i.e. the Shankill Butchers] cut them people [i.e. Catholics] up, done awful things on them before they died. I don’t think we’re like that because we’ve got a conscience.53

If the breakage in the first of the above quotes marks the ellipsis of the word ‘sin’, this suggests that the interviewee acknowledges that Catholics indeed know sins because she in fact believes they commit them in the context of the conflict but wishes to deny this. She is clearly projecting here. Interviewee 12 also believes that Catholics are superior to Protestants in an essential way. He believes that Protestants are to blame for the conflict in Northern Ireland and that they conveniently overlook the extent of their wrongdoing and their culpability for the conflict because they were not brought up with a moral theology.54 Catholic moral theology depends upon a graduated notion of sin in a way that this is not, according to the interviewee, the case in Protestantism, particularly Presbyterianism. Protestants have only a notion of sin as a ‘sinful state’ that requires them to seek redemption whereas Catholics are required to keep the law – a law that could be social or religious as the interviewee does not make clear what law he is referring to exactly. British morality Many of the interviews were critical of the British authorities in relation to the incident in which two British soldiers were murdered after they were taken by IRA members and shot near Casement Park in Belfast in 1988 during the funeral of an IRA member. Interviewee 2 claims that the two soldiers had not lost their way, as some British Intelligence sources had claimed. Neither were they undercover men. Instead they were sacrificed by British Intelligence in an effort to gain back ground in the war of publicity, which had gone against the British after the attack at Milltown Cemetery a few days earlier where, according to the interviewee, the bravery of members of the Catholic community who had run after their assailant, Michael Stone, had gained worldwide attention. Many interviewees shared this view, of which interviewee 2’s comment below is typical: C: That was a plant. They [British Intelligence] knew then that them fellas [the two soldiers] were going in to [dead-end] [to do a job], and not coming out again. The Brits knew them fellas were going to come in there and not [absence].

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Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict A: Why do you think they were going to plant them? C: Because that was more bad public. . . [breakage], publi. . . [breakage]. A: Publicity.

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C: Yep.

The dead-end above suggests, however, that the interviewee believes that the soldiers were killed carrying out an attack. The breakage suggests that she does not in fact believe her own story. This is a good example of the paranoia that accompanies projection. According to interviewee 6, the sacrifice of the two soldiers proves that the British are morally low and shallow. However, the cut in the following suggests that her attitude to the British is actually a projection of her understanding of her own community’s reality where Catholic people can be killed by the IRA when it suits their interest: ‘Everybody’s dispensable, you know. They [i.e. the two soldiers] didn’t [re-take], but they probably didn’t know that. I mean, I do feel sorry for them and I feel sorry for the family. You know, but it doesn’t matter who you are or what you are, you know, that we can . . . [cut] they can be done away with.’ Interviewee 6 is determined to show that the ‘sacrifice’ of two British soldiers near Casement Park in 1988 is an expression of how low the British are prepared to go. She says she is sorry for the men and for their families and remarks that nobody deserves to die but then basically says they did deserve to die because being sacrificed is part of the job description. When she begins to fantasise how the soldiers must have enjoyed being on a big job, she cuts her comments short because the pleasure she takes in their deaths has slipped out at their demise, which so contrasted with their supposed excitement: ‘Nobody deserves to die, nobody does. But, I just, you know, I feel sorry for them that they were allowed to die but you know, they paid . . . [dead-end], that was their career. They, you know, thought this great job they were doing and em probably [dead-end], I mean, I’m only surmising.’ When interviewee 9 is describing how Brits raided her home while she was abroad on holiday it is obvious that she wishes to accuse the soldiers of stealing. She begins by saying, ‘it’s hard really to know if anything [retake]’, implying that she is in doubt as to whether anything was actually taken but then she asserts something is missing but might have been given away by her husband or herself, and finally that perhaps the British soldiers took it. The re-take marks the point where she decides to implicate the Brits in an action about which she has already said she does not know if it happened.55 The theft is a fantasy: ‘Em, we had so much stuff there it’s hard really to know if anything [re-take], whether we’ve give it, thing, to 112

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somebody or they [i.e. the Brits] took it and you can’t accuse them of taking it unless you have proof it was there to start with you know.’ Interviewee 12 says he rarely encounters harassment because he is a ‘respectable citizen’ in British army eyes, because he is in a job and because his attitude is such as not to invite antagonism. In one instance where things went wrong for him with the Brits he claims this was because the soldiers did not recognise these middle class ‘vibes’ at first glance: a soldier who stopped him in the street addressed him initially as ‘Mate’, a derogatory term in the eyes of the interviewee, but finished up addressing him as ‘Sir’, the implication being that the soldier realised that he was dealing with a respectable citizen. The interviewee wishes (us) to believe that he has the right attitude and background and that soldiers thereby respect him: ‘You know, the attitude [re-take], I wouldn’t say the attitude [of soldiers] towards me has ever been antagonistic but, it tends, I think, to, em, be different if you’re in a job, you know, you’re obviously a respectable citizen in . . . in their compass [laughter].’ The idea that the enemy likes him is an unconscious fantasy about control: he controls them, not the other way around. It is superiority. His hands are clean. Getting respectable treatment from the Brits is for him a symbol of his ability to set the agenda and confirmation of his belief that working-class Catholics bring misfortune upon themselves. Conclusion Bland statements are the order of the day in conflict resolution. ‘We all want peace’, ‘nobody deserves to die’, etc. but these are examples of posturing. They are attempts at denying aggression and the desire to evade responsibility. People who talk peace are often the most intransigent. They project their aggression onto others. Splitting Protestant identity Protestants are presented by interviewee 4 as being naive. She claims they believed everyone in her area was in the IRA because of the strength of Catholic resistance whereas a brave twenty IRA members kept thousands of Protestants out. Her fantasy breaks down later, however, when she states that in a sense it is true to say that the whole local community supported the IRA then, an interpretation she implies would give validity to the Protestant belief that everyone in her area was in the IRA: 113

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Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict But I’m going to tell you [obsessive repetition], I always think this, I think the Protestants thought everybody was in the IRA. I think the Brits and the Orangemen thought that everybody was in the IRA that lived in this area. I know sometimes when I think about it, see if they only but knew like, do you know that way? Here’s me ‘Fuck if they knew the, [re-take] if they knew that there was about twenty people keeping them uns, thousands of them out’. Jesus Christ, they [i.e. Catholics] were some men! It wa. . . it’s it’s, [verbal inability] I don’t know, I, I imagine they thought everybody was in the IRA. I imagine the Brits thought everybody was in the IRA. And see then there was only about, like there was twenty really dedicated men. But everybody helped, so right enough maybe everybody sort of like was sort of connected [i.e. to the IRA], [re-take] not connected but there, everybody was there for you. All their houses [were available for use] any time of the day or night, climb over the wall, kick the yard door, you were in.

The movement from one interpretation to the other, i.e. from a Protestant community that is stupid enough to believe everyone in the interviewee’s locality was in the IRA to her own belief that they were, suggests that the interviewee’s primary concern is to show her community in a good light, i.e. one in which the local Catholic community has one up on Protestants. When one situates oneself in conflict, contradictions are insignificant and quickly rationalised. British morality Interviewee 4 claims that the two soldiers killed in 1988 near Casement Park were set up by fellow Brits. Then she claims they set themselves up, i.e. that they wanted to die, and finally she says that they intended to get away. The splitting before this final proposition represses her paranoid fantasy of a suicidal ‘set up’. See them fucking ones [i.e. the two soldiers] at Kevin Bradaigh’s funeral, they were set up too. Them Brits set them uns [i.e. the two soldiers] up for that. The whole funeral, see that whole funeral that day, [re-take] I think them Brits [i.e. the two soldiers] was set up. Nothing will convince me them Brits [i.e. the two soldiers] were stupid. They weren’t. Them Brits, [re-take] them Brits [i.e. the two soldiers] set that up. [Splitting] They thought they were getting away that day.

The fact that the soldiers thought they were going to escape contradicts the fact that they set the whole incident up and suggests that the interviewee takes her paranoid fantasy to an extreme. Interviewee 7’s account of the deaths of the two soldiers also exhibits splitting. Having already stated that the two soldiers were there ‘to kill Gerry Adams definitely’, she then says that they went out to die: 114

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H: . . . or did they want to come martyrs or what? A: To die? H: That is another way I look at it too. Aye, there is times I thought of that too. A: Why would they want to die, would you think? H: To make out that Catholics were [dead-end]. Maybe they [i.e. the soldiers] knew what was in front of them. A: To make out that the Catholics were what then? H: More savages.

Conclusion As we have seen above, contradictions are two a penny as interviewees rationalise in defence of their image of themselves.56 Several interviewees presented an idealised image of themselves as tolerant and innocent that was based on a denial of differences between them and Protestants, whom they presented as guilty and intolerant.57 They thus hid their bigotry and responsibility for the perpetuation of the conflict from themselves. Some interviewees are also in denial about the pleasure – jouissance – they obtain from suffering at the hands of members of the Protestant community or those they identify with that community including the RUC and the Brits. Related to this is the pleasure they derive from their self-interpretation as victims. As a result they display some anxiety at the thought that perceived Protestant oppression might be eroded. They also find pleasure in knocking both the Protestant community and the Brits and in their desire for maximum pain for the Brits and members of the loyalist community. Their sense of being disordered, their anxiety, negativity, poor selfesteem based in the belief that they are second-class white Negroes, and fears – all these provide grounds for projecting onto the Protestant community what they find unpleasurable in themselves. Thus the defences of the (Protestant) State are, in the case of the RUC, said to be biased against Catholics, full of badness, fearful of the IRA, deceitful, violent, abusive and selfish and, in the case of the British, untrustworthy, evil, full of sheer badness, troublemakers and biased in favour of Protestants. That which binds Protestants together is supposedly their religious bigotry against Catholics and Catholicism. Hatred for Catholics is in their blood. Protestants are said to be insecure, aggressive and responsible for the conflict. According to the interviewees, the Protestant community is an ethnic community 115

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without a political rationale. Protestants are bigoted, hypocritical, immoral, devious, manipulative in relation to the media, naive, stupid, illogical, dishonest, weak, guilty, wicked, slow, blinded, in denial, shallow and scum.58 Protestants are involved in a religious conflict of their own making. Protestant resistance has nothing to do with the constitutional question or cultural, social or economic factors. In this sense, Protestant oppression of Catholics does not challenge the republican view of Protestants as Irish. Protestants remain bona fide ‘blinded Irish people’ determined to kill Catholics because they are of a different religious tradition. They are in denial of their true political identity as Irish people. Protestants, therefore, have no political justification for the conflict – they have ‘fuck all to fight for’, as one interviewee put it. By robbing Protestants of any justification for the attitudes or for their use of violence by members of that community, republican interviewees present themselves in a good light. By emphasising Protestant bigotry, Catholics unconsciously enjoy their paranoia. Protestants are depicted as morally and politically inferior to members of the Catholic community so much so that the more enlightened Protestant or loyalist identifies positively with the Catholic community. A significant rationalisation of this desire to remain on top is the notion that while interviewees describe Protestants as being/not being like Catholics, Catholics are not like Protestants. As is clear from the above description of Protestants, perception is central to the resentment that foments division. In conflict resolution it is important not to fall into the trap of either idealising the enemy or entertaining the negative identification in order to bring about change. Instead, it is vital to reveal what rationalisations such claims involve and attempt to change perception on that basis. How people unconsciously stitch others up to stem their own confusion and anxiety is what matters. Catholics are tolerant, innocent, upright, rational, honest, strong and in touch with reality. They have political and moral integrity. Right is on their side and they have the truth. The interviewees’ references to the moral and political bankruptcy of the Protestant community and the moral bankruptcy of the British places the Catholic community in the position of Master. When Catholics see themselves as Slave, Protestants are said to have the power in the sense that everything operates in favour of Protestants and no one speaks for Catholics.59 Being Slave means that the Catholic community is dependent upon the recognition of those they claim oppress them. The self-interpretation of interviewees as second-class citizens who are the victims of Protestant bigotry is a view that brings with it an unconscious pleasure that makes the perpetuation of the cleavage in Northern Irish society desirable.60 Indeed, not only is there a pleasure in being seen 116

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as the victim community,61 there is also a desire for this status62 and for the type of pain this engenders.63 It is this that enables republicans to believe they are in control of, or on top of, the Other. Interviewees tend to rationalise the way in which they resent Protestants who are, after all, a part of the republican vision. To accept their unconscious feelings of resentment would be to tarnish their image as a tolerant people who simply wish that Protestants would wake up, see that Britain has created the conditions for the conflict, become persuaded of the folly and immorality of the Protestant community and come to recognise their identity as Irish citizens whose rightful place is in a New Ireland where they shall hold the balance of power and all their interests will be protected. Grand political designs in the shape of a United Ireland and grievances over economic and cultural discrimination are not entirely where it is at for republicans. What people primarily work out of is an unconscious rivalry with and hatred for Protestants, their interpretation of whom largely dictates how Catholics see themselves and all those institutional bodies that are interpreted as backing Protestants up. Why is the above analysis essential for conflict resolution? Denial contributes to conflict. Unconscious pleasure or jouissance sustains conflict. Only a theory of conflict resolution that takes into account unconscious feelings, desires, ideas and beliefs can really help resolve conflict. Only such a theory can deal with the confusion, contradictions and rationalisations that people live out of. NOTES

1

2

3

Bruce appears to suggest that it is easier for Catholics to rationalise ‘mistakes’, i.e. deaths occurring from IRA violence that the IRA claims went wrong, than it is for Protestants to rationalise ‘mistakes’ carried out by loyalist paramilitaries (Steve Bruce, The Red Hand: Protestant paramilitaries in Northern Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 58). Though he gives the grounds for the rationalisations, he offers no proof of the ease involved. This fact might confirm Conor Cruise O’Brien’s assertion, that the Other of the Catholic community is the Protestant community (Conor Cruise O’Brien, States of Ireland (St Albans: Panther, 1974), p. 16). However, I also examine Catholic interviewees’ relations with the RUC and the media, two groups that are viewed as backing up the Protestant community and the British. The desire to demonstrate that one has nothing against Protestants and to downplay the significance of differences is something that Gerry Adams also expresses in his autobiography. He tells of how he and his friends used to go to the cinema in the Protestant Donegal Road area of the city and would leave the cinema early in ‘defiance of “the Queen”’ (Gerry Adams, Before the Dawn (London: Heinemann, 1996), p. 48), i.e. skipping the playing of the British national anthem, with local people chasing after them. He says his defiance was ‘instinctive’ (ibid., p. 48), and had nothing to do with the fact that the local people in the cinema were Protestants or unionists. However, even here

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4

5

6

7

8

9

it appears to me that Adams is in denial of the reason for his motivation, which is premised on a notion that those who chased after him reacted because they were – as he acknowledges – different. His reference to the fact that throughout his childhood he ‘hadn’t really been aware . . .’ of ‘a small-scale but persistent campaign to foment antiCatholic prejudice, spearheaded by Paisley’ (ibid., p. 49) implies that here too he wishes to downplay an awareness of political differences. The word ‘really’ in the previous quote would indicate that he was aware of these differences to some extent. Hayes notes that up until 1939 the two communities inhabited virtually separate economic and social systems in which they kindled memories of past outrage, attack and dispossession (Maurice Hayes, Minority Verdict (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1995). Today, while there is an increased economic and perhaps social overlap the same focus on the injustices of the other remains. The absence of a ‘Protestant’ object of contact in this quote, like the later reference elsewhere to his ‘first encounter’, i.e. with Protestants, demonstrates the problem he has with Protestants but which by their omission he wishes to ignore. It is also an indication of his negativity towards Protestants. The notion that Protestants are not a problem for republicans might be rooted in the tendency towards abstentionism in the early 1920s. Anti-exclusionists abstained from the Belfast Parliament, believing that non-recognition was the best option at least until the Boundary Commission ruled on the issue of exclusion and that their salvation lay in pressure from the Free State for plebiscites in disputed areas. Their issues were with Britain. They felt that they could afford to ignore unionists and that it was to their advantage to do so. However, it is possible that the physical conflict of the past thirty years has brought republicans and loyalists face to face and led to a heightened sense of hatred for loyalists among republicans, though this is denied by individual interviewees. Maurice Hayes draws our attention to the way in which denial was rampant in local government where unionist councils that had not employed a Catholic for generations were invariably heard to profess ‘Of course, community relations have always been good around here’ (Hayes, Minority Verdict, p. 93). Bruce is at pains to convince us that the conflict ‘was not a result of bad manners or social awkwardness writ large’ which, he claims, highlights ‘an important paradox in sectarian relationships: most Protestants and Catholics, even those who got involved in the UDA and UVF, got on well with the other side’ (Bruce, The Red Hand, p. 45). This could only be true, however, if one overlooks Bruce’s claims elsewhere that Protestants always felt ‘beleaguered’ vis-à-vis Catholics even in times of peace (ibid., p. 31) and that prior to the outbreak of civil unrest in 1969 the UVF represented ‘a particular virulent version of a fear of republicanism that was widely shared among Protestants’ (ibid., p. 32) and the fact that, according to Bruce, most Catholics and Protestants fled one another in 1969 out of fear rather than out of an experience of violence (ibid., p. 45), which hints at a historical lack of trust. ‘[P]reviously friendly everyday interaction’ (ibid., p. 45) is hardly politically or sociologically significant in this context except to cover up or deny oppositions. In Frederick W. Boal, Margaret C. Keane and David N. Livingstone, Them and Us?: Attitudinal Variation Among Churchgoers in Belfast, (Belfast: The Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University, Belfast, 1997), the authors note that tolerance for individuals appears to be higher than for religiously-different groups (ibid., p. 162). This would suggest that paranoia in Catholic–Protestant relations is likely to be strong at the group level – a reality which the present research bears out in relation to the Catholic community.

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10 The Opsahl Report on Northern Ireland refers to the fact that Frank Wright remarks that a pre-condition of friendly relations in Northern Ireland is avoidance of politics and religion and the concealment of differences generally (Andy Pollak (ed.), A Citizens’ Enquiry: The Opsahl Report on Northern Ireland (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1992), p. 346). 11 Apart from the desirability of pain, discrimination also has the added pleasure of keeping Protestants in the dock. 12 Harris notes that in 1914 Bishop McHugh of Derry stated that he wanted a nationalist demonstration against the Ulster autonomy alteration to the Home Rule Bill because, although Catholics would be in danger of attack, ‘An attack by Orangemen . . . would expose their intolerance’ (Mary Harris, The Catholic Church and the Foundation of the Northern State (Cork: Cork University Press, 1993), p. 48). 13 This might also suggest that the interviewee himself is trying to ‘chop out’ his own sectarianism for the purposes of his own self-image and for the sake of the interview. 14 Ed Moloney notes that in the period 1975–77 the IRA bombed Protestant pubs killing ‘uninvolved civilians’ and kidnapped and killed ‘innocent Protestants’ (Ed Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA (London: Penguin, 2002), p. 145). He also writes that between 1970–90 the IRA’s response to loyalist killings of Catholics was ‘to retaliate with excessive but deliberately directed violence against the unionist community’ (ibid., pp. 319–20). Richard English notes that in the Irish revolution of 1921 ‘the IRA did indeed shoot some people because they were Protestant’ (Richard English, Armed Struggle, A History of the IRA (London: Macmillan, 2003), p. 28). Smith remarks that in the mid1970s the IRA ‘was trying to stoke up sectarian violence’ and that it ‘at least contrived to turn a blind eye to sectarian attacks carried out by its own members’ (M. L. R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland? The Military Strategy of the Irish Republican Movement (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 122). He also concludes that the republican movement still dismissed loyalists in 1994 (ibid., p. 221), that the position of the Northern Protestant community ‘represents an ideological blindspot for the republican movement’ (ibid., p. 222) rendering republicans guilty of ‘crypto-sectarianism’ and that the IRA’s record renders its ‘sectarian incantations highly suspect’ (ibid., p. 222). Bruce notes that in 1971 ‘the IRA was bombing public houses in Protestant areas . . . The bombs were designed to kill “Protestants” and they succeeded’ (Bruce, The Red Hand, p. 57). 15 The claim that the Catholic community has no power is synonymous with claims of ignorance, both of which are forms of unconscious enjoyment. Such ignorance is what English frequently calls ‘irony’ where nationalists ‘unwittingly’ act in a way that results in the opposite effect from that which they intended. For example, the civil rights activists in 1969 set out to rid Northern Ireland of sectarianism but actually it turned out that it ‘could unwittingly deepen intercommunal animosity’ (English, Armed Struggle, p. 94). One really needs to ask why people can’t see things coming. The answer has got to be because they unconsciously don’t want to – and this, in the above case, in spite of the fact that English says People’s Democracy members wanted to provoke the State forces into violence, the civil rights campaign was ‘expressly anti-unionist in character’ (ibid., p. 147) thanks to the influence of the old IRA, and some civil rights activists like Bernadette Devlin saw the restoration of civil rights as only being possible in a United Ireland framework – a prospect that was anathema to Ulster Protestants. 16 A reference to Annie Murphy (in his confusion he calls her Mary Murphy), mother to Bishop Eamon Casey’s child, ends up with a reversal of his argument against the demonisation of others such that it appears as an argument for demonisation. A reference to Salmon Rushdie further confirms that he does not believe in his own argument against demonisation of others. (See Adrian Millar, The Constitution of Republican Identity in Belfast: A Lacanian Psychoanalysis (PhD dissertation, University College Dublin, 1999), p. 241).

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Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict 17 Smith notes the tendency among republicans to view those nationalists whom they perceive as being persuaded by British imperialism as being morally ‘weak people’ (Smith, Fighting for Ireland?, p. 47). Writing people off on moral grounds enables participants to conflict to maintain an illusory total self that simply reproduces the conflict. 18 Perhaps the republican tendency to overlook difference is also apparent from the fact that Sinn Fein viewed the First Dail as the truly legitimate authority in Ireland, a Parliament they established after the results of the 1918 UK general election in which Sinn Fein won less than half the total vote. 19 The desire to scapegoat Britain is one that English notes was present in the War of Independence when the IRA tried to stimulate (British) State violence in order to garner support in the wider nationalist community (English, Armed Struggle, p. 23). State violence would also take the focus off the fact that Sinn Fein had little shape in terms of a blueprint for an independent state, nationalists were obviously divided among themselves, the war was waged principally in two areas, Cork and Kerry, and Sinn Fein did not have a mandate for the use of force. Lived legitimacy has always been an issue for republicans, and blaming the British for republican weaknesses has always been a feature of republican strategy. 20 This tendency to see Protestant attitudes to Catholics in terms of a religious interpretation to the exclusion of a political reading is present as early as 1921. Thus the nationalist Mayor of Derry complains that nationalists will be ostracised on account of their creed (Eamon Phoenix, Nationalist Politics, Partition and the Catholic Minority in Northern Ireland 1890–1940 (Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation, 1994), p. 157). The ‘disloyalty’ reading – i.e. that Catholics objected to the formation of the Belfast Parliament and that some Protestants had problems with this objection – is not given serious consideration by many nationalists at this time. On the contrary, Harris notes that the disloyalty reading was criticised by the nationalist press in 1923 as being a cloak to hide Protestant bigotry and anti-Catholicism (Harris, The Catholic Church and the Foundation of the Northern State, p. 147). 21 Harris points out, however, that in the 1929 parliamentary election in Northern Ireland the Protestant Labour candidate was criticised by supporters of the National League for his ‘non-Catholic’ religion (ibid., p. 182). 22 In his autobiography Gerry Adams also makes a reference to his crossing the path of an Orange march and he remarks that this ‘was supposedly suicidal’ (Adams, Before the Dawn, p. 64). This would appear to be a Catholic myth. 23 One is reminded here of Smith’s reference to ‘the ascetism of republican certainties’ (Smith, Fighting for Ireland?, p. 20) which involve illusion. 24 The lack of understanding of the Protestant community’s religious and political values can be traced back to the 1960s when, as Richard English remarks, republicans failed to attribute ‘any autonomy or self-sustaining seriousness to Protestant unionism in the North’ (English, Armed Struggle, p. 92). This lack of understanding might also explain the ‘irony’ that the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, which aimed to do away with sectarianism, failed to see how the Protestant community would react to their demands and stimulated that very sectarianism ‘into a more excited state’ (ibid., p. 91) thus creating ‘a monster beyond their control’ (ibid., p. 93). What is at play here, however, is not irony but ignorance, Lacan’s state of not wanting to know, which as we have seen brings unconscious enjoyment. 25 Hayes notes that loyalist paramilitaries forced Protestants out of their homes in the Ardoyne area of Belfast in 1971 and then burned their homes in order to keep the houses from being occupied by Catholics (Hayes, Minority Verdict, p. 139).

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26 Phoenix gives an example of a parallel instance of this territorial expression of hatred in the Catholic community. He mentions that a Dr McNabb of Belfast Sinn Fein suggested at a meeting with Collins and Griffith in March 1922 that Catholics should burn their own houses before fleeing imminent eviction by Protestants (Phoenix, Nationalist Politics, Partition and the Catholic Minority in Northern Ireland 1890–1940, p. 206). Referring to the same comment, Harris notes that Bishop MacRory of Down and Conor did not disagree with this suggestion in principle (Harris, The Catholic Church and the Foundation of the Northern State, p. 116). Causing oneself pain is desirable when this also inflicts pain on the Other. 27 The perception that ‘the other side’ always fares better is a strong dynamic in the conflict. One survey – A. M. Gallagher, ‘Equality, Contact and Pluralism: Attitudes to Community Relations’, in Richard Breen, Paula Devine and Gillian Robinson (eds), Social Attitudes in Northern Ireland: The Fourth Report 1994–1995, (Belfast: The Appletree Press Ltd, 1995), pp. 13–32 – shows that four out of five Catholics believe that employers will advantage Protestants a lot or a little while three in five Protestants believe that employers will advantage Catholics a lot or a little. Each ‘side’ believes it is hard done by in favour of the other. If the chances of getting a job are different for both communities, 86 per cent of Catholic respondents claim that Protestants will be advantaged while 41 per cent of Protestants say Catholics will be advantaged (ibid., pp. 24–5). 28 Hayes describes how during the Ulster Workers’ Council strike in 1974 the police and army stood by while supporters of the strike blocked roads. He adds ‘the very authority of the state was being challenged, and the state lay back and did nothing about it’ (Hayes, Minority Verdict, p. 187) However, Bruce notes that ‘this should not be seen solely as a lack of will on the part of the security force. UDA squads were under very clear instructions not to confront the police head-on’ (Bruce, The Red Hand, p. 97). Bruce also notes that the fact that the RUC was willing to use the ‘supergrass’ system to secure convictions of UVF men ‘should give the lie to the often-repeated claim that the state was soft on loyalist terrorists’ (ibid., p. 139). 29 According to Richard Breen, Sinn Fein supporters are much more likely than other Catholics to believe that the security forces favour Protestants (Breen Richard, ‘Beliefs about the Treatment of Catholics and Protestants by the Security Forces’, in Richard Breen, Paula Devine and Gillian Robinson (eds), Social Attitudes in Northern Ireland: The Fourth Report 1994–1995, (Belfast: The Appletree Press Ltd, 1995), pp. 49–62. 30 Speaking of loyalist sectarian murders Bruce suggests that at times the security forces have been reluctant to act against loyalists perhaps because of ‘an unwillingness to believe that Protestants did that sort of thing’ (Steve Bruce, The Red Hand, p. 274). 31 Bruce notes how in 1969 both Protestants and Catholics exaggerated the degree of organisation in the intimidation they suffered and downplayed their intimidation of the other side (ibid., p. 44). 32 Rivalry with Protestants has long informed the behaviour of Catholics in Northern Ireland. Harris gives the example of Bishop MacRory who was in favour of asking Catholics to join the Specials under the 2nd Craig–Collins Pact of 1923 because this ‘would be doing the thing that will displease Orangemen more than anything we could do . . .’ (Harris, The Catholic Church and the Foundation of the Northern State, p. 116). He also asks the Pope to contribute relief money to the expelled Catholic shipyard workers in Belfast in part in order to annoy Orangemen whom he sees as normally reviling the Catholic Church. McDonald and Cusack note how the Dublin and Monaghan loyalist bombings of 1974 were greeted with glee on the Shankill Road (Henry McDonald and Jim Cusack, UDA: Inside the Heart of Loyalist Terror (fully updated edition) (Dublin: Penguin Ireland, 2005), p. 78).

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Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict 33 The belief that if something is good for Protestants it is bad for Catholics was present at least from the formation of Northern Ireland and it dictated important policy. Thus, Phoenix finds it interesting that some Pro-Treaty nationalists were for the Treaty in 1921 simply because they saw unionists as being pleased with the rejection of the Treaty by the anti-Treatyites (Phoenix, Nationalist Politics, Partition and the Catholic Minority in Northern Ireland 1890–1940, pp. 164–5). In other words, principle was secondary to opposition to Protestants and the influence of the Protestant other on nationalist thinking in the North. 34 In his autobiography Gerry Adams makes the comment that the fact that ‘no matter what status the individual might achieve, Catholics in the North of Ireland were ghettoised, marginalised, treated as inferior’ in the 1960s and this made socio-economic differences within the Catholic community relative (Adams, Before the Dawn, p. 44). In this analysis it seems to me that how Protestants generally viewed Catholics is crucial because it takes the emphasis off the success of certain individuals within the Catholic community. The fact that for Gerry Adams the individual’s success had no bearing on the status of the community might suggest that he is in denial here because in spite of the real exclusion of the Catholic identity from the State ritual and ceremony, or the exclusion of some Catholics from jobs etc., it is surely arguable that regardless of the way Protestants are perceived as treating Catholics, at some point the success of individuals is bound to impact upon their ghettoisation and marginalisation. It is possible that the denial of the significance of differences within the Catholic community here is an expression of a certain pleasure to be found in perceived marginalisation or ghettoisation. Overall, this predominantly negative interpretation of the Protestant view of the Catholic community is central to the Catholic community’s self-interpretation as our interviewees’ references to Catholic victimhood suggest. 35 Bruce discovers the same phenomenon in the opposite direction among his loyalist interviewees: republicans were the aggressors, criminal, and ‘murdering scum’ whereas loyalists saw themselves as defenders, law-abiding and ‘decent family men’ (Bruce, The Red Hand, pp. 53–4). 36 The republican truths are irresistible. English points out that the IRA’s belief in 1933 was that ‘if only the Irish people properly heard the arguments, and had these explained to them, then they would of necessity understand and sympathize with and indeed support the army’ (English, Armed Struggle, p. 47). In 1962 an IRA statement marking the end of the border campaign implies that if the minds of the general public had not ‘been deliberately distracted from the supreme issue facing the Irish people’, success would have been guaranteed (ibid., p. 75). In the mid-1960s one leading figure in the IRA said of Ulster Protestants, ‘If these people understand, I believe they would support us’ (quoted in ibid., p. 93). Interviewee 2’s comments suggest that republican truths would still appear to be irresistible as late as the mid-1990s. 37 Gerry Adams recounts in his autobiography how a British prison officer came to him in prison to tell him that he (Gerry Adams) was right because the IRA prisoners were political prisoners even though the British Government denied them political recognition. The prison officer then resigned – the inference being that he resigned because he realised that the republican claim for political status was just (Adams, Before the Dawn, p. 234). 38 Maurice Hayes laments the fact that everyone in Northern Ireland recalls the suffering of their own community and forgets the suffering they inflict on others (Hayes, Minority Verdict, p. 317). 39 The Opsahl Report on Northern Ireland notes that Protestants feel alienated and unsupported in the early 1990s in the light of the Catholic community’s vibrancy

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and self-perceived generosity (Pollak, A Citizens’ Enquiry, p. 41). In this sense the two communities mirror each other in that they resent the perceived successes of the Other. For Gerry Adams part of the victory of the hunger strikes was that republicans had ‘criminalised’ (Adams, Before the Dawn, p. 315) the Brits who had long been attempting to criminalise republicans. There would appear to be a particular pleasure in putting others in the dark place reserved for one’s own. On the contrary, the more pain endured, the better, as is clear from the quote from the republican newspaper, An Phoblacht, in January 1967, quoted in Smith: ‘[P]arliamentary agitation is in a thousand ways demoralising. Even if it could win our independence, independence so won would be no good; for freedom to do good, must be gained with difficulty and heroic sacrifice, in the face of perils and death’ (Smith, Fighting for Ireland?, p. 76). Dependence on the military instrument to the detriment of political negotiation results from an unconscious idealisation of the Slave position. An echo of this might perhaps be seen in Michael Collins’ belief formed in the wake of the 1916 rebellion that nationalists were not to await ‘the gift of freedom’, which was the approach of the Irish nationalist parliamentary strategists who believed the promise of the 1914 Home Rule Bill that nationalist Ireland’s objectives would be achieved after World War I, but to take it for themselves. (English, Armed Struggle, p. 7). Padraig Pearse’s view that ‘to fight is to win’ (quoted in Smith, Fighting for Ireland?, p. 13.) also demonstrates the attraction of violence or confrontation as an end in itself. English maintains that the executions reinforced bitter opposition to the British connection among the wider population. He writes that ‘the executions helped to achieve what the rebellion itself had not’, namely an ‘intensification of nationalist feeling well beyond the rebel ranks’ (English, Armed Struggle, p. 5). Ibid., p. 5. Self-sacrifice is about more than sustaining the republican movement’s purpose and cohesion (Smith, Fighting for Ireland?, p. 13) or garnering wider nationalist sympathy and support by presenting defeat or suffering as a sacrifice to the Master as Richard Kearney suggests (ibid., p. 13). Moreover, it is incorrect to say that the executions of the 1916 rebellion leaders made the rebellion politically significant (ibid., p. 31). The belief that unionists need to wake up to who they really are is taken up in the literature. Richard English notes that Gerry Adams refers to the unionist community as a child that must be brought around to see that its natural family is the Irish one and speaks of how Protestants must come to shake off the shackles of unionism and take sustenance from the long tradition of Protestant participation in the democratic struggle of the Irish people for self-government (English, Armed Struggle, pp. 348–9). This notion that Protestants will one day find their true identity resonates with Catholic theology – Catholics have the truth and Protestants will one day find enlightenment and rejoin the fold – and not by chance. In the case of republicans, this illusion smacks of political dogmatism. Bruce provides an example of this type of rationalisation, which amounts to unconscious rivalry over victimhood, but in the opposite direction. He claims that the reason why some loyalists reacted to the civil rights movement with so much hostility in 1968 was because ‘they were as poor as the Catholics who were doing all the complaining’ (Bruce, The Red Hand, p. 28). However, he proceeds to back up his claim with two examples from interviews which in fact indicate that the interviewees believed Catholics were actually better off than Protestants. In the first, the interviewee complains about how Catholics ‘are getting a better education’ than Protestants (ibid., p. 28), and in the second (quoted from Sarah Nelson’s Ulster’s Uncertain Defenders: Protestant, Political, Paramilitary and Community Groups in the Northern Ireland Conflict (Belfast: Appletree,

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1984)) the Catholics in the Divis flats complex in Belfast are getting a bigger slice of the cake from the Government than Protestants looking on from their rat-infested houses. The examples do not prove his claim. Smith notes that in the 1970s republicans oscillated between a depiction of the British as a paper tiger and a depiction of them as a cruel Master (Smith, Fighting for Ireland?, p. 138). Such oscillations are indications of rivalry over jouissance, in this case, victimhood. Republicans, as Smith points out, ‘hold concurrent, but opposing views’ (ibid., p. 226). This tendency to write Protestants off as if they have no conviction other than to make life difficult for Catholics is expressed in Cardinal Logue’s comment in the wake of the Ne Temere article of 1908 that Protestants ‘don’t want to be satisfied’ (Harris, The Catholic Church and the Foundation of the Northern State, p. 16). Elsewhere the Catholic bishops describe Protestants as an ‘intolerant minority’ and a ‘favoured sect’ (ibid., p. 26). As early as the suspension of the Boundary Commission in 1925, a Catholic priest by the name of O Ciarain remarked that Catholics were given over to ‘the Northern masters’ (ibid., p. 172), indicating in this way that he saw Catholics as Slaves. The notion that Protestants are the Masters who treat Catholics as Slaves often involves the rationalisation that Catholics have nothing against Protestants in spite of the fact that Catholics were rendered powerless as a result of the fact that Protestants alone had the power. Denis Donoghue, for example, says that growing up in Warrenpoint, ‘[a] Protestant was someone who wasn’t a Catholic’ (Denis Donoghue, Warrenpoint (New York: Knopf Inc., 1990), p. 148) and were alien to him in the way Muslims were. However, he later adds that there is a significant oppositional difference between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland – of which he was aware growing up – and that was that ‘[i]n the North the Protestants are masters; the Catholics are supposed to know their inferior place’ (ibid., p. 148). The significance of this difference renders the first remark superfluous. Protestants were negatively identified but while they disapproved of Catholics Donoghue remarks elsewhere (ibid., p. 148) that he did not disapprove of Protestants. Bruce notes that while there were loyalists who approved of the Butchers ‘[t]here can be no doubt that very many decent Shankill Protestants were horrified by the gang’s catalogue of brutality’ (Bruce, The Red Hand, p. 179). Speaking of the ‘Shankill Butchers’ killings, Bruce is of the opinion that ‘there is no great difference in the brutality of many IRA men and the Moore–Bates gang (i.e. the Shankhill Butchers) (ibid., p. 188). Phoenix notes that Prime Minister Craig believed that Catholic grievances were of their own making in that they opted out of decision-making in the early days of the State. They repudiated Northern Ireland (Phoenix, Nationalist Politics, Partition and the Catholic Minority in Northern Ireland 1890–1940, p. 334). This type of belief mirrors that which interviewee 12 holds in relation to the Protestant community. The Other is to blame. Smith rightly notes that having an enemy ‘to which one can subscribe every kind of malicious intent automatically endows one with a morally virtuous self-image’ (Smith, Fighting for Ireland?, p. 138). The Opsahl Report on Northern Ireland suggests that the Protestant and Catholic communities speak different languages and that they need to accommodate these differences (Pollak, A Citizens’ Enquiry, p. 35). What my own research shows is that what matters is not so much the different uses of language but the common unconscious motivations that frequently lead the two communities to the same negative conclusions about each other. At this level the communities mirror each other.

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57 The Opsahl Report on Northern Ireland concludes that Catholics are less intolerant of Protestantism and Protestants than the reverse (ibid., p. 96). 58 As this research demonstrates, the tendency of interviewees to generalise about all Protestant others is strong. This tendency has its roots in paranoia: the Other operates and exists as one threatening entity. The tendency of 60 per cent of Catholic churchgoers to see Protestants as united, a view which is at variance with the Protestant view of themselves, and the tendency of 75 per cent of Protestant church-goers to see Catholics as united as opposed to only 50 per cent of Catholics seeing themselves as united (Boal, Keane and Livingstone, Them and Us?, p. 155) is another example of the desire to see others as being together as a cohesive group. Moreover, it is noteworthy that more than the supporters of any other political party, Sinn Fein supporters see the Protestant community as being united (ibid., p. 61). One can conclude from this that republicans are more prone to this paranoid interpretation than other nationalists. 59 Boal, Keane and Livingstone note that church-goers in both communities believe that the other community is fairly treated but that their own community is treated unfairly. Some 96 per cent of Catholics (ibid., p. 16) feel that Protestants get a fair deal in Northern Ireland and 73 per cent believe that Catholics do not get a fair deal. This tendency to deny the pain of the other community and to present oneself as victim is a typical expression of the Slave position (A. M. Gallagher, ‘Equality, Contact and Pluralism’, pp. 13–32) 60 There is a sense of this desire to retain oppositional differences in Denis Donoghue’s reluctance to use the word ‘chorister’, which he considered a Protestant term and which on one occasion was about to slip from his mouth, rather than ‘choirboy’, which he viewed as a word used by Catholics (Donoghue, Warrenpoint, p. 125) as he is himself. 61 The habit of comparing the proportion of dead and injured in the conflict to comparable populations elsewhere in an effort, presumably, to emphasise the gravity of the conflict also suggests something of the unconscious pleasure to be found in dramatising the conflict (see Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA, p. xiv). 62 Maurice Hayes points out that minorities become insular, defensive and develop a culture of victimhood in which they become relatively secure and ‘perversely happy’ (Hayes, Minority Verdict, p. 311). 63 Maurice Hayes remarks that judging the reaction of some Catholics to the resolution of housing discrimination in Dungannon ‘people are often happier with their grievances than with their relief’ (ibid., p. 85). Pain in some sense defines people, shaping their identity.

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Symbolic relations Symbolic relations are the relations republicans have with the Other, out of which they invent themselves. Fink refers to these as ‘one’s relation to the Law, to the law laid down by one’s parents, one’s teachers, one’s religion, one’s country’1 or ‘the way people deal with ideals that have been inculcated in them by their parents, schools, media, language, and society at large’.2 I focus in particular upon violent republicanism, the legitimation of republican tradition, the morality of republican violence, and on ideals such as liberation and non-sectarianism. Violent republicanism Interviewee 1 claims that people at first made do with stones and petrol bombs as a means of resisting British troops when they were first deployed in Belfast and from this ‘it just developed, and people just gradually gravitated towards the republican movement’. There was little sense of a political rationale for resisting the British Army. The fact that the violence had initially no ideology to support it is presented as an indication that the desire for violence as a response to State and Protestant attacks was a spontaneous expression on the part of the nationalist population and thus in some sense justified, dignified and benign. If violence is spontaneous, then it is not the responsibility of republicans. In this sense, spontaneity is a rationalisation of guilt. This desire to play down the function of violence in the Catholic community’s self-interpretation is also evident in the following quote. The interviewee is eager to demonstrate that the IRA do not desire violence.3 They do not want (violent) conflict: ‘The Rep. . . [breakage] when I say they don’t want conflict, they don’t want military conflict. They don’t want dead bodies. They don’t want towns bombed. They never have. They were forced into a military campaign [by the Brits].’4 126

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Supporters of the IRA campaign desire to show that they are agreeable, moderate and tolerant. Interviewee 4, on the other hand, is determined to accentuate the IRA’s prowess. She is convinced that nothing frightened her or her colleagues in the IRA in the early 1970s. They were on the crest of a wave: ‘It was brilliant because of all the comradeship and all and nobody, nobody was ascared then. Nobody was afraid. It was sort of like, because you didn’t really [dead-end]. We weren’t afraid of the Brits then because the Brits were so [trace] . . . more afraid of us.’ However, the use of the word ‘more’ in the quote implies that the interviewee is in denial of her fear and the community’s fear of the Brits. She wishes to present the image of a fearless community but the truth slips out. The interviewee is full of admiration for the present-day IRA as the following quotes indicate: I really admire them. I really do admire the IRA for I think it takes brains and balls and everything else to do it and I haven’t got it now. I had it then years ago like. [and] They seem to be far braver men than I [re-take], than I ever knew – the men [brief stop] now.

The re-take in the above text suggests that the word ‘was’ was meant to appear here. The interviewee represses this because this would contradict her view of herself as being courageous during her time in the IRA, as indicated in the first of the two quotes above. The re-take would suggest that she is trying to present an image of a strong and valiant IRA but that this is not the reality.5 Interviewee 8 believes that nationalists now have a healthier sense of self to which IRA violence has contributed positively in that it has given Irish identity and republicanism recognition abroad, particularly in Britain. It is IRA violence that proves to the world and to nationalists themselves that ‘Croppy isn’t going to lie down again’. (This term refers to the Croppy Boys, a group of Irish republicans who rebelled against the British in Ireland in 1798.) Through the use of violence the Catholic community has come to assert itself in the face of demeaning and dehumanising treatment at the hands of the Protestant State and British rule as they gradually became aware of their second-class status. Interviewee 8 says that Northern Catholics are recognised wherever they go for their just cause and the ability of the IRA to put them on the map through the use of violence to defend that cause.6 For interviewee 11 IRA violence works. If Belfast had to suffer there is at least some consolation: the bombs in Belfast worked out very well for the local business community and the local council. The former got 127

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spanking new premises for free and the council got away without paying demolition charges: ‘So the whole of Belfast was all modernised you know, at half the cost it would have normally taken, you know.’ Interviewee 4 states that she found the people who attacked the two soldiers near Casement Park in 1988 and those who killed them were wicked: ‘See our people, Adrian, [dead-end]. That was wicked what they done too. It wasn’t nice to see them lying there like. Although when [deadend], to tell you the truth I never worried about them [i.e. the two soldiers].’ When I asked her to clarify what she meant by ‘wicked’ she says: Ach, Adrian, they slayed [laughter] them like. I know they slay. . . [breakage]. They murdered them. Like to get them out of them c. . . a car and all. Like it was a wee bit . . . Our ones was like vultures [laughter], know like, do you know the lion that runs and gets the fucking old animal that’s lying on the ground and fucking rips it asunder [laughter] – our ones was like that. Know like complete . . . they were like something . . . Jesus Christ [laughter] when you watch it, it’s wicked. Isn’t it? Very wicked. Our ones – Jesus Christ, [laughter] you don’t know where they get it from!

Those who attacked them are animals but everything about her comments – particularly her laughter – suggests that she feels a certain pride for her community alongside her sense of embarrassment.7 Legitimation of republican tradition Interviewee 4, in keeping with several other interviewees, makes out that the republican view and republican values were a tradition that was just a part of life into which they were born and which neither they nor their parents had any influence over.8 It was self-legitimating and it did not involve the conscious passing on of values from parents to children. This is a case of depoliticisation that is ultimately what conflict turns on as Zˇizˇek points out.9 There is an overriding sense in this interpretation that the interviewee feels she had a proper sense of the way the world was as a child – the republican way: ‘So we knew [dead-end]’, i.e. they knew instinctively what the problem was in Ireland. The interviewee just knew that Ireland belonged to Ireland and not to Britain and that she had to join the IRA to do something about the plight of the North.10 She did not have to be told of the injustice – she intuited it, as it were. She would like to believe ideally that everybody knew as the breakage in the following quote reveals: So, aye, it [i.e. the republican way] is just a way of life. I think it is just in you. It’s just in you, not. . . [dead-end]. I never wakened up one morning and said ‘Right, this is what I’m going to do.’ You sort of knew what you had to do.11 You just sort of, [brief stop] knew. I didn’t [dead-end], nobody had to sit me

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down and tell me why because you sort of, I knew why. Everybody kne. . . [breakage], well we all knew why. Our family knew why. We didn’t have to be told.

For her, real republicans know. It is a knowledge, a fundamentalism, that says the republican interpretation is not a construction but an a priori given and is thus beyond criticism, is legitimate and is totally justified.12 Yet, the interviewee’s belief that she did not have to be told that something was wrong in Northern Ireland and that republicanism was ‘just in you’ contradicts her admission that she learned republican values from her father who took her to GAA matches and taught her rebel songs.13 She also describes how her father sat her down at night and told her the problem was the behaviour of the Brits and the fact that people told Catholics that they were British. The notion that republicanism is just in you and that it is an unquestionable and ineradicable facet of one’s being is also meant to be demonstrated by the fact that her father remained a republican after the murder of a close relative by republicans for being a police informer. The truth of the republican cause is unshakeable: ‘It never turned him [against the IRA]. I think because it [i.e. republicanism] is in you.’14 Her assertion that her sister’s Protestant partner and his family have come to see that the republican interpretation of the conflict is right in the light of RUC harassment – ‘They’re starting to believe’ – is meant to prove that people who are honest with themselves cannot deny the legitimacy of the republican cause.15 The self-idealisation that republicans are in possession of the truth and that this is innate perhaps explains why they feel they do not require a mandate even though the need for wider support in the community is constantly felt,16 as the following quote indicates: ‘I mean, the IRA is a, is an organisation, [re-take] only lives with the support of the people.’17 Having stated the IRA needs community support, interviewee 1 claims that the IRA is not going to let the desire of ‘everybody’ who says they do not want to go back to war to stand in the way of the IRA’s desire not to decommission.18 The IRA will go back to war if necessary,19 as indeed it did. Consider the following: At the end of the day, at every meeting [to consider the peace process] that I have been at, I mean the bottom [line] is, everybody is saying, ‘we don’t want to return to war again,’ but our bottom line is, we are not going to allow that to compromise the republicans’ struggle and to allow the Brits, to sort of way come in with a wishy washy settlement.20

Far from republican ideals descending out of nowhere, some of the interviewees, like interviewee 2, used their children to confront the security 129

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forces, sending them out to riot or taking them into custody to bargain for their release. She sees her first child in terms of his dedication to republicanism. Thus being ‘good’ takes on the meaning of being republican for her. She says her first son ‘loved’ being brought to an RUC barracks with her when she was arrested for smuggling goods into Armagh Jail. He would orally pass ‘comms’, i.e. written messages, to his father in prison as a child and ‘was great at all that’. The child also shouted republican slogans in the prison while visiting his father there. This left his father on edge lest the prison officers take offence but his mother viewed this as a sign of his strength of character. In the following quote, where she intends to say that she showed no respect to the security forces and that this shaped her children’s worldview, she also says she showed no respect to her children. The brief stop here suggests the interviewee is momentarily aware of her slip: ‘We hated the Peelers [i.e. the police]. We give [dead-end], I showed my children no respect [brief stop and slip] myself for Peelers and Brits in uniforms. I know that.’ The republican worldview is passed on from parents to children after all – regardless of the effect this might have on such children. The interviewee’s children are pawns in the conflict. Interviewee 5 wishes to stress that her parents did not ‘drum’ their views on the problems in Northern Ireland into her. However, it clearly involves denial as the frequent breaks in the following text indicate: But as I say my daddy was [absence], but not an out and out [absence], he would, now, [dead-end], nothing was ever drummed in to us. It was up [retake], we always, you know, [dead-end]. You might have been told different things about history and what happened during the years and what have you but it wasn’t drummed in to you, it was up to you to make your own choices and make up, you know, your mind. You weren’t [dead-end], it wasn’t drummed in to you or beat in to you sort of thing.

The morality of IRA violence While interviewee 4 specifically regrets the death of innocent people as in Enniskillen, she says in the next breath that in the light of the biased media reporting of the bomb there she is sorry there was not more destruction caused. Rivalry is at the heart of her interpretation of the bombing: ‘Ah, I swear to God, I am sorry the IRA didn’t blow Enniskillen off the face of the earth, now. I swear to God. Because you get a wee bit fed up with it.’ Indeed, the innocent people she claims were killed at Enniskillen are ultimately denied their innocence as the interviewee’s anger boils over at what she perceives as the biased media reporting of the bomb there: ‘See the BBC, British Broadcasting, that’s true [i.e. that it is British]. The British 130

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rule that. They, they don’t, they only tell you half the truth. They don’t even tell you half the truth. The bomb in Enniskillen: “The IRA tried to blow up innocent people.” What innocent people?’21 Interviewee 4 denies that the IRA beats ‘touts’ and suggests that claims that they have been tortured are either the illusions of the bereaved families or injuries sustained by ‘touts’ as they try to escape their IRA captives. And then she accepts that they are tortured. Her belief (reality) and disbelief (illusion) involve splitting. She wishes to rationalise what she knows to be the truth, i.e. that the IRA beat ‘touts’: Aye, if you’re sitting in a room tied up, fucking somebody hitting you, sure you would tell them what you want to bel. . . [slip and breakage] so that you could get away, sort of, do you know what I mean? It’s the same thing in Castlereagh [Police Holding Centre]. You say the thing to get fucking out of it. You’d, I, I, I don’t know whether they [i.e. informers] say the thing to the IRA, ‘Yes, fuck you, I am a tout’ to get off, to get, [re-take] to stop them uns [i.e. IRA members] beating you. I don’t know whether they beat them or not [denial], Adrian, but I hope they don’t. I hope they don’t. Do you know when they find them and they say he was badly marked and all? Here’s me ‘I hope not.’ I don’t know whether it’s the family in their grief and their sorrow and their annoyance saying he [i.e. the captive] was black and blue. Is it the struggle they’ve [put up when they’ve] tried to get away from them [i.e. the IRA]? I don’t know.

Overall interviewee 4 is challenged by the issue of violence against ‘touts’ because of the way this is interpreted by others whom she believes wish to negatively judge the Catholic community. Thus she both avows and disavows the reality that the IRA tortures them. Speaking of the Enniskillen bombing on Remembrance Day in 1978, which killed eleven Protestants, interviewee 7 both avows and disavows that the IRA kill innocent people: I mean, the IRA didn’t go out and kill Protestants because they were Protestants.22 They didn’t. They never killed anybody innocent. [and] [The] Enniskillen [bombing], it was bad like. I did feel it. I mean they were innocent people, do you know? They were innocent. I didn’t believe in that.

Interviewee 2 is supportive of IRA attacks in England and believes that the IRA do not set out with the intention of bombing people. However, what she says also unconsciously means that they do go out to bomb people as well as other ‘things’: ‘Certainly let them [i.e. the IRA] bomb England, but they don’t go out just to bomb people. They don’t bomb people. Now that’s not what they are at like.’ 131

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Interviewee 2 states that she does not want people to die and implies that she would never feel that someone deserved to die. She says: ‘I don’t like to see anybody dying even if it is a Brit. I would never cheer at the TV. Never cheer it, [or] say, “God you deserved it!” ’ However, she contradicts this later:23 ‘The Brits and all – I’d say they deserved it [i.e. to die] because they know what they’re going in to. They’re joining up just for to get the money. They know what they’re going in to.’ Interviewee 4 indulges in splitting in relation to her own use of violence as an IRA member in the 1970s for while she says that her own actions were wrong she also denies this as the dead-end in the following quote suggests. She both admits and denies her wrong, deciding that the deaths of innocent people were wrong because they were not intended – a rationalisation of killing: Like I know I was [slip] a, I’m a republican. I know that I’ve went out and done things myself. That was [brief stop] a war for me. And I know some of things that happened it was wrong. Well, it wasn’t . . . [dead-end] You didn’t set out to do them. Nobody set out to kill children. Nobody set out to kill the civilians but it was a war and it happened.

Relativisation of violence suggests that people have problems with violence but are in denial of this. Interviewee 3 explains that after 1970 her family would provide petrol and bottles for petrol bombers and helped rioters escape the security forces but not out of a sense of being a republican – ‘you done this because everybody else was doing it’. The use of violence by members of the Catholic community in Belfast is also justified in part by the interviewee’s belief that people use violence because they have a history of fear in relation to the Protestant community. Protestants are to blame for republican violence. When I remind the interviewee that she had earlier said that Catholics had no reason to fear Protestants in the 1960s and that she had gone shopping on the Shankill Road, she simply laughs to hide her embarrassment. Her justification for violence is unconsciously rooted in paranoia. People want to fear Protestants. People relativise the negative effects of violence. Interviewee 2 notes that ‘the Troubles’ had a positive side – they kept the general crime rates down: ‘That’s another thing once these Troubles now have ceased there’s more drug addicts, there’s more breaking into houses or you’re going to get rapists, you’re going to get everything. That was, that was the good thing about the Troubles, they kept people like that away but you’re going to get it all.’ Interviewee 2 is for punishment beatings and believes that some parents are glad that their sons are beaten. She says that these parents also continue to support the republican movement even when their sons have suffered 132

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punishment at their hands. For some interviewees it is clearly important to show that people support IRA violence even when it is used against their ‘own’: ‘There’s people there you see at [republican] protests. Their sons and all has been beaten. Some people are glad of it – if they thought it was going to help their sons, they’re glad.’ Violence against Catholics is unacceptable, but not violence against Protestants. Several interviewees express their reticence about IRA violence that leads to damage or deaths of civilians in the Catholic community – ‘our own ones’ – while all the while supporting violence directed at the Protestant community – or more precisely at loyalists, as they see it. Interviewee 4 reveals that she has nothing against rioting in principle provided that Catholics who riot hijack vehicles that belong to companies or businesses that are not in the Catholic community. She recommends they hit companies that are identified with the other side. Interviewee 3 is worried solely about victims in the Catholic community. Speaking of her reaction to the killing of a Catholic woman in an IRA bombing on the Falls Road she says: ‘I sort of way went, “Well, who the fuck are they [i.e. the IRA] hurting?” It is their own people [i.e. Catholics] that’s getting killed here and getting up and apologising isn’t bring back that woman’s life.’ She is angry at IRA men, their families and their cronies to whom another set of rules seem to apply. She says they need to lead by example and so she believes the IRA should start administering punishment beatings to their own first for stealing, drinking, rowing and doing drugs, before beating up others in the community for similar reasons: I’m going to tell you the IRA have to look at their selves first. They have to look at their selves first. And they have to st. . . they just have to look at their selves and say “Right, let us st.. start with ourselves and then they’ll, [deadend] we’ll deal with ourselves, now [when we have finished with ourselves] let’s deal with the people” because I’m telling you, the IRA need to sort their selves out. Because I’m telling you, Adrian, there’s some of them uns need a quare beating. There’s some of them – IRA men, their families and their cronies – they need to sort their selves out. And then people would respect them more.

She claims that if violence is for the republican cause, as her actions once were, then it was morally right and that if it is not for the cause then it is morally wrong. However, she implies in the next breath that even this opinion is a moral muddle,24 suggesting that she cannot believe her own rationalisation of her stealing cars. She was about to say her children saw her running out stealing cars but buries this remark. The breakage in the quote below along with the change of subject from ‘you’ to ‘the IRA’ in the re-take is proof of the reality that the interviewee wishes to bury her guilt regarding such actions: 133

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Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict We let them [i.e. the children in the community] out to run riot and then brought them . . . [re-take] ‘Fucking come in!’ when they started it [i.e. rioting] themselves. You know what I mean? If the Orangemen had have come everybody would have said ‘Fight them!’ If they [i.e. the children] had have started a wee riot with the Orangemen they would have got ‘Fuck yous uns!’ [from their parents] and ‘Yous uns started that. Yous aren’t allowed out now. Yous have to stay in’ sort of. Aye, we got muddled up for them [i.e. our children], to say the least. They seen you running out and ste. . . [breakage]. The IRA [re-take] running out and grabbing cars and jumping in to them and putting them across the road, just taking people’s cars and burning them so they [i.e. our children] just take people’s cars and drive them and think you get it back on the insurance. You get it back! Like nothing seems to make any sense till [i.e. to] them.

Stealing cars is wrong, but not so wrong, it slips out, when one steals them from somewhere other than the area in which one lives: ‘I, [re-take] my son stole a car. Here’s me “Right!” He never stole a car around here, but he stole a car anyway and he shouldn’t have stole anybody’s car, any car.’ IRA violence is criticised when Catholics are the victims. This is the case for interviewee 3. Her home was taken over by the IRA one night while some of its members used a room in her house to make up a bomb. They weren’t going to bring back my fucking children by getting up and apologising, ‘Oh, we were making a bomb that went wrong like, what can you do? This is war!’ [She says] ‘This is war, my hole!’ The wire, the burns, scorch marks on the carpet. I says [to my husband], ‘What the fuck else were they doing?’ And sh. . . They were up those stairs like a ca. . . [breakage], carthorses! B Company or whatever fucking [IRA] Company they were from, and here is me, ‘They think the people in this street is deaf.’ (Because I can hear X taking her dog out next door.) And they’re charging up the stairs, about fucking twenty of them, fucking dick heads! Couldn’t fucking organise an argument!

Some interviewees are keen to lay responsibility for certain expressions of IRA violence at the door of the British or those working for them.25 Interviewee 11 defends the IRA bombing of Enniskillen, although he denies that his argument is a defence of their action. His motivation for telling this story is clearly to undermine other opposing interpretations. He says that he has heard that there was a trip wire for the bomb which was meant for the military searchers who were bound to check the area out the night before the Armistice Day commemoration. However, this IRA plan went wrong. There are, he claims, two possible explanations doing the rounds as to why the searchers did not set off the bomb. In the first scenario, the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) were sent out to check the area out for bombs but being ‘a lazy bunch of bastards’ they did not bother to check the area out but yet ‘put in their overtime, “Yes, we done that,” but they 134

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done nothing’. In the second scenario the UDR found the bomb and left it there because, as he explains: ‘Because there was no soldiers killed in the bombings, you know, which is very strange in a crowd of people who were, eh, [re-take] dignitaries there who had to be protected [by the military], but there was no military casualties, you know.’ Interviewee 2 describes the IRA bombing of Frizzell’s fish-shop on the Shankill Road in 1995 in which eleven people died as an ‘accident’. This ‘accident’ then becomes a ‘set-up’ because she believes an informer gave the loyalists who had been meeting above the shop earlier that day a warning. The fact that the ‘boy’ who threw the bomb into the shop was not a known IRA man confirms her suspicion that the whole thing was a set-up rather than an accident. But this suggests the IRA knew they were being set up and went ahead and sacrificed two men, one of whom was killed in the bomb. For interviewee 2, then, the set-up interpretation must stick no matter what the contradictions: I’d hate to believe that would happen [i.e. that the IRA would send out two inexperienced men on a mission] but to be realistic, because I could never see them uns [i.e. the IRA], [re-take] they would never [re-take], going back in my time, you were never sent out on anything that you weren’t comfortable with and if you weren’t experienced enough for it then you weren’t sent out. They just didn’t give you a bomb and you’ve only joined up a week and they don’t say ‘Here, take that’ [i.e. bomb]. There’s no way that they’d do that. There’s just no way.

Questions of morality regarding IRA violence are framed by paranoia, unconscious guilt, double standards and wishful thinking. Innocence Speaking of the killings of two soldiers by the IRA near Casement Park in 1988 interviewee 1 says that if it were proven from the helicopter tapes recording the dialogue between the pilot and British Intelligence Headquarters that the British knew that two of their men were captured and would probably be killed then this would justify the behaviour of those at the funeral. In other words, the British authorities let them die. The people who challenged the two soldiers at the funeral, those who took them captive and partially stripped them in an effort to establish their identity and those who later killed them are to be rendered innocent: ‘It would have gone a long way to justify what happened on the Andersonstown Road that day, you know.’ Of course, his desire to search for justification implies that the actions of all those involved in the interaction with the soldiers were not justified in their actions in the first instance. 135

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At one point the interviewee’s argument is based on the premise that the British are guilty even though he acknowledged above that for the British to be proven guilty one needed access to the helicopter tapes. In other words the Imaginary is presented as fact as the verb ‘was’ in the following quote demonstrates: ‘At the end of the day [had one access to the tapes] that whole thing would have been, [re-take] the British would have been the animals, because it was them that let two of their own soldiers be slaughtered.’ Interviewee 1 argues that an IRA man, a friend of the interviewee, shot dead by British troops in Belfast in 1976, was not responsible for the deaths of the three children who died when the car he was driving went out of control and hit them. Instead British soldiers are to blame.26 His friend was the innocent victim of British injustice. Interviewee 1’s friend was shot dead by British soldiers after an IRA shooting had taken place nearby and a soldier had been shot. It unintentionally slips out that the interviewee believes his friend was involved in this shooting that had occurred shortly before the car he was driving was fired upon by British soldiers and he was killed. He tries to cover up this slip, claiming that he was not involved in the shooting. This reveals that he is striving to present his friend as innocent. His unconscious belief is that he is guilty at some level. He is in denial: You see, number one, there was no warning given [by the Brits who shot], on the morning that he [i.e. the interviewee’s friend] was shot. Number two, you see the shooting that he was invo. . . [breakage] that they alleged he was involved in, it wasn’t him that was involved in the shooting. The ironic thing they [i.e. the Brits] did [re-take], there were two identical coloured cars, two hijacked motors and on the day there was shoo. . . [breakage] there was a soldier shot at the top of F. Street by an active service unit.

The explanation continues as he tries to show how the British soldiers confused the two identical coloured cars referred to above – one that an ‘IRA active service unit’ was driving away from the scene of the shooting of the British soldier and one that the interviewee’s friend was driving (as he made his way to dump a gun that was not assembled). Consequently the soldiers shot his friend, an innocent man, by mistake. However, the final word in the utterance, namely ‘them’, while intended to refer to the people in his friend’s car, can only mean the IRA active service unit: The ironic thing they did, there were two identical coloured cars, two hijacked motors and on the day there was shoo. . . there was a soldier shot at the top of F. Street by an active service unit, now they got away, but they were driving a car identical to the car that my friend and his mate were in and the helicopter spotted them [i.e. the active service unit].

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The whole idea that two identical cars were confused by the Army is further undermined by the following slip: ‘They say, the soldier was shot [in the first incident], but he was shot by different people, but as I say, the cars was the sa. . . same [verbal inability], but, at the end of the day the weapon [found in my friend’s car] was never assembled for firing.’ The interviewee unintentionally says that the ‘two identical coloured cars’ are in effect one and the same car as his above slip of the tongue indicates. Some interviewees are also keen to hide the truth about their own use of violence. Interviewee 1 does this. It is clear that their motivation for this is in part to present an innocent picture of themselves. Interviewee 1, however, unconsciously believes he is guilty. From the following quote it is clear that interviewee 1 either associates himself with the men who were in the taxi that took the two soldiers killed near Casement Park in 1988 to their deaths or was indeed himself in the taxi at the time. The use of ‘we’ below suggests this and the absence of ‘were’ denotes his attempt to bury the slip. His opening words also point to the fact that he was in the taxi listening to them speak, which is why his revelation dead-ends: The very fact that they [i.e. the two soldiers] were sitting [in the taxi] saying [dead-end], they knew the helicopter was sitting above them. I mean, even at the latest [mistake] stages, as I said to you, even when, obviously, see when we, [absence] taking them up the road in the black taxi. I mean, they knew the helicopter was following them, and I think even then they were saying, I mean, tha. . . ‘They’re going to come in here and s. . .’, I mean, ‘That we’re going to get saved here.’

Elsewhere in relation to the same incident he says that he was not present in Casement Park and gives his reasons for this. However, in another slip of the tongue the interviewee himself acknowledges that he was in fact in Casement Park: But, the whole self-defence argument then brings you right into the likes of big Mr XXX, and Mr YYY and Mr ZZZ, know what I mean, where, I mean, even at that stage, you know what I mean, I’m in Casement Park [slip], a lot of them [i.e. the people present in Casement Park], I mean, I mean it shows you on the helitele [camera on board a security force’s helicopter] one of these men just wandering about the place, know what I mean.

Interviewee 7’s account of how the RUC tried to set her up as an informer and tried to get her to let the IRA use her home so that she could inform on their activities presents a number of diversionary anecdotes about various themes many of which are efforts to knock the RUC or Protestants. However, the purpose of these anecdotes would also appear to be to take the focus away from the fact that the RUC found a gun at the back of her house, an interpretation that she accepts and then rejects: ‘There was one 137

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time we were living in C. Street and they had found a [re-take], they say they had found [brief stop] a gun at the entry. At the back of the house in C. Street and I was lifted [i.e. taken in for questioning], and I was brought around to the Barrack.’ Interviewee 3 believes her husband is innocent of murder in spite of the fact that his solicitor told her that her husband had stated in his affidavit that he had burned his victim’s personal effects, implying that her husband had admitted guilt. However, following on from her expression of her belief in his innocence she mentions that her son had accidentally set fire to her home: D: He [i.e. her son] was our [. . .] baby. Our house-burner! Gets it from his Da. Probably does get it from his Da [repetition]. A: So that was . . . D: Going to blackmail me with these tapes? It’ll be like Eastenders. You’ll will come in and put this on some night. [I will say] ‘What, did I say that?’ [And my husband and kids will say] ‘Is that the way she is talking about us?’ And there will be divorce proceedings.

This joke to the effect that her son gets his tendency to set alight to things from his father and confirmed for me with ‘Probably does get it from his da’ would suggest that the interviewee believes that her husband set fire to his victim’s personal effects – which would amount to guilt. This would explain her reference to the fact that I might blackmail her with the information that she has just given me in the form of a joke. The following confirms her rationalisation: ‘It was the fact that he didn’t do anything I think that is why I go religiously [every] week to see him [in prison] ‘cause he didn’t [split], he didn’t actually do anything, ‘cause he’s innocent.’ It is not the fact that he did not do anything that makes him innocent but the fact that he is innocent that means that he did not do anything. Interviewee 3 claims her anti-British attitudes hardened after her brother was arrested for rioting. Her attitude became ‘Fucking bastards, shouldn’t be here. They [i.e. Brits] deserve anything they get!’ However, it is interesting that this attitude develops out of a belief that her brother was innocent of rioting, a belief that the interviewee had already stated was untrue. In this sense, the interviewee’s appeal to personal (family) experience of (unjust) violence as being grounds for her support for violence against British soldiers is shown to be a rationalisation. Her argument for such violence, which follows below, involves splitting for she at once acknowledges her belief that her brother was innocent and her belief that he was guilty. His innocence is an illusion, which is why she says he was arrested for going shopping and why she wants to keep the truth from the Courts: 138

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Yes, that [i.e. her brother’s arrest] turned me towards republicanism as such. When that happened, when it hits your own family direct in that way and it was only a minor thing like. It was never any of our family that lost their lives or, touch wood, or were really involved in the Troubles in any way, only him, and he got off. But it still annoys you to think that they can come in and fucking hit him with a rifle butt in the mouth and lock him in the Crumlin Road, ‘cause he was only going to the shop for a packet of fags, for his Da, (in case the Courts get their hands on this, and come back and do him for it in years to come).

Where the interviewee meant to say that the witnesses at her brother’s court case perjured themselves she says they purged themselves. This slip in effect describes what it is that the interviewee is doing. She is removing any accusations of guilt: He [i.e. her brother] got bail. He was only in a week or something and he got bail. And he got off. The charges were dropped when he went up in front of the judge like, because all the neighbours went and said, ‘No, that young fellow was only going to the shops for cigarettes for his Daddy. And the shop was closed and he jumped, you know.’ So they all purged [mistake] themselves in Court and he got off.

The liberationist ideal The republican cause is often portrayed as a desire to right the wrongs of British injustice in Ireland – principally the injustice of Partition. An examination of references to this liberationist ideal in the interviews reveals that this ideal involves rationalisations of resentment towards Protestants. Interviewee 8 wishes to present the picture of a community that has been dehumanised but that is up off its knees:27 There is no way that you’ll bow your head [nowadays, as one formerly did] when you walk into City Hall or walk into Marks & Spencers like you’d be afraid, instead of calling yourself Seamus as what you were christened, you’d be calling yourself Jim. Do you know on the thing, and they [i.e. Catholics] will not speak in a low voice.

However, he contradicts himself in his development of this interpretation. This occurs at the point where he attempts to explain why Catholics did not confront the State for the first fifty years of its existence. He says this was so because people were satisfied with their lot and were not into confrontation and that they were unaware of some of the issues – the way in which the State dehumanised Catholics. Then it slips out that he believed that no one was trying to demean them or dehumanise them in any case. The absence in the following quote marks the point where he refrains from 139

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pointing out that Catholics were indeed, in his estimation, satisfied with their lot precisely because, as he implied earlier at the point of the second re-take in this quote, nobody tried to demean or dehumanise them: See people can keep themselves [to themselves?] [re-take], they don’t really want to indulge or confront trouble, know, on the whole. They’re pretty satisfied with their lot if they’re not [re-take], if nobody tries to demean them, dehumanise them, and what had happened in the, in the fifty years prior to this phase of the trouble was that eh people had come to accept [absence] and had avoided confrontation on the thing.

This slip might suggest that what is significant in Catholic experience is not so much an experience of the injustice of second-class citizenship and dehumanisation but the gradual awakening to and acceptance of this interpretation as a victim community.28 The emphasis would seem to be on perception of reality rather than an experience of the Real.29 In this scenario how Catholics believe Protestants view them is crucial. Experience of injustice is secondary to acceptance of the view that Protestants see Catholics as Taigs, which, as the interviewee pointed out, is the bottom line for Protestants. It is how Catholics see the world as a community rather than individually that takes precedence with the result that an attack on a fellow Catholic is seen as an attack on one’s community. They are the victim community.30 It is highly ideological.31 For interviewee 5, her decision to join the IRA had as much to do with a sense of rivalry and hatred for loyalists as with a desire to right the wrongs in her country. However, she holds Protestants responsible for her bigotry because she claims one could not but be bigoted when faced with Protestant bigotry: F: But I always knew if it was possible for me to do anything that I would have wanted to be a part of it [i.e. the republican struggle]. In joining [the IRA], I didn’t know if that was possible . . . that I could have . . . . A: And when you said you’d always wanted to do something, something, what was that feeling? F: It was just to better the country, to better ourselves, if I could have helped in any way to make a better situation. You know, because I just didn’t think it was fair the way things were. And I would be telling lies if I was to say that I wasn’t [re-take] um, tended to be a bit bigoted at times. Because to me, you couldn’t have been any other way living down where we were with the loyalists.

Non-sectarian Interviewee 8 comments that the ‘republican thing’ has never been sectarian but then he says some individuals within the republican movement 140

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are sectarian but qualifies this by saying their approach has never been sectarian – which to me amounts to a contradiction: And I mean the republican thing has never been sectarian, I mean, most, I mean there might have been individuals who were sectarian but their approach has never been sectarian, in my experience and as a matter of fact, talking to guys, I mean, I, there’s very few of them are, are sectarian in outlook. I mean, they all agree we’re all the one, we all want to live together.

There is no place for sectarianism in the ideal self-interpretation of republicans.32 The problem for republicans is the British and not the Protestant community. Thus the republican struggle is a war of liberation and not a sectarian conflict. Hence he claims it was the British that held Catholics down prior to 1969, not Protestants. The negation in the following quote demonstrates that he is in denial about this matter: It [i.e. the awareness of problems for Catholics] was kind of creeping in [in the 1960s], you know, ‘We are in our own country, but, we’re being held down’, and it wasn’t – by the way, my, my recollection of it wasn’t [negation] that we were being held down by the Protestants, it was we were held down by the British [laughter] and, but it wasn’t really [re-take], it was only now and again. It wasn’t a preoccupation. It wasn’t a [re-take], it didn’t become a be all and end all of things and . . . .

The slip in the following quote demonstrates that hatred for Protestants is not incompatible with being a republican but it is obvious from the way in which this admission slips out that the interviewee wishes immediately to cover this up. Thus where interviewee 8 was about to say that people who see him as a republican find it interesting that he does not hate any Protestants, which in fact implies republicans hate Protestants, he ends up altering this to an admission on his own part that he does not hate anyone. He buries their observation, which he does not repudiate because he realises that it would mean that bigotry is not incompatible with republicanism: ‘We [as a family] weren’t [dead-end], there was never a word talked about hate or . . . it wasn’t, just wasn’t part of the vocabulary and even now where people who might consider me to be [re-take], to have a republican outlook [dead-end], I mean, I still would find it hard to say, I hate any, [re-take] anybody.’ In their attempts to prove that the IRA is not sectarian, some interviewees claim that the IRA does not kill Protestants unless by accident. Interviewee 2’s laughter in the following suggests that this is a rationalisation and that she does not believe her own words: A: Does the IRA kill Protestants? I hear people say they kill Protestants. C: No, they don’t. No, they don’t. Who told you that? [laughter]

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Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict A: You hear that all over the place. C: For fuck’s sake they don’t! [laughter] See, that’s that that bloody fucking TV – God forgive me for cursing. That’s that TV. See everybody believes them bloody TVs. They don’t, Adrian. Don’t let anybody tell you that! The IRA is not sectarian.

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A: So who do the IRA kill? C: Soldiers, Peelers, UVF men, UDA men. They say they’re not in it [i.e. these organisations] but they’re [dead-end], you [should] rest assured the IRA don’t kill Protestants.

She claims in the end that Protestants lie about victims of the IRA in order to portray the IRA as sectarian: A: But they [i.e. Protestants] would say the IRA kills Protestants. C: Pardon me. But they’ve never proved that, they always say [re-take], ‘there’s never, there has never been a UVF man killed in the Protestant area’, you know, when they say ‘that was an ordinary Protestant’ and yet when they’re on TV they have all the military funerals. Not all of them. But then if they, if they, when they don’t do that then its [compensation] claims they’re looking.

It is not that the IRA does not kill Protestants because of their religion but that they do not kill Protestants at all. Protestants are stripped of their identity. Political republicanism Differences within the republican movement are played down by interviewees. In his discussion of the changes within the republican movement in the 1980s interviewee 1 exhibits several signs of attempts to mend his text in an effort to downplay differences among IRA prisoners, i.e. between those whom he claimed supported ‘basic militarism’ or ‘pure republicanism’ or ‘old republican traditions’ and ‘the new generation republican’. Examples of this follow. The dead-ends indicate his attempts to bury these: A lot of the change within the republican movement was sort of way planted in the jails where people in jail sat down and thought about things and looked back and then started to, eh, to challenge different things within [dead-end], know what I mean, different [dead-end], I mean up till then you were still, eh, you were still fighting the struggle. As I say, it was through that period then that there was different eh [deadend]. People came in and people started showing us [dead-end], people started to read and get a bit of awareness about them, a bit of politics about them. A younger sort of generation, the likes of Brendan Hughes were there, the Dark. People like that started to come into the jail who had a wee bit of politics

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. . . . They started to, I mean, rather than sort of way just accept all that was being said, you know there was a [dead-end], challenges being put in, I mean [they asked] ‘Why do we do this, why do we do that?’

The political path was not automatically followed. Those who pushed a political strategy had to fight with the militarists to get their way. Interviewee 1, however, wants to deny this dissension. In the following case the interviewee obviously feels that some of the younger prisoners, including Gerry Adams and Brendan Hughes, were a ‘different breed’ but because of his desire to downplay differences, the interviewee censors this interpretation:33 ‘Then you had, eh, a different, I don’t mean a different breed [negation], a sort of way, a younger sort of generation.’ This would suggest there was a significant difference in the thinking of the younger prisoners.34 The dead-end and the ensuing silence below reveals the extent to which he is reluctant to name the extent or type of difference, perhaps even conflict, that existed in his opinion among prisoners at that time: ‘You know what I mean, socialism, you couldn’t have talked about socialism [in the jail], you were eh, sort of a way, eh, [hesitation] an agitator, you were a [dead-end], what would you call it, a [silence]. They [i.e. the prisoners] just didn’t accept that type of thing.’35 Interviewee 5 also plays down difference within the republican movement.36 The following oblique reference – the silence and absence in the text – to the fact that someone in the republican movement had ‘touted’ on her resulting in her arrest and imprisonment shows how she wishes to hide what might reflect badly on the republican movement: ‘No. I was daft enough that um . . . they [i.e. the RUC] had all the information right, somebody had [silence and absence], whatever . . . .’ Interviewee 4 first of all claims that ‘touts’ pass on no really significant information to the RUC, a belief that would be in keeping with a desire to minimise damage to the IRA. That this is a rationalisation is clear from her slip a few moments later to the effect that some ‘touts’ do give away valuable information to the RUC. She contradicts herself in an effort to hide differences within the republican community: ‘And I’m going to tell you, I think they [i.e. informers] feed the Peelers shite. They must. I’m not saying they don’t [dead-end], there’s not touts that don’t fill them full of shite but . . . .’ Conclusion Republicanism is self-legitimating. Republicans have it together. They are presented as fearless, brave, innocent, victims in possession of the truth and not in the slightest bigoted. The development of a political wing of the republican movement is presented as a period of agreed, smooth transition. 143

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Disagreement is buried. Differences are downplayed. Republican violence evolved naturally and spontaneously out of a need for a response to State injustice. Republicans have no desire to use violence. Violence is something that is forced upon them by British injustice. Republicans who are blamed for certain violent incidents or murders are presented as innocents who are framed by the British (or the RUC). These are republican illusions. In relation to violence there is a moral hierarchy in which violence against one’s own community is deemed the worst for the simple reason that it does damage to the Catholic self-presentation or republican cause and is more difficult to defend. One can conclude that finding a given act of violence disgusting or wicked does not preclude finding it pleasurable or desirable or justifiable. Moral principles that are applied by an interviewee to others are not applied to one’s own community. The driving force is not a set of high moral principles, but keeping ahead of or on top of the Other that threatens one. In the case of violence this allows for expressions of revulsion to coexist with all sorts of rationalisations. The individual will condemn violence and all the while support it, desire it and even use it. Moral and mental juggling are par for the course in situations of conflict where what matters is to show oneself in a positive light. It is clear from the above analysis that jokes and slips of the tongue reveal what the subject unconsciously desires, feels, believes or thinks and it is this that enables conflict to be reproduced as people idealise themselves and project on to others what they find unpleasurable in themselves. While much of conflict resolution uncritically accepts people’s self-interpretation in a spirit of respect, the above demonstrates that unconscious dynamics must be challenged, otherwise opposition proliferates. It is also significant that conflict is as much born out of an interpretation of reality as an experience of injustice. The intensity of the feelings associated with a particular interpretation helps sustain and reproduce conflict. In conflict resolution, therefore, it is important to challenge the unconscious desire for such identitfications and the rationalisations that underpin them. People also need to realise the underbelly of their ideals: they are flawed. People condemn violence but unconsciously enjoy it. It gives people a sense of power, of being on top. When people feel inferior they want to be on top and so resort to violence or support its use. The challenge for conflict resolution is to unearth the rationalisations that victimhood or inferiority involve.37 People need to take responsibility for this fantasy. Conflict resolution also needs to consider the place of unconscious guilt in situations of conflict. People idealise the past and so need to confront the pain that leads them to do this. The belief that republicanism is irresistible, that it has the 144

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truth and right on its side is a rationalisation of pain, of responsibility and of resentment. Conflict resolution has to get people to deal with whatever it is within them that they find unpleasurable or painful. Otherwise, people continue to live out of such illusions in the realm of ideals. Conflict resolution must also take stock of how hatred is passed on to children unconsciously and how, in this way, as in others, children are pawns in conflict. There needs to be a link between talk of violence and experience of violence, and for this to happen one needs to go beyond the many rationalisations of this. What drives the people to hatred is not injustice against the innocent but their unconscious guilt. They make-believe they are innocent. They tell themselves lies. People appear to unconsciously enjoy taking a public stance, having an opinion or view on the conflict etc. because these serve as a mask that keeps personal pain at bay. Talk is cheap. Polls cannot be trusted. People fool themselves and this masking needs to be understood and challenged. People remain in denial because of their defensiveness vis-à-vis the other community. One can aspire to removing threats that prevent people from engaging in a peace process but it makes more sense to go live rather than to expend energy on trying to get the right conditions for dialogue. In conflict resolution one must expect widespread moral ambiguity. One has to go to the unconscious to understand what it is that drives the illusions people create. NOTES

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Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 33. Ibid., p. 33. This view flies in the face of, for example, the IRA Army Council of 1970 which ‘decided to pursue a sustained offensive engagement with the British’ (Richard English, Armed Struggle: A History of the IRA (London: Macmillan, 2003), p. 146). Smith notes that the republican image of ‘complete British culpability risks promoting tunnel vision’ as it elevates analysis to the level of dogma and gives rise to the use of violence out of blind hatred rather than functionality (M. L. R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland? The Military Strategy of the Irish Republican Movement (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 9). Blaming others for one’s woes is a sign of the presence of rationalisation. Smith claims that republicans have an ‘inflated self-image’ that is ‘indicative of a more systematic process of self-deception’ that affected the IRA’s military thinking (ibid., p. 135) and formed a part of their strategic paradigm (ibid., p. 139). However, the point about such rationalisations is that subjects are unaware of these and not, as Smith would have us believe, that republicans fall short of the ‘rational actor model’ (ibid., p. 139). This view of the military instrument as being something that puts nationalists on the map suggests that for republicans armed conflict is an end in itself rather than a means

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to getting the Brits out of Ireland in order to attain national self-determination. Violence becomes an object of dependence that provides the recognition of the Master. Citing Padraig Pearse’s comment that bloodshed is a cleansing thing, Smith concludes that republicans revere violence in its own right (ibid., p. 18). There is unconscious pleasure here. Laughter is perhaps as close as one can come to an expression of emotional attachment to violence, which Smith rightly notes republicans are careful to deny (ibid., p. 18). This type of denial also occurs among loyalists who depict their murder of Catholics as something arising from the actions of individuals from the ranks and not from the UDA Inner Council, actions typically thought up on the spur of the moment in Shankill Road pubs. Their responsibility is minimised. See Henry McDonald and Jim Cusack, UDA: Inside the Heart of Loyalist Terror (fully updated edition) (Dublin: Penguin Ireland, 2005), p. 59. Martin McGuinness admits that he was aware that ‘older people had a resentment’ towards the RUC prior to 1969 but claims that his father and mother and older people never said anything bad about the RUC – ‘The older people had a resentment towards them but it was never really discussed or talked about to us young people. I can never recall my father or my mother or any older people saying “these guys are bad news” or “they’ve done this” or “they’ve done that”’ (Ed Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA (London: Penguin, 2002), p. 357). The problem with this type of rationalisation for republicans is that blaming the British for the upsurge in republicanism suggests that republicanism was irrelevant to republicans prior to British Army actions in 1970. Former IRA man Patrick Magee who bombed the Tory Party conference in Brighton says of his joining the IRA that it was the most natural thing in the world – ‘there was nothing else I could have done’ (English, Armed Struggle, p. 121). The irresistibility of the IRA is akin to predestination. One’s choice is presented as being a non-choice, which takes away from personal responsibility. Consider also ‘it had to be done’ – again Magee (ibid., p. 382) and Walsh (ibid., p. 382) ‘I would say I had no choice.’ A political explanation of republicanism must see these for what they are – instances of the depoliticisation of the political that simply reproduce the conditions for conflict. Such a view ties in with Smith’s understanding that the military instrument was a ‘pre-chosen path’ for republicans (Smith, Fighting for Ireland?, p. 140). Political violence is experienced as beyond the political. Smith laments the fact that such rationalisation is difficult to prove because it occurs unconsciously (ibid., p. 140) but the current work provides proof of its occurrence. It prolongs violence. The lack of choice implies a desire for self-sacrifice. You give yourself over to the irresistible cause. Evaluating Northern Catholics and the IRA, English remarks that what a group sees as good or right ‘is in fact merely what is or seems to be in their own particular interest’ (English, Armed Struggle, p. 145) or that an opinion (say, on freedom) that the IRA claims deserves widespread acceptance because it is right, ignores the persistence of differing and clashing interests. Such rationalisations are clearly at work in the interviews. In his autobiography, Gerry Adams also displays this desire to portray his family as having no influence upon him in terms of politicisation as a child but also contradicts this portrayal at a later point. Thus, having said that his grandmother, at whose home he stayed, did not politicise him (Gerry Adams, Before the Dawn (London: Heinemann, 1996), p. 22), Adams later says that he learned, from among others his grandparents, that ‘aspects of life in the North were felt to be threatening’ based in part upon ‘impres-

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sions formed in the wake of some political event’. His elders spoke a ‘coded language’ and Gerry received ‘signals’ from these elders which were always ‘muted’ (ibid., p. 42). Elsewhere, besides, he says: ‘In a sense I had absorbed an ethos of republicanism while growing up’ (ibid., p. 73) – presumably from his family among others. In his autobiography Donoghue notes that he kept his distance from Protestants ‘upon instinct’ and that this attitude ‘was not inculcated by my parents, whom I never heard speak a word on the subject’ (Denis Donoghue, Warrenpoint (New York: Knopf Inc., 1990), p. 53). He kept his distance because Protestants were different. Elsewhere, however, he explains that this difference had to do with the way he believed Protestants owned the place, which was clear from the way Protestants carried themselves in the street (ibid., p. 47). In a sense, therefore, one could argue that his awareness of the oppositional differences between Protestants and Catholics had little to do with instinct and everything to do with belief. Like some of our interviewees he is keen to play down the fact of his part in this awareness. He also, typically, wishes to make it clear that his parents had nothing to do with his insight into this difference. However, elsewhere he mentions ‘WE WERE A CATHOLIC FAMILY. That meant that we bought our groceries at Catholic shops . . . and were on speaking terms only with Catholics’ (ibid., p. 46), suggesting that his parents’ attitudes to Protestants did in fact shape his views of the latter. Smith remarks that republicans’ conception of the political arena is one ‘characterised by a series of unmovable truths to which people should owe allegiance’, a phenomenon he refers to as ‘republican elitism’. Such elitism allows for violence to be used to awaken the consciousness of the Irish people (Smith, Fighting for Ireland?, p. 11). In this context, it is arguable that even causing Catholic suffering is acceptable within the framework of getting the Brits out. The perceived attraction to the republican cause on the part of the enemy has long figured in the republican mind-set as is clear from John Devoy’s reaction to Gladstone’s comment that an Irish Republican Brotherhood bomb explosion which killed ten people in Clerkenwell in 1867 brought home the vast import of the Irish controversy (quoted in Smith, Fighting for Ireland?, p. 15). The identification with ‘the people’ is often couched in terms of the IRA’s defence of the latter. This is given as the prime motivation for IRA violence. This identification, a rationalisation of course, gives the IRA legitimacy. The matter of the national question is seen as secondary. Indeed, republicans frequently contribute the reawakening of their desire for self-determination to the British. In an interview with Ed Moloney, Martin McGuinness remarks that ‘The British developed republicanism . . . They brought about resistance to British rule.’ (Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA, p. 362). The notion that people spontaneously identify with republicanism in the light of an experience of oppression is a rationalisation of republican motivation. It presents republicanism as irresistible and allows one to avoid the thorny issue of responsibility for violence. The degree of concern on the part of the IRA for the Catholic community is questionable. Richard English suggests that the IRA has brought more suffering than succour to the Catholic community. ‘[D]uring the troubles as a whole, IRA violence made more rather than less likely the prospect of Catholics suffering violence. Much IRA violence, of course, itself caused death and injury among Northern Catholics’ and ‘it is undeniable that IRA actions did often prompt direct loyalist reprisal’ (English, Armed Struggle, p. 351). Smith stresses the ‘tendency to elitism in republican ideology’ (Smith, Fighting for Ireland?, p. 68) of which this is an example. The ‘mandate of history’ is the only mandate that republicans worry about (ibid., p. 70). The obsession with the Master rules out a

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desire for a mandate. In my view, such elitism has an unconscious Catholic ring to it. Authority lies with a band of individuals, and mainly men at that. ‘[P]reserving the doctrinal purity of the republican vision’ is what matters most (ibid., p. 66). This is an example of what Smith aptly describes as the republican ‘emotional affinity with the use of force’ (ibid., p. 181). Richard English provides a similar example of how republicans ignore their support base when he quotes Danny Morrison as saying in 2000 that the IRA ‘would go against public opinion . . . (even republican grassroots opinion), if it thought that there was an achievable objective’ (English, Armed Struggle, p. 285). Ed Moloney notes that the Sinn Fein leadership of the mid-1990s was one ‘that preferred to talk at rather than to or with their basis’ (Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA, p. 298). This is an extreme case of an interviewee rationalising failure as success. This tendency is in keeping with the republican view of failed historical revolts (e.g. 1798, 1803, 1848, 1867, 1916) being sources of inspiration. Smith notes ‘the sectarianism evident in the choice of target’ (Smith, Fighting for Ireland?, pp. 175–6). Bruce claims that one of the views taken by loyalists in relation to the killing of Catholics is that ‘random murder is unfortunate’ (Steve Bruce, The Red Hand: Protestant Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 261). Coming from the mouths of those responsible for the killings, this would seem to be an evasion of responsibility. Moral muddles are indications of the unconscious pleasure to be found in violence and the belief that violence is an end in itself. Former IRA man Tommy McKearney blames the British for IRA violence against the RUC and UDR, claiming that the British policy of putting them in the frontline meant that the IRA could not avoid attacking them (English, Armed Struggle, p. 174). English also rightly speaks of ‘a moralization of politics’ among republicans. ‘The ultimate responsibility lay with Britain, the ultimate victimhood with the nationalist people of Ireland’ (English, Armed Struggle, pp. 341–2). It is clear that Gerry Adams shares this view that the Brits were to blame for the deaths of the three Maguire children because, whatever way one looks at it, the Brits opened up ‘in a street where people were walking on the pavements’ (ibid., p. 254). Bruce concurs with this view of the Catholic community as being downtrodden when he remarks that the IRA represents ‘a minority people with a long history of subordination’, (Bruce, The Red Hand, p. 275). English speaks of how ‘the day-to-day experience of a state substantially built against their interests provided northern Catholics with a culture of grievance that helped to strengthen the IRA in many nationalist minds’ (English, Armed Struggle, p. 353). However, as my analysis shows, questions need to be asked about the rationalisations that underpin such a culture. People cultivate, even enjoy, grievances. It is not enough to say that ‘the northern war was self-fuelling’ because of grievance and countergrievance (ibid., p. 359), which veers towards a removal of responsibility from participants to the conflict. Grievances are fuelled by interests that are fuelled by rationalisations. And the historical Real, which forms a backdrop to the interviewees’ self-interpretation, is clearly overwhelming as Phoenix documents this – the expulsion of Catholic workers from the shipyard in 1920 and the consequent hardship suffered by the community (Eamon Phoenix, Nationalist Politics, Partition and the Catholic Minority in Northern Ireland 1890–1940 (Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation, 1994), p. 136), the introduction of internment in 1921, the involvement of the Ulster Special Constabulary in attacks on

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Catholics, the abolition of proportional representation in 1929 and Craig’s admission that this was done to rid the Commons of those who looked to Dublin (ibid., p. 351), the anti-Catholic attitudes of certain unionists ministers in the 1930s, the 1935 riots against Catholics and the anti-Catholic discrimination in education and the civil service (ibid., p. 368), the ‘pogrom’ of 1920–22 (ibid., p. 191). 30 Ed Moloney provides various examples of where the Catholic community’s suffering is used as a strategic weapon by republicans in so far as the latter were able to induce the State to overreact with brutality thus creating sympathy and support among the wider nationalist population (Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA, p. 176). He cites Gerry Adams’ desire to prevent the IRA going out to take on the Brits in spring 1970 in Ballymurphy so that through their suffering the people would become radicalised (ibid., p. 91) and notes how Gerry Adams urged republicans to use the 1981 hunger strike as an opportunity to foment alienation among nationalists (ibid., p. 210). Lacan would argue that pain is unconsciously pleasurable. This is the real goal of such suffering. People unconsciously invite domination. The conscious desire to cause maximum suffering for one’s own community might also explain the IRA’s desire in 1972 to force the British to introduce internment early by increasing bombings immediately prior to its introduction, although the reason given for this by republicans is because hasty action on the part of the British would increase the likelihood of their botching up on the basis of bad intelligence (ibid., p. 100). In the two days after internment eight civilians were killed in Ballymurphy alone, twenty-two people in all over a three-day period. The unconscious motivation here could well be the desire to be dominated. In the case of internment, republicans stole pleasure from the Master by shaming him. Where there is an imbalance in a conflict in terms of power, shaming the other by unconsciously or otherwise inviting pain is commonplace. Indeed, in the case of the violence in Ballymurphy in 1970, Gerry Adams notes that the positive consequences of radicalisation included the fact that ‘The women were humiliating and demoralising them [i.e. the British Army]’ (ibid., p. 91). Claims by republicans that the British developed republicanism or helped create it by their brutality belie an unconscious dependency on the British. 31 Breen notes that it is the ‘perceptions of the material position of the Catholic community as a whole’ (Richard Breen, ‘Beliefs about the Treatment of Catholics and Protestants by the Security Forces’, in Richard Breen, Paula Devine and Gillian Robinson (eds), Social Attitudes in Northern Ireland: The Fourth Report 1994–1995 (Belfast: The Appletree Press Ltd), p. 62) rather than an individual’s material standing that shapes attitudes and beliefs about equality of treatment by the security forces among Catholics. In other words, Catholic perception of such inequality has ‘to do with people’s perceptions of the overall relationships between Protestants and Catholics and their political and constitutional preferences’ (ibid., p. 61). 32 English claims that the IRA has been shaped by Catholicism. The Irish nationalist tradition and the Irish State it produced after 1922 ‘were deeply coloured by the religious experience, grievance and thinking of one denomination – the Catholic Church’. Thus, ‘[i]t is historically implausible simply to remove these religious dimensions and suppose that one can adequately account for or describe the evolution of Irish and British histories, or nations, without them’ (English, Armed Struggle, p. 371). Also, ‘Catholic thinking has informed the culture of IRA members in ways that have influenced the organization’s imagery, argument and activity’ (ibid., p. 371) and ‘[s]ectarian influences played a vital part in moulding the thinking of the Provisionals’ (ibid., p. 123). Ed Moloney also notes that the IRA Army Council’s right had Catholic roots as it ‘came from a higher authority; it was spiritual, conferred by the blood sacrifice of those who had

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fought and died to attain the Irish Republic’, which was ‘still-born’ in 1919 (Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA, pp. 375–6). Volunteers, he remarks, later pledged loyalty to ‘this almost mystical administration’ (ibid., p. 376). Smith remarks that Padraig Pearse’s visions of nationhood were ‘quasi-religious’ and that martyrdom is a compelling symbol of republican ideology (Smith, Fighting for Ireland?, pp. 10–12). One might also argue that the emphasis among republicans on honouring their dead who have died for freedom (to the point of continuing the armed struggle in their memory) has Catholic resonances. Smith also claims that there is a sectarian dimension to republican thinking and that Gerry Adams implicitly associates Protestants with loyalist anti-Catholicism (Smith, Fighting for Ireland?, p. 25). Richard Engish notes that the IRA censored reading materials coming into Long Kesh (English, Armed Struggle, p. 230). Gerry Adams confirms these divisions in his autobiography (Adams, Before the Dawn, p. 197). However, while he says the older men in jail changed their minds on particular issues he does not explain why they did so. He also makes it clear that he was reluctant to challenge the (IRA) leadership because they needed support (ibid., p. 247), an attitude that is somewhat in keeping with that of interviewee 1 who wishes to downplay challenges within the republican movement. English remarks on the long-standing role of James Connolly’s socialist thought in IRA thinking but interviewee 1’s comments demonstrate that IRA members resisted seeing the national and the social as ‘two sides of the same coin’ (English, Armed Struggle, p. 345). The denial of difference ties in more generally with a denial of vulnerability, a habit that might help explain why agents and double agents are so prone to recruitment. Moloney quotes one senior IRA source as saying that Gerry Adams liked ‘to encourage the view of nationalists as being the underdog’ (Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA, p. 324).

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7

Loyalists

Introduction In this chapter, I examine the depiction of Northern Protestant identity in the literature,1 with special emphasis on loyalists and proposed resolutions of the conflict, and draw conclusions about the reproduction of conflict from a Lacanian perspective. Empirical research on loyalists presented in the Kimbley section (pp. 193–5) is to be found in an MA thesis completed under my supervision by Anthony Kimbley,2 and in Susan Mc Kay’s empirical study of Northern Protestants.3 Peter Shirlow and Mark McGovern Shirlow and McGovern’s presentation of the key features in the construction of the ‘Protestant People’ include the community’s stress on unity over dissension, their stress on ‘British civility’ over ‘Irish barbarism’, and their removal of the Irish Other from their historiography.4 These are attempts at self-idealisation. Added to these, the authors note that the Protestant People see their norms and beliefs as immutable, which evokes the immutability of the imago in Lacanian psychoanalysis, which the child perceives in the mirror and confuses with itself in the mirror stage. Their sense of ‘Britishness’ coalesces around shared social norms and actions that are constructed as distinctly British, and the living out of these norms and actions is constituted as rational, clear and intuitively natural. Finally the authors remark that threat, siege and deliverance are part of an everrepeating cycle in the Protestant community, while Lacanian psychoanalysis argues that repetition is central to identity construction as are threat and siege. The process of identity construction in the Protestant community is not unique, though the authors do not acknowledge this.

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In the introduction to their book, the authors make a number of interesting claims regarding identity construction and resolution of the conflict. They claim that current representations of political identity in Northern Ireland are confusing and full of contradictions and that these do little to resolve the conflict. They say that cultural representations of the two communities in Northern Ireland are built on the myth of homogeneous communities and that unless this is challenged antagonisms in Ireland cannot be progressed or resolved. They claim that there are already people in Irish society that represent the ‘many dissenting voices which disagree with community norms, voices which wish to raise us all above the sectarian quagmire in which we have all been encased’.5 They claim that what Northern Ireland needs is a new non-sectarian cultural framework in which people share diverse socio-cultural experiences. They also claim that the myth of homogeneous communities needs to be challenged by establishing the diversity and variance that exists among Protestants and Catholics, something that can only be achieved through community introspection. Only this will enable the two communities to respect the other and support the notion of ‘parity of esteem’. This introspection is described as a ‘process in which individuals declare that they find the cultural representations, whether Protestant or Catholic, nationalist or unionist, which are forced upon us all, both alien and unacceptable’.6 The introspection will involve resolving to produce a more secular understanding of what people want to be. These are many problems with these claims when viewed from an analytic perspective. Taking the last claim first, the need for community introspection makes various dubious assumptions. It assumes that people have no choice in their identifications – instead cultural representations are forced upon us. It assumes that after a period of reflection people – the subject supposed to know – will recognise that the cultural representations of them no longer reflect who they are because they do not reflect their internal diversity, and that they need to be changed. A further supposition here is that people need to have their identifications conform to that of the authors – or the dissenting voices mentioned above – who know that current representations of the two communities along bi-polar lines are erroneous. Lacan would argue that people unconsciously make ideological choices. The subject supposed to know is a fiction and people are driven by an unconscious desire for enjoyment, not by a desire to do the right thing, whatever that may be. Besides, there is no reason to suggest that the authors’ claim is any more right than that of the members of the wider communities or that it will deliver a progression of the conflict rather than contribute further to it. The preferred identifications of the authors are 152

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simply substitute fantasies. Attaching to other fantasies does not advance the management of the conflict. There is no guarantee, for example, that the authors ‘myth’ of internal communal diversity would not in turn lead to violent conflict, as has happened in multicultured Britain where race riots occurred. Nor is it a given that people will be rationally convinced of the need to see themselves differently, let alone in the authors’ preferred interpretation. Management of conflict is not about managing claims. Talk of ‘deconstruction of cultural animosity and division’7 itself needs to be ‘deconstructed’. Conflict does not arise out of a clash of claims. Indeed, claims regularly change to suit the conflict. Arguing, as the authors do, that a given claim is a recent invention, or that at a given period in history Protestants and Catholics united as Irishmen, or by demonstrating that Protestants and Catholics have more in common than what divides them will not impact on attachment to current fantasies. The ‘myth’ of homogeneity is itself but one claim and claims such as this are not resolved by proving that they are false or demonstrating that they lead to instability, which is what the authors suggest.8 One cannot approach the subject with a preconceived notion of what is wrong, as the authors do, with a view to persuading them of the folly of their worldview. This issue of creating new fantasies needs to be further explored. There are several issues with these underlying suppositions. If, as the authors assume, people can choose to cast aside current erroneous cultural representations of self, it must equally be possible for them to choose the cultural representations that the authors claim they have been forced to accept. Zˇizˇek argues that ideology does not interpellate us or manipulate us. Instead we choose to identify with its unconscious fantasies. The authors fail to acknowledge that people in Northern Ireland have chosen their current cultural representations because they enjoy them for the jouissance that ideology brings. The authors assume that once the communities have reflected they will recognise their illusions and decide to abandon the folly of their ways. But if the communities unconsciously enjoy them, as my empirical research suggests, no amount of reflection is going to entice them to give them up. The management of antagonisms requires one to identify the irrational dimensions of identifications and the unconscious enjoyment people find in these. And a means needs to be found to bring people to avoid resistance of their enjoyment, which leads them to repress this. Introspection might be valuable, but the type of introspection, should we call it that, which is required is not an intellectual examination of one’s position or beliefs but an attempt to grasp the nature of one’s fantasies and their consequences. 153

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The authors claim that this process of introspection is required because respect for the Other is impossible in a society where ideologies are based on the perpetuation of antagonism and normal forms of social contact are almost impossible in what is a highly segregated society. In other words, because parity of esteem cannot be achieved one must introspect, experience a kind of enlightenment, and abandon one’s ways in order to grow in respect of others. It is a case of repentance and metanoia. The authors fail to recognise that all ideologies are based upon the perpetuation of antagonism – and this would include the authors’ new cultural framework. Besides, parity of esteem will not work not because ideologies and politicians or simple physical logistics militate against it but because relationships are affected by the intensity of the fantasies that cannot be substantially altered without addressing unconscious enjoyment. Finally, the Other that merits respect is based upon an illusion, namely that of an ideal Other. Perpetuating such an illusion is unhealthy and detrimental to conflict management. As noted earlier, the authors have a secular ideal to relieve them of their ‘confusion of identity’ and help them eradicate the contradictions they experience in themselves in terms of their choice of competing identifications. Their ideal is meant to tell them to whom they should identify. However, such ego or superego modifications will by their nature fail to eradicate existing contradictions and will produce contradictions of their own. Contradictions are a part of identity construction. For this reason also, new representations will not resolve the nature of socio-cultural antagonism in Northern Ireland. It is not enough to suggest, as the authors do, that people fail to ‘point the finger at their own community, through questioning how and why it reacts in such conflictual ways’,9 and that people fail to do this because of the threat of violence and rejection by one’s own community or because each community is so divided that many individuals or sub-communities do not feel that violence or atavism emanates from their actions and/or political beliefs. People do question their own community, as Ruane and Todd remarked, and if they do not believe that the violence has anything to do with their beliefs, this is a form of denial. People have had ample opportunities to reflect on their fate in Northern Ireland and yet the divisions and conflict persist. The authors also argue that distancing oneself from sectarian events and actions is worthy but insufficient. In keeping with Zˇizˇek’s view of the trans-ideological kernel of social fantasy, I would argue that far from being worthy, distancing oneself from such events is actually a political act that brings unconscious pleasure. 154

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The authors criticise the notion of the ‘two (supposed) traditions’,10 which they call pro-British and pro-Irish, suggesting that this term is inappropriate in so far as it promotes a binary ideological framework and overlooks intra-community diversity leading to a stress on differences as opposed to similarities, which in turn prevents inter-community dialogue and promotes demonisation of the Other. From a Lacanian perspective, however, the two traditions are no more or less ‘supposed’ than intra-communal diversity. Both are of the order of the Symbolic. Besides, one has to seriously question their argument that the two ‘supposed’ traditions are not valid or do not exist when the authors themselves give as an example of shared values and beliefs within the Protestant community the fact that ‘most Protestants consider themselves to be British’.11 Similarly, how can one assume that people are not already aware of the internal diversity and plurality at the heart of their community when the authors themselves acknowledge that many Protestants and many Catholics distance themselves from certain actions and events that they disagree with, such as Drumcree or the boycotting of Protestant businesses? In short, an explanation and resolution of the conflict cannot depend upon the acceptance of diversity and rejection of homogeneity in the self-interpretation of the Catholic and Protestant communities. The reality is that if socio-cultural heterogeneity is ‘lost or misrepresented’12 it is because the non-conformist voices of which the authors speak also identify with the monolithic depictions of identity that the authors claim silence or dilute such voices. If many Catholics and many Protestants distance themselves from the events and actions that might be viewed as sectarian, thus, according to the authors, demonstrating that the existence of socio-cultural conformity in either community is fictitious, psychoanalysis sees this for what it is – not proof of diversity, but of denial. This weakens the authors’ claim that the communities are divided within themselves and thus that this diversity is key to a resolution of the conflict. Distancing is not an indication of diversity and plurality in this case but evidence of conformity to shared identifications. What is unitary and identifiable in identity construction are shared identifications, not a set of characteristics, presumably shared values, as the authors claim. In so far as shared identifications produce a shared sense of self or solidarity within each community, these also produce opposition and contribute to the proliferation of sectarianism. Such sectarianism must be tackled not by the fabrication of plurality but by a serious exploration of enjoyment or jouissance. It is not the stress on internal conformity or external differences that make the two traditions model problematic so much as the rationalisations that underpin this model. It is these rationalisations that are driven by the unconscious socio-ideological fantasy that promote violence, antagonism 155

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and division. While the term ‘Protestant community’ clearly suggests a unity that involves rationalisation, even if one could take this away it would not cause the foundations of sectarianism to crumble because other rationalisations would persist. What the authors fail to see is that people unconsciously enjoy their rationalisations. They criticise the type of depiction of the Protestant community presented in the Chicago Tribune – ‘Protestants are less humorous than their Catholic counterparts. They are sombre and hard-working. They feel British and deny their Irish past and future’13 – which they say only furthers the sense of besiegement for many Protestants. Yet here the example given simply echoes how some Protestants feel about themselves as is apparent from my examination of McKay’s Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People. The logic of this is that some Protestants are happy to further their own sense of besiegement. It is a source of unconscious enjoyment. It is not problematic to speak of the (Protestant) People, a ‘supposedly’ unified Protestant community, if one accepts that this refers to a community that is unified around a certain enjoyment and set of identifications. Fundamentally the authors believe that the crisis facing Ireland today is to reconceptualise who ‘the People’ are in order to achieve a new social and political consensus. Both Irish nationalism and unionism need to become inclusive of the whole enfranchised citizenry. Talk of the ‘Catholic community’ and the ‘Protestant community’ needs to stop. However, even the authors themselves acknowledge that this is a ‘seemingly insurmountable task’14 and that large sections of the Protestant community would be alienated by such a move on the part of unionism. Even within their own frame of reference their proposal for a resolution to the conflict seems, therefore, to be dead in the water. I do not accept that we need to avoid speaking of the Protestant community or the Catholic community on the grounds that these designations represent the two communities as bi-polar opposites and contribute to the conflict. Whatever terms we use to represent the reality of the two communities, recognising their differences will always be seen by those analysts who view the problem as conceptualisation (and the solution as reconceptualisation) as contributing to the perpetuation of the conflict. The communities are neither bi-polar opposites nor internally conformist. However, they do exist. They reflect a reality. Changing the language will not make the conflict diminish in any sense. Reconceptualisation is simply a limited intellectual exercise. What is required is to examine the way, for example, in which ‘the Union enshrines far more [my italics] than merely the nature of state institutions and the rights of the citizenry’, as the authors put this.15 The crisis in Ireland today is the far more: the way in which objects are unconsciously 156

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invested with meaning. New social and political consensus, i.e. a new political imaginary, is only possible if we address the far more and the unconscious pleasure attached to this. The subject must be brought to see the satisfaction their unconscious fantasies bring and then must be challenged to find their satisfaction elsewhere. When people pursue their desire without inhibitions or with fewer of these, or with less influence from others around them or from the internalised Other, then there is a greater likelihood for less conflict. The aim is to transform the fantasy that props up the subject’s desire, a desire that impedes the pursuit of satisfaction. The subject is called to reconstitute itself in relation to the lost object not in relation to the Other’s demands or desires. In other words, one clarifies and obtains what one wants. It is not sufficient to get people to identify with ‘strong’ replacement fantasies. Nor can one forever interpret the unconscious. Instead, one must traverse the fantasy by transforming it or removing it. Below, I consider other contributions to the work edited by Shirlow and McGovern. Brian Graham For Graham the problem is the contested nature of Protestant and Irish identities. He understands identity in terms of positive cultural frameworks that involve an iconography of place (which shape space and power). Ideology must create an integrative place consciousness, thus the challenge in Ireland is to create landscapes in which pluralist myths might be embedded. However, it is not clear from the article how unionists are meant to formulate the positive cultural iconography necessary to imagine their place and thus legitimate their cause. This is more of the new subject position approach that Lacanian psychoanalysis rejects. Besides, it views identity as something positive, rejecting the reality of the rivalry at the heart of the constitution of the self. How one is meant to attain the goal of an integrative space is unclear, and in this regard this suffers from the same problem as Shirlow and McGovern’s analysis. Emphasis on accommodation with the Other under the myth of a pluralist umbrella is unhelpful: the problem is not the Other but how one constructs the self. The problem arises more out of a desire not to acknowledge aspects of oneself. In the case of the Catholic community this is their sectarianism and contradictions, Catholic jouissance. The problem is not a prohibitive ideology, as Graham believes – the Good Friday Agreement has accepted the need for Protestant consent for a United Ireland – or a dissenting neighbour. Conflict resolution cannot be about the Other or about ideology but about self-interpretation, in which both the Other and ideology play significant roles. Graham says that unionist identity defines 157

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itself largely by what it is not, i.e. Catholic Irish, and this condemns it to ultimate destruction. What needs to be understood in discussion of identity construction is that all identities define themselves by what they are not. And contrary to Graham’s opinion, this tendency does not necessarily lead to self-destruction.

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Alan Finlayson Finlayson’s description of Ulster loyalist identity is standard. Loyalists are attached to the Union, view themselves as non-Catholic, see themselves as needing to be defended, have a sense of their separateness, a set of characteristics such as resilience etc., and a sense of being posed against an alien or foreign Other in the shape of the Irish Catholic. He notes that it is in opposition to Catholicism that Protestantism has greatest importance, confirming his view that social and political identities are constructed around a negative pole, the Other. Finlayson claims that ethnic and national identity claims involve a solipsism: we are a homogeneous group because we have always been so, and we have always been so because we are. He notes that this essentialising of identity depoliticises people – a highly political act that avoids ethical questions as to who we are, why people are this way, and what they can become or should become. He proposes a reading of social and political identities that are discursively constructed through interpellation. This approach allows one to reconceptualise the conflict in terms of the interpellation of subjects and the forging of communal identities. New possibilities arise in the wake of the ceasefires as new loyalism moves towards a truly democratic ideology based on class rather than on allegiance to a Protestant identity. He remarks that the possibility of maintaining rigid definitions of political identity is waning. The binary opposition of Catholic/Protestant, nationalist/unionist is being whittled away with the reduction of violence. This approach to an explanation and resolution of the conflict is questionable. While I like the fact that he points out people’s tendency to essentialising, which has the very serious effect of suspending judgement and, in the vein of Zˇizˇek, sees this for what it is – a political act of depoliticisation, I cannot agree that the way to deal with this is to view identity as being discursively interpellated in the Althusserian vein. As pointed out earlier, people unconsciously choose their interpellation. Moreover, I have already pointed out that the definition of self over against the Other is not just a Protestant phenomenon. And new fantasies or interpellations will not work, which, indeed, might explain why his hope of change post158

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ceasefires appears now to be ill-placed. Clearly, some other form of analysis beyond the purely discursive approach discussed here is required. Colin Coulter Coulter examines the unionist middle classes and notes that Direct Rule has brought about a dependence that has resulted in a sullen disenchantment, the politics of inertia, a political ambivalence about the British Government and an indifference about political affairs, all of which undermine political dialogue and progress in Northern Ireland. As a result, the unionist middle classes conceal their sectional interests by portraying their political interests and ideological concerns as the common currency of all. Coulter says there is a need for change and that this could come about if they develop economic ties with the South, thus bringing to the political life of the province the more temperate and cosmopolitan outlook that has come to inhabit a cultural environment that transcends the narrow sectarian contours of the six counties. Coulter believes that the fissures this would create in terms of wealth would inevitably lead to the opening up of the ideological space, which he sees as essential for class politics, moving the people of Northern Ireland away from nationalist politics. However, Coulter himself points out that the unionist middle classes might in fact resort to their ‘profound ambivalence’16 and eschew contact with the South. There are various problems with this analysis. For one thing, recent election results suggest that waiting for the contribution of the unionist middle classes could prove futile and eternal.17 If the ideological traits of the unionist middle classes undermine political dialogue and progress in Northern Ireland then maybe one should address the possibility that this is what they unconsciously desire. Psychoanalysis would view their temperate and cosmopolitan outlook, and their inertia, ambivalence and indifference as a form of disidentification that adds to conflict. It will take something other than wishful thinking to deal with what Coulter refers to as the ‘paranoia which infests the political imagination of contemporary Unionism’.18 One will need to examine the satisfactions that such paranoia produces. Why should they give these up? Many political scientists and sociologists have it in their heads that the problem in Northern Ireland is nationalist politics, i.e. the clash of unionism and nationalism, and that a move to class politics is the answer. But would this be any better? And why would people want to give them up? How would you move them away from these? Few have given coherent answers to these questions. The problem in Northern Ireland is not one of ‘isms’ but one of unconscious fantasy. 159

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Jennifer Todd Todd identifies two ideological traditions within Northern Irish unionism: Ulster loyalism and Ulster British ideology.19 The primary imagined community of the former is that of Northern Protestants or the Ulster loyal people and it has a secondary conditional loyalty to the British State, while the imagined community of the latter is that of Greater Britain, while it also has a secondary regional patriotism for Northern Ireland. She notes that Ulster loyalism is probably the most numerous and certainly the most vociferous ideological grouping of Northern Protestants. Significantly, it is clear from the author that people’s beliefs are products of several ideological traditions and many Protestants have a foot in both camps. They share aspects of each ideology.20 According to Todd, for loyalists political life is about the battle between good and evil, and continually under threat from evil, compromise is viewed as defeat and as a result dominance must be maintained. The author notes that Ulster loyalism is dominance, a defence against humiliation, which is expressed in the desire to protect one’s identity. They have lots of interests to defend – good over evil, loyalty against treachery, truth against error, light against darkness.21 This take on domination reflects the Lacanian view and is a universal phenomenon. For Lacan, domination is a defence of the paranoid ego. It is the insecurity and fragmentation that arise from identity construction that give rise to fear, anxiety and aggression. While aggression is present in all relations, violent conflict happens when people choose to act upon their aggression. Todd claims that in the pursuit of dominance, loyalists transgress the law and become their Catholic Other, but remain in denial of this. Protestant violence is viewed in this context as a defence against tyranny. Todd claims that Ulster loyalist identity is underpinned by fundamentalism. The notion of their being a chosen people is strong and is rooted in uncertainty. Todd’s analysis suggests perhaps that there is a contradiction here, an interpretation with which I would agree: ‘It is as if the imaginative justification of loyalists as God’s chosen people in their recurrent battles is gained only at the cost of continued uncertainty about the place of that people.’22 Indeed, Lacanian analysis suggests that uncertainty is unconsciously pleasurable, feeding as it does into fear and anxiety. She also notes that loyalists feel tensions, insecurities and contradictions, the latter including loyalty/disloyalty and order/disorder. They take on some of the perceived traits of their Catholic Other. Todd argues that Ulster loyalism is a closed system resisting refutation by experience or argument and so change in Ulster loyalist ideology in the direction of non-sectarianism must be radical: it cannot change gradually because of its binary structure of thought. The author argues this on the 160

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grounds that it cannot be proven or argued that humiliation will not follow from loyalists letting down their guard. Its change must also come from without. Todd believes that such externally generated radical change can only occur when Ulster loyalists face what they have perceived as defeat and humiliation and if they find the experience different from what they had anticipated. Although Todd’s examination of Ulster loyalism is full of insight, I disagree with her analysis of change. For a start, on beliefs the author notes that individuals’ beliefs are constantly changing while in the context of her discussion of Northern Protestants she speaks of ‘[t]hose real individuals whose ideas are in flux’.23 So, change is constantly taking place even though the author suggests that Ulster loyalism is a closed system that requires change from without. Furthermore, all identities involve a binary system of thought as every subject is, in Lacanian terms, an Other. It also seems that the author is saying that loyalist fears are ungrounded, that the problem is one of their perception, and that in the final analysis they will be pleasantly surprised. Again, this view could be wishful thinking and insufficient to make people change. Who can guarantee loyalists will be pleasantly surprised? One must consider the consequences for the conflict should loyalists face what they perceive to be defeat and humiliation only to be confirmed in these perceptions. And even if they should discover that defeat and humiliation were not what they perceived them to be, the question arises as to how would they be brought to this conclusion and whether this would resolve the conflict. What one needs to deal with is the reality of paranoia rather than attempt to prove to people that their paranoia is not grounded because they can basically have what they want. Most importantly, approaching the possibilities for change from the perspective of ideology as a structure of thought already precludes an effective strategy for managing conflict. As we noted earlier, ideology is unconscious and only a treatment of its unconscious dynamics can allow for change. Thought, like beliefs, is a matter of ego, and change cannot be about adjusting the ego to some other ideal ego position. Change need not be about Ulster loyalists compromising or understanding others, as the author proposes. Change is not an intellectual endeavour. Change concerns shaking up the fundamental fantasy, and this involves the subjects examining their unconscious enjoyment. It does not occur on the basis of reflection on one’s ideological system. Sarah Nelson Sarah Nelson concentrates on the subjective experience of loyalists – their feelings. She wants to find out how loyalists interpret themselves. While 161

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sometimes critical of their self-interpretation, which she notes involves selfdeception in relation to violence, she simply tells us how loyalists experience their world. Apart from an open-ended interview method, it is not clear what theory she applies to the information gained. Nonetheless, she makes a number of interesting points about loyalists on the basis of her interviews. For example, she claims that loyalists need Britain to believe in them. They need to believe that they are vital to Britain. She points out that the matter of not knowing what one is for the Other, in this case for Britain, has led to a period of anxiety for loyalists, provoking the question ‘Who am I then, and where do I belong?’24 This parallels the psychoanalytic question, ‘Who am I for the Other?’ and remains at the heart of all identity construction. Her comments that only a minority of Protestants, mainly middle class, are racist in the sense of seeing Catholics as inherently inferior and likewise that extremists are often in the middle class rather than the working class are perceptive. Rather than resolve sectarianism as many researchers believe, class appears to add to it, helped no doubt by its transideological flavour. She does not explain the contradiction that exists at the heart of the selfsame Protestants whom she claims complain about Catholic indolence and subservience and yet appear envious of Catholics’ greater capacity for independent social and political action. Indeed, her own presentation is contradictory for she implies that Protestants feel inferior to Catholics and not superior, whereas their criticism of Catholics would also suggest a sense of Protestant superiority. So it is clear that the perception of others needs to be analysed systematically. She notes that similar trends of obedience and submission to authority exist in both communities. In a sense, they mirror each other. However, this is not done by force but unconsciously and so I disagree with her opinion that unionists forced nationalists to become intransigent like unionists by getting them to conform to unionist stereotypes of them. Unwittingly, the author may be suggesting that Catholics and Protestants want to be discriminated against, a view with which I would concur, though the author’s meaning is more probably that both sides feel that discrimination is inevitable given the zero-sum nature of politics in Northern Ireland: ‘Protestants as well as Catholics complain loudly of discrimination, but each side expects it to happen. Indeed, they find it hard to imagine a world without it.’25 They unconsciously enjoy discrimination. Being discriminated against gives one moral worth. This is the pleasure in pain. She explains how she only ever heard former Stormont unionists express compliments towards Stormont nationalists and, interestingly from a Lacanian perspective, she says that the nationalists that the former commented upon were very much like those who were paying the compli162

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ments, i.e. ‘straight, principled and honest’. The author’s perception that they are alike is insightful. When unionists find nationalists to be just like them they guarantee separation or exclusion because positive identification with others involves a rationalisation of dominance. The interviewees are projecting. What they do is construct Catholics in a way that hides Protestant enjoyment from themselves. The Protestant category of the ‘good Catholic’, i.e. innocent Catholics, allows for the construction of the ‘bad Catholic’, which allows Protestants to rationalise the use of violence against Catholics. Nelson explains that her examination of Protestant ideology helps us understand why Protestants thought discrimination justified and felt threatened by nationalist advances: they did so principally because of their belief that compromise was a sign of dishonesty and a lack of integrity. However, she fails to analyse why Protestants held these beliefs in terms of the unconscious satisfactions that they gained from this interpretation. Subjective reality involves denial. Self-interpretation cannot be taken at face value. This is a mistake that many of the treatments of political identity are prone to making. For example, Nelson effectively posits a myth about loyalist violence based on interviewee presentations: loyalists killed innocent Catholics because those who gathered information on potential Catholic targets were of low social status, low intelligence and unemployed, thus resulting in the poor quality of the information. Self-interpretation must be taken with the proverbial pinch of salt. This is one of the problems of not having a systematic theoretical approach to interviews. I will argue that Catholics in general were killed because of the identification Protestants had with the Catholic threat, itself a product of Protestant angst. Again, sociological factors are used by the author to explain why the Protestant view of Catholics as being happy in 1969 was correct. Catholics are said to have been manipulated by the IRA, or the society was so segregated and divided that Protestants would inevitably misinterpret feelings across the divide. In other words, the Protestant view is not questioned. I will argue that the Protestant reading of Catholic happiness is a self-serving rationalisation of unconscious Protestant guilt. The contradictions among Nelson’s interviewees hint at this rationalisation. Nelson regrets the fact that Protestant People did not understand the ‘real feeling’ of Catholics in 1969, i.e. their unhappiness, for if they had have done so mutual understanding could have arisen. Understanding the Other is not, as I have pointed out, a recipe for conflict resolution because it is based on an ideal Other. So the author’s imaginings are ill-founded. As Zˇizˇek also points out, ignorance is a form of denial, concealing pleasure. And it is of no surprise that the ‘optimistic Protestants’26 the author interviewed also suffered from a lack of comprehension of the Catholic case. 163

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The problem according to Nelson is in large part that in 1969 Protestants’ self-image and definition of themselves were seriously challenged by Catholics. However, the problem is not so much the threat of having to give up one’s self-image as about the threat of having to confront the source of one’s pleasure, which the images defend. The fact that Protestants were depicted internationally as the ‘baddies’ in 1969 (and since) does not, contrary to the author’s claims, prolong the conflict on the grounds that even moderate Protestants get to feeling aggrieved. It reproduces the conflict because, on the contrary, being the ‘baddie’ is unconsciously pleasurable. It maintains what is a pleasurable conflict which, as the author herself notes, gives people – in this case Protestants – reassurance. There is nothing incongruous for the participants about the fact that such reassurance should be depressing and fatalistic as the author claims it is. People find anxiety satisfying. Peace would disturb their satisfactions. What matters in conflict resolution is not primarily whether people want peace or not, or what kind of peace they want, any more than whether people want conflict or not. It is about unconscious enjoyment – the way in which people are always happy, even with their woes. In this context, pessimism is a sign of hope: a desire that the conflict will continue. People do not reach for ideologies in times of stress as if to find relief or refuge, instead they opt for these to increase their stress. The lack of Protestant self-confidence has little to do with not wanting to appear disloyal resulting in a reluctance for self-assertion against the establishment, which is what the author argues and interviewees claim it is. Instead, the perception of Protestant lack of self-confidence is a desire not to tackle their grievances and situation because they unconsciously enjoy it. This lack of self-confidence, moreover, is linked into the loyalist claim that they never demanded better material conditions for themselves because they were led to believe that to have done so would have been disloyal. But the fear of being disloyal, as we have seen, is another rationalisation like that of poor self-confidence. This fear is a rationalisation of the pleasure to be found in the underdog status. Loyalists unconsciously enjoyed their weak social position. They enjoyed dependence, their identification with authority. These were sources of unconscious satisfactions. Contemporary new loyalists profess that the people did not know any better because they were fed a diet of guilt-trips, which subdued the people who might otherwise challenge the unionist status quo. They were unwittingly manipulated. However, as I have pointed out, ignorance is a form of pleasure. The satisfactions working-class loyalists enjoyed were that they were not like Catholics who complained of their lot, they were morally superior. And respecting the status quo also meant that the Catholic threat would be contained. Furthermore, if the State of Northern Ireland were said to be 164

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good enough for Catholics, then it had to be good enough for loyalists. Loyalists believed it was good enough for them because it suited them to believe this. Nelson gives many examples of community ‘myths’, in other words, rationalisations.27 She explains that people repeat these even when they know they are untrue. This is a reminder that managing conflict is not about changing people’s beliefs, but a matter of understanding what people say at the unconscious level. She also claims that people rationalise because they find their self-image threatened by others and wish to do a repair job on this. This is not the case. People rationalise in order to quell their anxiety and the sense of fragmentation that is a permanent feature of identity construction. Others do not instigate rationalisation. Managing the conflict is not, then, a matter of bringing people to see the ‘truth’ about themselves, i.e. what lies behind their so-called self-image. There is no how people really are. There is no real self divorced from rationalisation. Conflict management is about identifying the unconscious enjoyment that underlies rationalisations. The Northern Ireland conflict is not about image, however important this is to participants to the conflict. Susan McKay There is much work done on Protestant identity. The strength of Susan McKay’s work, Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People, lies in the raw interview material rather than in her analysis of this. It is proof again of the need for a systematic methodology for the analysis of identity. McKay’s interviews with members of the Protestant community provide enormous insights into how Protestants interpret themselves in Northern Ireland. However, her analysis of Northern Protestant identity presented in the epilogue shows once again the weakness of the journalistic approach that relies heavily on psychology. Below, I examine the author’s analysis of Protestant identity, give examples of the major themes of the Protestant selfinterpretation, and, finally, demonstrate how the application of Lacanian theory would provide a reading of the Protestant self-interpretation that is significantly different from the author’s psychological assessment of her interview material. McKay’s analysis McKay offers some of her own thoughts on the Protestant community, particularly in her epilogue. These basically echo many of the things her Protestant interviewees see as negative aspects of themselves. Unfortunately, she does not go beneath what her interviewees present her with to 165

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unearth the rationalisations that underpin their opinions. She concludes that inflexibility is one of the traditional unionist virtues, and that unionists crave old certainties, one of these being the conflict and confrontation with the Catholic community as at Drumcree. Unionist ideas of politics and power are described as ‘male’. She believes that Ian Paisley’s worldview speaks of and shapes the loyalist worldview. His fondness for black and white oppositions informs Protestant identity generally: things are a matter of life or death, freedom or slavery, loyalty or treachery, etc. Such oppositions are rooted in paranoia – if Protestants fail to take action they stand to be killed, sold into slavery or betrayed. On the subject of Protestant sectarianism, McKay describes as one of its sordid mysteries the way this turns against individuals who had believed they were tolerated. She agrees with Ignatieff28 that it is because differences are so minor between communities that they have to be expressed with such aggression. The matter of the author’s view of Protestant violence is worthy of particular scrutiny. McKay believes that loyalists kill Catholics because they are ‘simply taigs, fenians. The enemy’29 and compares loyalist attacks on Catholics to white attacks on blacks in the USA. It is a matter of hatred. McKay uses the image some loyalist interviewees put across of loyalists as Frankenstein’s monster (i.e. created by sectarian unionist politicians) to demonstrate the nature of this hatred. She points out that David Ervine30 reiterates this in his belief that (post-ceasefire) loyalists kill Catholics because they hate them, and that this hatred is cultivated in them by hypocritical mainstream unionist politicians. McKay further develops the theme of why some Protestants kill Catholics in her exploration of how it is that the selfsame influences produce Protestants who would abhor the killing of Catholics, and Protestants who would carry out these killings, acting out of this hatred. Her precise question is ‘How, in some, did being “proud to be Protestant” turn pathological?’31 McKay’s explanation of the pathological strain in the Protestant community is basically an amalgamation of her interviewees’ reasons: loyalists are easily led by ‘respectable’ unionist or church leaders; they lack education and are ignorant; they are working class and as such share a weak sense of morality; they are prone to cultural influences that are exclusively loyalist and innately negative; they have no purpose in their lives or lack jobs; or simply because they are sectarian.32 McKay also implies in her epilogue that pride in one’s identity becomes pathological for Protestants when they listen to ‘voices’ – presumably not loyalist voices – which are sectarian in tone, and which when they are heard by people who share a genuine grievance and a self-pitying paranoia and are prone to repressing the personal for the group become combustible. They give rise to violence. She concludes that loyalist killers have listened to the voices of sectarian 166

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forces that have been ‘sowing dragon’s teeth’.33 For their part, many who, according to the author, should know better wink at the sectarian forces from the sidelines. McKay also implies that the sectarian forces in question are people with sectarian views, often politicians or leaders who presumably because they are more educated should know better, and that loyalists fall under their influence then fall by the way killing Catholics because loyalists are somehow flawed. Critique of McKay’s analysis McKay’s explanation of Protestant identity and violence is seriously flawed. Her claim that the way sectarianism turns on individuals who had believed they were tolerated is a sordid mystery simply serves to mystify sectarianism when there is nothing mysterious at all about the fact that people turn against others that are perceived as symbolising a threat. Mystifying sectarianism is an expression of Zˇizˇek’s trans-ideological kernel, the function of which is to place the political beyond the political in the construction of social-ideological fantasy. McKay’s agreement with Ignatieff about the relationship of minor differences to conflict is mistaken. It is not because differences are minor that aggression arises. Aggression arises because of the drive to cohere and the unconscious sense of lack that propels this. Differences that are small become huge because rivalry over jouissance in this context is huge. It is not because the two communities resemble each other that minor differences must be made major. It is because the Other’s desire shapes one’s own desire. It is an unconscious process. McKay posits a conscious hatred of Catholics as the reason why Protestants kill Catholics but this interpretation is insufficient and simplistic. While individuals may or may not consciously hate Catholics, what drives hatred of the Other is the unconscious desire for the Other’s enjoyment or jouissance. This is the real issue, and this is why loyalists attack Catholics and more generally why, according to the literature, the Protestant community identifies with actions of loyalist paramilitaries. What Protestants clearly hate and unconsciously desire is perceived Catholic solidarity, success, strategy, craic, identity, victim status and disloyalty. The Protestant community, which clearly experiences itself as a socially, religiously and politically divided society, imagines that Catholics are united in all these areas and desires this solidarity for themselves, even though, consciously, they pride themselves in being a diverse, independent community, supportive of individualism and conscience. What is particularly significant about the hatred of the Other’s enjoyment is that it is indicative of a self-hatred – a hatred of one’s own 167

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enjoyment because the enjoyment of the Other is a reminder of the impossibility of one’s own enjoyment – their fantasy of a people who ‘spake with one spake’, ‘the people of Ulster’ or the ‘Ulster says No’ identity.34 McKay’s explanation of the perceived pathological strain in the Protestant community is flawed.35 Pathology is not a matter of the presence or absence of particular cultural or social traits or natural dispositions. It is not a matter of one individual or group being ‘weak’ and therefore prone to violence, while another individual or group is ‘strong’ and above it all. Nor is it about weak and strong cultures. The question why one person chooses to kill and another subjected to the ‘same’ influences does not is based on a false premise because influences on the individual are never the same, and again these are affected by perception. It is about the unconscious, and in the cultural domain this is then about the social-ideological fantasy. The extent to which the Northern Protestant identifies with unconscious ideological forces in the large part determines whether he/she comes to use violence or not against the Catholic Other. The strength of identification is a matter of how great the perceived threat and the desire for cohesion are. Thus whether one uses violence or not is a matter of how one chooses to deal with the anxieties, fears, aggression, fragmentation, etc., which are the lot of humankind and which give rise to the socialideological fantasy. A discussion around pathology misses the mark if it comes down to how easily an individual can be manipulated because of external cultural influences or natural inadequacies. People kill for pleasure – the unconscious pleasure in maintaining cohesion by getting back what one unconsciously believes has been stolen or defending what is thought to have been captured by the Other. It is exactly McKay’s type of analysis of pathology that unionists and loyalists identify with and which leads to rationalisations among them such that loyalists claim that they are the social manifestation of middle-class or unionist bigotry, while middle-class unionists can claim that they are ashamed of the acts that loyalists carry out because it gives their community a bad name. The unconscious enjoyment that either group experiences in violence perpetrated by Protestants is not addressed. Instead, the Other is blamed. This rationalisation rests on a rationalisation – the distinction of the beatific, enlightened Protestant and the flawed, spectral Protestant. In other words, the belief is that people kill because their minds are fertile for sectarian messages, i.e. they have a genuine grievance, a self-pitying paranoia, and a propensity for personal repression that leaves them wide open to group identification. However, the desire to kill Catholics in those who are not psychotic has to do with the Protestant unconscious attraction to Catholics, which is expressed in unconscious rivalry over jouissance. 168

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The important grievance is the unconscious perception that Catholics have stolen or will steal what is Protestant. Paranoia is relevant, and whether it is self-pitying or not is of little importance. The author’s claim that individuals repress the personal over identification with the group is, for its part, a false dichotomy. McKay’s belief that weak people, namely loyalists, kill Catholics because they fall under the influence of politicians who should know better than to promote sectarianism is also too simplistic. Here we have a kind of fatalism that McKay criticises in fundamentalist Protestantism: there are those who are supposed to know better, i.e. unionists, and those who are not supposed to know better, i.e. loyalists, presumably because they cannot know better for one or any of the reasons mentioned above, which render them prone to self-pitying paranoia. Lacan says the subject supposed to know is also a fantasy that promotes conflict. The explanation above of how the selfsame influences would produce Protestants who would abhor the killing of Catholics, and Protestants who would carry out these killings fails. There is a theoretical problem here that requires reiteration of the premise on which the author’s conclusion is based, namely that people are shaped by culture. Fine. So, she asks, if the Protestant people share the same Protestant culture, i.e. the ‘same influences’, why do some of them kill Catholics? The answer appears to be that it is not the Protestant culture that determines this after all but other influences or dynamics, e.g. how people let their paranoia be manipulated in the ‘group’ or community context. Thus, the author can conclude as she does that the Protestant culture is basically a good culture and Protestants can be proud of much of it (while there are monsters that have to be faced down). Now, this interpretation is flawed because it aims to take the negativity out of identity because it is assumed that identities are a ‘positive’ construct. This approach involves an idealisation of reality. The construction of all identities involves rationalisations of desires, which result in exclusion. To fail to recognise this is to rest one’s argument on the notion that there are different kinds of Protestants, in other words the reconstruction of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Protestant or of the ‘respectable’ Protestant and the ‘half-baked one’, which the author herself questions elsewhere. In this context, talk of different kinds of Protestants is a defence. It is a rationalisation of the unpleasurable unconscious aspects involved in Protestant identity. An explanation of pathology in the Protestant community that overlooks Protestant rivalry over jouissance is rationalising. Yes, there are different kinds of positive Protestant self-interpretations, e.g. loyalist, Free Presbyterian, moderate, unionist, middle class, etc.) but all such 169

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constructions involve rivalry over jouissance and it is this that motivates hatred of Catholics and violence towards them. The psychoanalytic reading of identity would suggest that all Northern Protestants by definition identify with the unconscious dynamics that inform their identity to a greater or lesser degree regardless of sub-category. It is essential to acknowledge this. Otherwise, we are into good and bad Protestants, i.e. those who fall under the influence of sectarian voices and those who influence them but should know better etc. The reality is that people engage in political violence because, apart from personal conscious motivation, they want to kill on the basis of their identification with the unconscious dynamics that inform the social-ideological fantasy, with rivalry over jouissance at its centre. In order to understand what lies at the root of Protestant hatred of Catholic enjoyment it is important is to identify what it is that loyalists block, for it is essentially this that explains why they kill Catholics. It is not because they are ‘simply Catholics’. What matters is ascertaining what unconscious voices loyalists hear when they do violence to Catholics. It is their repressed fragmentation, self-hatred, doubts and anxieties in relation to their ideal self that propel Protestants into confrontation with Catholics. Protestants feel the need for the cohesion, which they perceive Catholics as having. The Protestant self-interpretation So how do McKay’s interviewees interpret themselves? Below I give examples of what they see as their strengths and what they consider as weaknesses and then offer a psychoanalytic critique of this self-interpretation that suggest that the typical Protestant self-interpretation involves rationalisations that help reproduce the unconscious dynamics of the conflict. THE POSITIVE PROTESTANT SELF - INTERPRETATION

The stereotypical Protestant positive self-interpretation is succinctly portrayed by one of McKay’s interviewees, the writer Gary Mitchell who speaks of the hard-working, decent, upright, very religious man. Another alludes to the Protestant principles of industry, dissent, individualism, capitalism. Still another speaks of the ‘typical Prod’ as being honest and open, moral, without guile, and clear-cut and unambiguous. The ideal Protestant self is moral, law-abiding and tolerant as is clear from the way in which several of the interviewees expressed their disgust for loyalist violence. These speak of their shame about what paramilitaries were doing in the name of the Protestant community or cause. The Protestant community’s ideal self is cast in the role of the ‘giver’: ‘We gave away 26 counties and only kept 6. No wonder people are fearful. Are we to be given away?’36 170

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Ken Maginnis remarks that along the border, Protestants have sacrificed so much that they are disheartened. THE NEGATIVE PROTESTANT SELF - INTERPRETATION

The negative self-interpretation of the Protestant community elaborated in McKay’s work can be categorised along three strands: defensive-aggressive, fearful-paranoid and underdog. Defensive-aggressive Some interviewees allude to negativity in the mood, character and behaviour of the Protestant community, much of which contradicts the Protestant stereotypes described above. Gary Mitchell remarks that Protestant men are violent and lack respect for women. He also speaks of the belief shared by some of the working classes as scum, denoting a perceived split in the Protestant sense of self. The working class were born to follow their betters. Another interviewee notes that sectarianism is part and parcel of the upbringing of the children in her area such that they think they are better than Catholics. Mervyn Long remarks that Protestants have an inbuilt sense of superiority over Catholics. Sam McAughtry claims that Protestants are continually wary of Catholics. A. T. Q. Stewart remarks that there is an almost visceral hatred between the two communities so much so that to be a ‘staunch’ Protestant is associated with hating Catholics while to be a ‘strong’ Protestant, according to the author, is understood by Protestants as meaning to be sectarian.37 The middle classes are said to keep out of politics because they are bigoted and entrenched but dare not let it show. David Dunseith sees the Protestant community as being afraid of new ideas and as being defensive such that Protestants will identify with loyalist violence even as they express regret about it. John Robb notes that Protestants are defensive and full of denial about their own violence and feel threatened by others. Dunseith remarks that Protestants are fearful of expressing themselves, and that this can lead to aggression. Tom Paulin believes that at the centre of the loyalist mentality there lies a contradictory, self-pitying, childish and festering sense of grievance. He also speaks of the aggressive feeling of cultural inferiority that afflicts loyalist imagination. Dermot Seymour remarks that Protestants have no self-esteem and are even proud to be ignorant. They inhabit the world of inferiority complex and constantly put each other down. (There is an inference here that Protestants enjoy being inferior or ignorant.) He notes that Protestants do not understand ‘shading’ – everything is black and white. They also share a conspiracy theory – subversion is rampant. Some acknowledge that intimidation is rampant. 171

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Fearful-paranoid Many Protestants think of their community as being divided – the churches, class, unionism, etc. and see this as a type of vulnerability. Another interviewee speaks of how her father used to say that the only good Catholic was a dead one and then she adds: ‘With the other side you know what you have. With your own side you don’t know nothing’38 – displaying the fear, distrust and suspicion some Protestants experience in relation to their own community. People are afraid of betrayal from within. Another interviewee remarks that it is as if Protestants think the whole world is against them. Underdog In some cases Protestants sees themselves as being reluctant to develop their community or advance their interests. Adree Wallace points out that even when Protestants she worked with complained about all the benefits and facilities that the Catholic community got through its hard work they still refused to make their own efforts to better themselves. Lesley Carroll says that she sometimes fears that unionism is just incapable of change. They are limited in terms of strategies because they are ‘the defenders’. They see themselves as the underdog and believe that their culture is being continuously eroded.39 Another interviewee describes the unionist as a beleaguered underdog in need of getting his or her confidence back: ‘The unionist is like a child who has been slapped around the ears for thirty years.’40 Such analogies with children are not unusual in the discourse. The representation is of someone who is dependent, needy, incapacitated, etc. Some Protestants like Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MP Roy Beggs believe that there is an imbalance in media reports of violence in favour of Catholics. The media fails to advance Protestant interests. CRITIQUE OF THE PROTESTANT SELF - INTERPRETATION

Below, I consider some of the rationalisations that the above negative and positive Protestant self-interpretation conceals. I particularly consider the notion of giving and being nice, both viewed as positive traits in the Protestant self-interpretation. Both are rationalisations of aggression that help reproduce the unconscious dynamics of the conflict. The Protestant giver The author notes that the sentiment that ‘Protestants had passively responded to nationalist aggression by conceding and giving until they could give no more’41 was ubiquitous. Giving is tied in with victimhood as the above suggests. Protestants are innocent victims of Catholic aggression. They are being bullied for having done no wrong. From a psychoanalytic 172

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perspective, giving is a rationalisation of the perception of having been robbed or the fear of being robbed, typical features of socio-ideological fantasy. The notion of one’s generosity invites paranoia and confirms Protestants’ belief that they are the victims in the conflict. ‘We’ve given X’ means ‘We’ve been robbed of X’. Robbery or potential robbery is a rationalisation of Protestant lack. The frustration of one interviewee who comments, ‘[b]ut they [Protestants] can’t say what it is or what it was they are losing. In the end they say, “They [the RUC/Catholics] won’t let us [i.e. Orangemen] down the Garvaghey Road.” And it makes me think, is that all there is?’42 would suggest that what Protestants feel they are losing is a matter of small things, which are experienced as big things. And as my research indicates, which small things become big is determined by the perceived attitudes of the Catholic community.43 One can conclude from the Protestant self-interpretation as giver that Protestants unconsciously enjoy an inferiority complex as the victims of robbery. Giving is also expressed through the discourse of loss. This too allows Protestants to imagine that Catholics have the power to rob them. Like the discourse of giving, it is an expression of paranoia that reinforces the siege mentality, dependence on violence and the idea that compromise is dangerous. One interviewee reluctantly accepts the view that Billy Wright was a psychopath as his critics maintained but she takes pride in him for ‘at least he was our psychopath’.44 She will enjoy his contribution to her community precisely because the Catholic community does not have a claim on him. This discourse also explains why some of McKay’s interviewees feel threatened by community development because Catholic gain is experienced as Protestant loss. They resist it because it is seen as taking control away from their community. In other words, community development is perceived as a codeword for giving ever more to Catholics. Fear of loss or an experience of perceived loss can lead to intense feelings of paranoia. Dunseith sees the Protestant community as an ‘embattled minority’ fearing abandonment by Britain and potential swamping by the Roman Republic of Ireland. ‘They feel they are losing everything. It almost reaches the level of hysteria. The sense of identity among Catholics is much stronger.’45 What is also interesting about this analysis is the inference that Protestant identity is weak (relative to Catholic identity), a perception that is seemingly driven by fear. A community’s paranoia is reinforced by the idealisation of the Other. Catholics are typically perceived as being more together, coherent or whatever, an idealisation that simply enables Protestants to unconsciously reproduce the Catholic threat and the relations of domination and social power. Fear of loss is akin to fear of defeat and the author notes that some loyalists like the certainty of the apocalypse that she claims Paisley indulges 173

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in. She remarks that ‘Unionists revel in this ourselves-against-the-world stance’.46 Lacanian analytic theory explains that there is unconscious pleasure in paranoia. This would account for why some interviewees wish to be wronged. It strengthens the perception of being threatened and thus enables the community to imagine they are cohesive. Accusations that the media is biased against the Protestant community are typical of this mind-set. The accusation that the Catholic community is better at propaganda than the Protestant community is a further expression of the pleasure found in imagined conspiracies. Taken to an extreme, its proponents rationalise perceived defeat as triumph. As the author points out, Protestants rationalise accusations of being in the wrong as their being in the right.47 The Protestant self-interpretation as giver gives rise to grievance. Adree remarks that Protestant community groups frequently see Catholic groups as being advantaged, and the Protestant community as being victims. They think to themselves: ‘The other side gets this and the other side gets that, and we get nothing.’48 Others have stolen their jouissance. The desired object is something that Protestants in fact never had. Lacanian theory would argue that the maintenance of grievance is aided by the fact that people never get what they want. What Protestants want is the imagined source of Catholic enjoyment. This is not driven by a conscious desire to spite the Other but rather by the unconscious desire to steal back whatever the pleasure is that they imagine Catholics have robbed from them to create their happiness. This unconscious desire also allows one to suppress guilt in relation to the Other’s suffering. Rivalry over the Other’s enjoyment comes out in the interviewees’ preoccupation with getting back their history from the enemy. McKay notes that her interviewees frequently referred to the fact that they felt the need to ‘capture’ or ‘recapture’ from republicans the roles of the victim and the hero in history. In the desire to recapture history, interviewees rationalise defeat as triumph as they idealise what they have lost, even, the author remarks, the disastrous slaughter at the Somme in which Protestants perished. This is similar to the way loyalists read the Siege of Derry: division in loyalist ranks and the lack of compensation given to those who held out for William’s forces are overlooked, just as current divisions in unionism are airbrushed in references to ‘the people of Ulster’. The past is idealised in order to solidify current identity. In the giver self-interpretation Protestants overlook the damage that Catholic violence does to them. It becomes almost irrelevant in the context of Protestants getting the better of Catholics at the unconscious level. If Catholics are criticised for their violence, this becomes the ideal pleasure for Protestants. 174

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Protestant victimhood, which is tied in with their view of themselves as givers, is not about people trying to let themselves off the hook, as the author claims. McKay notes Ken Maginnis’ comment that the Protestant community saw itself as more sinned against than sinning and she claims that this shows the Protestant community on the side of the good or of the real victims in the conflict. She says Protestants can use this to avoid selfcriticism and to remain in denial about their violence. She does not explain how she arrives at this conclusion. This is simply a matter of opinion. Such an explanation of victimhood in terms of conscious motivation reduces an analysis of the conflict to the blame-game and thus simply prolongs the conflict, letting people off the hook. Victimhood has to do with an unconscious desire for the object of the Other’s enjoyment, which Protestants perceive as Catholic victimhood. In the case of the Protestant community, this is a tool that keeps the Catholic threat, which is unconsciously enjoyed, alive. This tool is all the more relevant in post-ceasefire Northern Ireland where the desire to retain oppositional differences remains strong and the need to rationalise one’s past actions is now a more pressing defence than ever. The victim position involves a conscious desire for pain. John, an Orangeman at Drumcree, wants the Orange Order to get battered because that would unite the unionist community, which he perceives as too split. He believes that the British people will unite behind the unionist community when they see British blood streaming down the faces of Orangemen. However, his final comment, ‘This will be our Bloody Sunday’, is not proof of the author’s claim that he wants to wash away the image of Protestants as triumphalist bullies. This is not how John sees himself. He does not have a guilty conscience. It is proof that what he unconsciously wants is what he imagines Catholics enjoy – Bloody Sunday. This is what drives rivalry with others. Obtaining whatever it is Catholics appear to enjoy is meant to fill in the unconscious lack that Protestants experience. According to some interviewees pain is desirable for the imagined solidarity it will bring or the peace it can lead people to or even for the kind of perverse normality it brings. However, these are all matters of opinion. Pain may or may not lead to these things. Ultimately, Lacanian analysis holds, pain is unconsciously enjoyed as an end in itself, and so the above comments are no more than rationalisations of this desire. Proof of this is clear from one interviewee’s belief that local community relations were good because ‘[p]eople around here weren’t aggressive. They agreed too well.’49 ‘Too’ in this context is a slip that suggests disappointment at agreement and thus an unconscious desire for pain and conflict. Failure and self-destruction are also unconsciously desired for the pleasure they bring. Dermot Seymour hints at this in his remark: ‘Protestants 175

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see sharing as losing. They are doomed, but it is almost as if they want to be doomed.’50 Leslie Hill notes that the Good Friday Agreement might work but ‘[o]nly if everyone remains pessimistic, funnily enough. If anyone was optimistic it would imply they were getting unfair advantage.’51 The desire for pessimism, rationalised here as its opposite, i.e. the guarantee of success, is in fact an unconscious desire for failure. Tied in with victimhood is the belief that Protestants are hard done by. This is expressed by several interviewees in terms of how the Protestant story is not told. This is an expression of paranoia that helps reproduce the unconscious dynamics of the conflict. Seamus Heaney’s ‘Whatever You Say, Say Nothing’ is not an expression of the fundamental Protestant suspicion about the act of expression as David Dunseith appears to imply it is, or even an indication of fear of reprisal as McKay thinks it is, but paranoia. This fear of Protestants that they cannot claim their Protestant identity publicly – ‘It has got that it is nearly an offence to say you are a Protestant or a loyalist’52 – is a rationalisation of their desire for victimhood. In this instance, Protestants echo Catholics and thereby unconsciously enjoy the status of victim they feel Catholics have stolen from them.53 What is also interesting here is the way commentators inadvertently mystify Protestant motivation by applying cultural explanations like Dunseith. Conflict resolution theory and practice in Northern Ireland has, as we have noted, been shaped by this type of rationalisation. The loyalist notion that they are hard done by is a form of dominance because the loyalist Slave uses victimhood as a means to dominate the unionist Master who is offered the gratification of violence and the pleasure of the position of the one supposed to know, while in return the Slave snatches jouissance from the Master who depends on the Slave for his defence. Protestant paranoia is also expressed in the fear of losing control. David Browne remarks: ‘The days when Big Paisley and them could bring this country to its knees are over. You could be sitting in a Protestant area and fifty yards down the road is a Catholic area and it is growing.’54 The perceived loss of Protestant control, even Protestant domination, is blamed on the infiltration of Catholics into Protestant society. Catholics have, in other words, stolen Protestant enjoyment, in this case, their security. In conclusion, whether Protestants desire victimhood to get off the hook or whatever is not important. What matters is that at the unconscious level what drives this desire is rivalry with the Catholic community for what the Protestant community believes is the Catholic source of enjoyment, which has been robbed from them. There is no point, therefore, in attempting to resolve the conflict by telling Protestants that pain does not necessarily bring solidarity, or that normality is anything but normal, or 176

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that they are not the underdogs. As Lacan acknowledges – and we noted elsewhere – telling the analysand that he/she is suffering from imaginary intentions simply arouses his/her aggression. Change is a matter of addressing the fantasy of enjoyment. It is not about bringing people to view the world your way, which is what conflict analysis is so often about. It is not about telling people they have got it wrong. Nothing will convince them of this. What matters is that people comprehend for themselves the nature of their fantasy. The nice Protestant McKay’s interviewees display various aspects of tolerance: they love peace; are respectable citizens; hate loyalist violence, and keep out of the dirty business of politics. Below, I argue that these are rationalisations. Many of the interviewees express shame over loyalist violence but as we saw in our examination of Lacanian theory, shame is not an indication of an acceptance of guilt, rather it is an indication of an excess of enjoyment. An examination of many of the interviews makes it clear that in spite of expressions of shame – particularly a trait of the ‘comfortable’ middle-class interviewees – unconscious pleasure is to be found in identifying with violence. For all Ellen’s moral indignation at Catholic suffering on Bloody Sunday, she mentions that Protestants saw Bloody Sunday ‘[l]ike a football score’ and then proceeds to say, ‘[b]ut I still haven’t got my head around it. I mean, I do feel if something is banned it shouldn’t go ahead.’55 Shame or disgust at how her community viewed Bloody Sunday is at odds with her desire to justify the suffering of Catholics. This contradiction indicates the presence of the unconscious pleasure she derives from the events she condemns. The problem for conflict is that shame simply serves to foster antagonism because in so far as the pleasure unconsciously derived from it is not recognised it reinforces division. ‘Comfortable’ interviewees say that while they disapprove of loyalist violence against Catholics they do not openly condemn it because they fear loyalist or fundamentalist retribution. However, Zˇizˇek’s reading of Lacanian analysis suggests that failure to condemn violence is identification with it. One interviewee explains that loyalist paramilitaries are placed beyond critique by the Protestant community because they are beyond respectability, and this is ‘allowed’ because Northern Ireland is a society in perpetual crisis. By constructing a self that is respectable and thus strictly to be seen in class terms, the Protestant community relies on the myth that the middle class is non-political, which as Zˇizˇek notes, is itself a political device that simply serves to prolong conflict. The interviewee’s use of the word ‘allowed’ here indicates, paradoxically, some kind of identification with the paramilitaries that the middle class is said to have ceded control over. 177

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When interviewees speak of the benefits of loyalist violence in terms of how it was the catalyst for bringing Sinn Fein to dialogue with the Social Democratic and Labour Party leading to the peace process, then we are closer to the unconscious pleasure people find in loyalist violence. Justifying violence does not in itself denote the presence of unconscious enjoyment but when this goes hand in hand with its condemnation then such enjoyment is operative. Paramilitaries themselves indulge in the myth of the uncontrolled, unsupervised paramilitary that they claim was created by mainstream unionist politicians as Billy Mitchell demonstrates in the following:56 ‘When you incite people to form armies and then walk away, you create a monster and the monster does what it wants,’57, 58 What this means is that loyalist paramilitaries do not want violence. They are nice. They go out of control because the politicians who created them took French leave. That this myth is a rationalisation is clear from a close analysis of his comments. He contradicts himself in his pursuit of self-exoneration. While he admits that loyalists do have to take responsibility for what they did, he says that paramilitaries were influenced by the doomsday ‘rhetoric’ of preachers and politicians, and he does not refute their claim that they were speaking in spiritual terms. Consequently he says: ‘But for us it was reality. We took them literally. It got out of control.’59 If the preachers and politicians were speaking in spiritual terms and he and his fellow paramilitaries accepted this, then if they took them literally about ‘the need to fight and the need to arm’, this literal interpretation surely would have led them to fight a spiritual battle. This indicates that the paramilitaries are in denial about their motivation and their responsibility for loyalist violence in spite of their belief that they do have to take responsibility. They unconsciously enjoy their violence. They continue to blame the Master for the ‘monstrous’ acts of paramilitaries and beatify themselves. Loyalists rationalise their violence, as the classic denial in the description of how a woman was attacked and two families put out of Glenfield when differences flared up between rival loyalist paramilitaries demonstrates and yet, in the words of the interviewee, the man who was not put out of his home was in the next breath put out of his home.60 The interviewee had forgotten his lie. This shows how the socio-ideological fantasy is constructed. The nice Protestant also reveals him/herself in talk of a lack of sectarianism. McKay notes that a 1990 study pointed out that both communities claimed they enjoyed good relations but tended to be in denial of the reality that their shared contact was minimal.61 She concludes that sectarianism is ‘the ghost at the middle-class table’. That denial of sectarianism occurs is clear from the following comment of one interviewee who sees herself as tolerant of Catholics though her utterance could also mean 178

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that this is an aspiration: ‘Here in Holywood we work hard at being tolerant – we would like [my italics] very much to be above all that [i.e. intolerance].’62 Tolerant is how middle-class people wish to see themselves, in contrast with their perception of loyalists. This is their ideal image. Ellen, another Holywood wife, is regularly surprised at her ‘old reflexes’ that lead her to cast her community in the role of the conciliator and of being betrayed. Her surprise indicates that such interpretations are not perceived as being a part of her ideal self. At the level of the ideal self she also wishes to believe that she is not angry with the Catholic community for continually taking from the Protestant community, that she does not have a strong political viewpoint and is not paranoid. Such denial is typical of people in conflict. Self-condemnation indicates unconscious pleasure. For her part, the author herself appears to accepts that ‘Holywood wives’ such as Ellen have gut reactions that are surprisingly extreme and remarks that these may sometimes be self-interested.63 The author’s surprise shows the difficulty facing conflict analysis: interviewer bias creeps in when one has no specific methodology to apply to materials. From the perspective of the ideal self, such surprising reactions are, besides, always self-interested. Lindy Clarke is also in denial about Protestant sectarianism. She does not believe that Northern Irish people hate each other but in the next breath contradicts herself as she comments that education has made her more tolerant of others, ‘maybe it’s if people are slightly more educated, you learn to accept people for what they are’.64 The contradiction here is that while she says there is no sectarianism in Northern Ireland, she is also implying that education has made her tolerant though not everyone has had the education and so not everyone is like her – in other words she unconsciously believes that sectarianism does exist in Northern Ireland. This rationalisation is indicative of the subject’s need to appear tolerant. It is typical of the type of rationalisation of sectarianism that McKay’s interviewees indulge in – particularly her middle-class interviewees. Denial of politicisation among the middle class contributes to the reproduction of the conflict. At least one meaning in the following comment is that the interviewee believes that the fact that a Catholic was killed near her home is an example of her familiarity or intimacy with Catholics: I swore I wouldn’t be like that [i.e. bigoted] for my children. [. . .] There are a few Catholics on the estate. There was actually a Catholic man murdered just a couple of streets away from us here. I’ve a wee friend lives near me here and she’s a Catholic. I’ve known her twenty years and religion doesn’t come into it.65

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This reading is a rationalisation of the interviewee’s sectarianism. As Lacan explains, people say the opposite of what they mean. In the following quote the use of the verb ‘simmer’, where ‘sail’ might have been expected, would suggest that sectarianism is a permanent feature in community life in Northern Ireland, though the interviewee appears to be in denial of this: ‘In our village we just simmer along most of the time and people talk to each other and share shops, but then if something contentious happens, people go into their own wee camps.’66 From a reading of McKay it is clear that an important dimension of the Protestant self-interpretation is respectability – another version of being nice. McKay comments that while interviewees had many definitions of respectability in their speech it fundamentally meant to be virtuous. One interviewee remarks that the Orangemen at Drumcree needed to be careful not to appear unlawful and not to draw the RUC into conflict with them because ‘you can’t have the police fighting with the Protestants’.67 As we have seen, Zˇizˇek argues that appearances reproduce domination. Appearances of respectability are also crucial in the maintenance of cohesion. It would not do to for Protestants to appear divided to Catholics. In so far as appearances perpetuate the unconscious belief that Protestants are loyal citizens who are submissive to authority, they reproduce domination because Protestant submission is used to justify Protestant domination of the rebellious Catholic Other. Appearances also sustain the illusion that unionists are the sole guardians of democracy, and imply a need to be tough with its enemies. The appearances associated with adherence to the law also enable Protestants to rationalise loyalist violence.68 Terrorists, as the following quote from Ian Paisley regarding Drumcree demonstrates, are Catholic, never Protestant: ‘It is time that terrorists realise that we as Protestants and law-abiding citizens will not stand for it. There will be a price to be paid.’69 In some cases McKay’s Protestant interviewees also present themselves as being non-political. The author remarks that one of the typical comments of middle-class Protestants all over the North was ‘Oh, we don’t bother about politics’, and yet – in her estimation – they turn out to have ‘strong’ views. Interviewees make a number of appeals to the trans-ideological kernel of loyalist ideology whereby subjects place distance between themselves and ideology through the ideological practice of disidentification. They appeal to something other than the political, which holds the fantasy of ideology together, thus reproducing the conditions for the conflict. In an effort to justify the Orange protest at Drumcree, John, an Orangeman, notes: ‘There’s good-living people backing the Orangemen on this. Even the lady folk is in on this.’70 Appeals here to the apparently non-political nature of subjects (including their gender) is meant to demonstrate the validity of 180

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the Orange cause. In the case of John’s remark what he says actually means the opposite of what he intends. At the very least the implication is that normally only ‘bad-living’ people back the Orange Order, or that only such kind of people belong to the Orange Order. There are numerous examples of appeals to the non-political nature of Protestants. Alan Brooke, grandson of Lord Brookeborough, first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, joined the UDR and describes himself as ‘not really political’. Part of his motivation for joining the UDR was that ‘[o]n the roads one would be stopping and meeting friends from both sides of the community’.71 He presents a non-political image of self with an appeal to the inclusiveness and friendliness of UDR patrols, though ‘stopping’ friends suggests a lack of friendliness. James Simpson remarks how in the UUP ‘it is fashionable to say, “We aren’t involved in politics.” These people actually vote for the party because it has no politics.’72 Juliet Turner suggests that the reason why some people she came across burning a car in her community were violent was because they had ‘never done a day’s work in their lives’, because they shared a ‘frighteningly blank ignorance’ and because they are people ‘who have never been encouraged to think for themselves – they’ve just imbibed the whole thing’.73 Her beliefs are an unconscious attempt to place distance between the use of violence and the ideological. So, for her, those who use violence are ordinary people with personal moral defects. And yet, though ignorant, she tells us they have a particular angle on the ‘whole thing’. Such depoliticising helps sustain antagonism. The subject supposed to know has the right way of things. This thinking is common in conflict resolution approaches. The author agrees with Seymour’s idea74 that the Orangemen are like men who are ‘headless’ i.e. incapable of thinking. This opinion is not unlike Juliet Turner’s comment that people use violence because they are ‘frighteningly ignorant’, quoted above. But this too is really an appeal to the trans-ideological that actually acts as a support to loyalist ideology. It diminishes personal and political responsibility and serves as justification for violence. A North Belfast vigilante leader uses an appeal to social circumstances to disidentify with political violence: loyalists never sat down and decided to ‘stiff taigs’,75 it just happened from the ground up. The myth here is that loyalist ideology developed spontaneously and at the level of the individual out of a desire to address an immediate need. It was a natural response, not a political decision. Many of the interviewees refer to the withdrawal of the unionist middle classes from politics. This withdrawal is imagined. The ‘strong’ views of McKay’s middle-class interviewees and their trans-ideological identification prove this.76 The reference in the following quote to imaginary disenfranchisement is an expression of the trans-ideological kernel of ideology. The 181

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subject feels she is robbed of her political identity, but is not. She speaks of how she belongs in Northern Ireland and yet, she proceeds to reveal, does not really belong in Northern Ireland. This contradiction is immediately followed by ‘I identify very much with the poet John Hewitt. I feel slightly disenfranchised. I do charity work. This is my justification. Every Holywood wife has to have her charity.’77 The charity work is another such reference to the trans-ideological kernel of ideology. The wives of Holywood want to see themselves as non-political. McKay refers to Hewitt’s ‘The Coasters’ as providing an example of this phenomenon. Hewitt writes of how some people coast along in troubled Ulster, supporting ‘worthy causes’, living ‘a good and useful life’ and being moved by their own broadmindedness when they looked at themselves in the mirror. They imagine themselves as being above it all, but in reality they are not. Those who disidentify with ideology in fact contribute to the conflict by this ideological disidentification. The Catholic Other In the above section I examined some of the rationalisations in the selfperception of the Protestant self-interpretation. Below, again referring to McKay, I consider the function of the Catholic Other in this self-interpretation. An examination of the Protestant perception of the Catholic Other allows us to better understand how the Protestant social-ideological fantasy operates. I begin by examining expressions of the Protestant ‘love’ of the Catholic Other and then explore Protestant hatred of this Other. In the former, love of the Catholic Other is an expression of the unconscious desire to have Catholic jouissance. It serves to disguise Protestant lack, aggression and hatred of Catholics of which subjects remain in denial. In the case of conscious hatred of the Catholic Other, what this signifies unconsciously is hatred of the self because the Other’s enjoyment is perceived as blocking one’s own enjoyment. Any attempt at conflict resolution must confront these key aspects of the socio-ideological fantasy. LOVE OF THE CATHOLIC OTHER

Many Protestant interviewees typically sing the praises of Catholics and present Protestants as problematic. Working-class Protestants are described as duller, shyer, more reserved and more anxious than Catholics who are perceived as being more fun-loving, vibrant, less reserved, open to asking for help and keen to give it. Juliet Turner believes that looking back on her youth in Northern Ireland: ‘It always seemed that Catholics were having a better time [than Protestants]. They had better songs, and they drank more.’78 In other words, Catholics had what Protestants wanted and what 182

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Protestants were lacking. The unconscious dynamic in the beatification of Catholics and demonisation of Protestants feeds the Protestant unconscious belief that Catholics are a threat to Protestant enjoyment. This leads to aggression. It also feeds into paranoia. Catholics are viewed as more politically and ideologically progressive than Protestants.79 Lynne Sheridan remarks that she is full of admiration for the republican ethos partly because ‘they have a goal’ whereas the loyalists have been reactionary. Mervyn Long is also full of admiration for Sinn Fein: ‘Republicanism is one tree, with one set of rules. Unionism is too many branches.’80 Thus, republicans are understood to have it together, whereas loyalists lack a sense of purpose or direction. Another interviewee remarks that Catholics are running forward but Protestants are running backwards. And if Protestants are so fragmented and so lost compared to Protestants it is because they have given concession after concession to the Catholic community, as another interviewee put it. In other words, Catholics have stolen Protestant enjoyment. Beatifying Catholics in this way simply serves to recreate fear of them. Billy Mitchell also sees the Catholic community as being more engaged in community development than the Protestant community: loyalists chose to be looked after by mainstream unionists rather than look after their own community interests. Loyalists are presented by him as ‘the social manifestation of your [i.e. unionists’] bigotry’.81 This perceived dependency in relation to mainstream unionists has an obscene supplement in that it is based on the belief that the Master was meant to look after loyalist interests to the exclusion of nationalists. This is the jouissance that loyalists in their position as Slave stood to gain from their unionist Master. Loyalist dependency is, therefore, a rationalisation of Protestant lack. McKay paraphrases a speech by David Ervine according to which she says he was of the opinion that the way Protestants work was to demand whereas because nationalists were strategists they would be the ones with the top jobs in twenty years’ time. The author notes that this point could have been made by the DUP – in other words that it was somehow antiCatholic and paranoid – but that Ervine’s case was actually different from the DUP’s because Ervine proceeded to point out how Catholics are better than Protestants in certain ways. She quotes him as saying: They [i.e. Catholics] are better than us. They are cleverer. They make an effort. They have someone who looks after them . . . . Nationalist areas have cultural centres, heritage centres . . . they have worked feverishly for their culture. Now, you look at the [Orangmen’s] Field at Edenderry. There isn’t even a toilet. For thirty-nine years I have walked past a big mausoleum of an Orange hall. What have we done for our culture?82

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Lacanian theory alerts us to the fact that such comparisons unconsciously sustain domination. The author’s differentiation between Ervine and the DUP is unfounded. Ervine’s praise of Catholics has the appearance of political ecumenism but unconsciously shares some of the dynamic of what the author views as apocalyptic Paisleyism where Catholics are said to outbreed Protestants, or as one Protestant put it when describing the Catholic district of Andersonstown, ‘the roads are black with the citizens of the future’.83 This is new loyalism, but the voice is old hat. The conceptual Catholic that certain strains of new loyalism invent is a consummate strategist who, by implication, will outdo Protestants in the job front in twenty years’ time, an innately intelligent individual – proof of which Ervine claims is clear from a comparison of the eleven-plus exam results for the Falls Road and loyalist working-class areas. Who would not be resentful of such a person? What is also interesting is that the author does not understand the unconscious intention here. Praising ‘the other side’ is not all that it seems. No surprise, then, when Belfast erupts into street violence post-Good Friday Agreement. Catholics are also perceived to be politically and ideologically cohesive, unlike Protestants. Billy Mitchell, an ex-loyalist paramilitary, remarks that while once Protestant ‘riff-raff’ from working-class parts of Belfast get ‘a wee bit respectable’ they distance themselves from their past, in the nationalist community people give something back, there is more solidarity. Again, the Catholic community is idealised and the problem appears not to be that according to his perception Protestants give nothing back, but that Catholics are perceived as giving something back. The sense is that Catholics are outperforming the Protestant community, but of course perceived Catholic solidarity reinforces Protestant paranoia. On the level of ideology, for Mitchell, loyalists did not have a coherent ideology during the conflict, unlike republican paramilitaries: ‘We knew what we were against, but we didn’t know what we were for.’84 However, this too is a self-serving illusion, and it is one that is based around the perception that Catholics know what they are about or know what they want. What loyalists were for is, if we follow his proposition logically, what they were against, yet the belief that they were reactive or incoherent is used to justify their killing of Catholics even when this involved, as Mitchell himself acknowledges, rationalisation. The belief that there was no coherent ideology behind loyalists and that there was such an ideology among republicans is a convenient cover for the unconscious reproduction of ideology that allows Mitchell to imply that the loyalist notion of a target being ‘an enemy of Ulster. A thing’85 was not a rationalisation. This is an example of disidentification. 184

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Catholics are also perceived as being culturally superior. ‘Middle-of the road’ Protestants are presented by one interviewee as having an identity crisis, as feeling a gaping hole in their identity because they have nothing to be proud of whereas Catholics are said to have a marvellous culture of music and dancing. It then transpires that the interviewee believes Protestants do not have a culture to be proud of because Catholics have denied Protestants this.86 From an analytic perspective, this is a clear case of the belief that the other side have stolen our pleasure. Blair notes some Protestants are keen to have an Ulster Scots language because Catholics have Gaelic. Tellingly, McKay calls this a type of ‘loyalist nationalism’.87 The desire of one side to be like the other is an unconscious expression of the desire to dominate the Other. It is a useful rationalisation in post-conflict Northern Ireland because it normally has the veneer of tolerance and ecumenism. Catholics are said to be more focused and confident than Protestants: they know what they want.88 They are also said to be more vulnerable.89 The tendency to idealise Catholics’ perceived non-political features is of course a rationalisation because by alluding to the pre-ideological dimension of everyday experience people simply avoid looking at the deadlock that they unconsciously experience in themselves. David Browne criticises loyalist paramilitaries in North Belfast who compare unfavourably with the IRA. He claims loyalists are into extortion and that ‘the Provos’ have never been as ‘bad as our side’ in this regard because loyalists have not the brains republicans have. This comment is yet another example of how Protestants do sections of their community down, thus keeping the Catholic or republican threat alive. The belief system that many of the interviewees share and that places Catholics above Protestants is a rationalisation of the desire to dominate Catholics. HATRED OF THE CATHOLIC OTHER

McKay claims an integral link exists today between hatred of Catholics and Protestantism. She states in the epilogue: ‘It is as if the bigots had captured Protestantism, and “proud to be a Prod” was a status only available to those whose pride meant putting Catholics down.’90 What is significant in expressions of hatred is not their imagined status but their unconscious dynamic in the conflict. This dynamic is the same in hatred of Catholics as that which operates in Protestant appreciation of Catholics. Both are rationalisations of lack. Negative identifications with Catholics make Protestants whole – moral, loyal, superior, cohesive, victim – and thus bring the satisfaction of self-idealisation.91 Below I consider various typical expressions of hatred of Catholics. 185

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Some interviewees are obsessed with what Catholics have. For example, Protestants are urged by some Orangemen to claim state benefits, which Catholics, the disloyal enemies of the Union, are said to do. They want what Catholics have. Emily from Portadown is full of disgust about Catholics: What do these people want? They’ve all the pubs in the town only [i.e. except] two, all the bookies, and they’re working as doctors and solicitors and I don’t know what else. There’s a lot of them in Wellworth’s and the post office. What more do they want? I know Protestant boys and girls have got good education and they’re working in that carpet factory. What more do the Catholics want?92

Emily’s remarks reveal that she is preoccupied with what it is Catholics want – an expression of paranoia and the fear of being robbed. Unconsciously Protestants like Emily believe that Catholics have stolen what they enjoy from Protestants. Of course, what they enjoy is excessive from the Protestant perspective. Such rivalry brings helps drive the conflict. One interviewee points out that Protestants are brought up to believe Catholics are inclined to criminality, whereas when Protestants break the law they do so for good reason. ‘Terrorists’ are by definition Catholics while ‘innocent victims’ of violence are by definition Protestants. In this way the experience of Catholics is written out of the loyalist script and Protestant behaviour and identity are idealised. Catholics are the ‘bad object’ that cause Protestants’ downfall. As such, this perception is the guarantee of loyalist cohesion – Catholics are purely bad, Protestants purely good. In all of this, Protestants create oppositional differences with Catholics, differences that are built on rationalisations of Protestant behaviour and identity. Catholics, Willie Frazer maintains, ‘never miss a trick. That’s the difference between Protestants and Catholics. If you drive past a Catholic, he’ll always look to see who is in the car. In a Protestant area, no one passes any remarks.’93 As this remark indicates, the desire to negatively stereotype the Other, itself a desire to control or dominate the Other, is strong. Lorraine meets Catholics in a restaurant whom she claims called Billy Wright a murderer and boasted of all they owned. She referred to them as ‘[j]umped-up taigs’, revealing her jealousy and indignation at wealthy Catholics. She presents Catholics as fly or cunning, so much so that Protestants could not be up to them. Jealousy is a typical response to Catholics – Catholics get everything, Protestants get nothing or Catholics are said to get it easy, Protestants get it hard, and Catholics are lazy and fat. Such paranoia is a rationalisation of the subject’s aggression. Catholics are also seen by some as damned and in error. They need to become Protestants – not unlike the way some Catholics believe that Protestants have to wake up and recognise that they are really Irish. The notion that Catholics are not to be trusted is a rationalisation of the Protestant desire not to trust Catholics. 186

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William Coulter believes a comparison of Catholics and Protestants in terms of hardship is akin to comparing like with like: ‘Catholics make out they were badly off . . . the Roman Catholics were no worse off than the Protestant working class. Anything the Protestants got, they worked for. Not like the so-called underprivileged.’94 So, Catholics and Protestants suffered equally. This is an attempt to minimise the suffering of the Other (the ‘so-called underprivileged’ referring to Catholics) because the Other is thought to enjoy their suffering. The desire to equate the suffering on both sides is a tack that is common to some strands of conflict resolution. This is an appeal to the trans-ideological kernel of social fantasy whereby the conflict is depoliticised. The claim that Protestant tears are like Catholic tears (or the inverse) is typical of this approach. The political is minimised. This only serves to prolong conflict. Moreover, claiming that Protestants and Catholics suffered equally and then noting that Catholics are lazy and dishonest because they got benefits without ‘a day’s work’ (implying Protestants laboured or suffered more) is typical of the contradictions that inform ideological fantasy and that point to rivalry over jouissance. Like shame, the construction of plots and conspiracies also points to rivalry over jouissance or unconscious pleasure. The notion that Catholics deserve their suffering or have not suffered enough or at all is typical of this genre. One woman’s belief that nobody was shot in Derry on Bloody Sunday and that the bodies of the dead were those of IRA men taken from deep freezes having been killed previously is a good example of this.95 CONCLUSION

What is significant in this examination of Protestants’ views of Catholics is that much of what Protestants criticise in Catholics, particularly that which Catholics are said to enjoy, and Protestants publicly prohibit, forms the obscene underbelly of Protestant identity and the Protestant or unionist power base. This concurs with analytic theory. While many of McKay’s interviewees are critical of Catholic disloyalty and disobedience, it could be argued that they unconsciously enjoy the transgression of disloyalty – which itself is rationalised as loyalty. Catholics are condemned for revelling in victim status but all the indications are that Protestants themselves unconsciously enjoy victimhood. While they complain about how Catholics are controlled by the Roman Catholic Church, how they are controlling, and how they belong to an uncritical mass of the ‘pan-nationalist front’ type, Protestants themselves unconsciously enjoy control. They punish disloyalty and identification with Catholics, reproach openness, and have authoritarian paramilitary fiefdoms. So, what Protestants publicly disavow and object to in Catholics actually forms the support for the unionist or Protestant power edifice. And the more something is prohibited, the more 187

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it is unconsciously enjoyed. To be a Protestant to some extent means to unconsciously tap into disloyalty for one’s own ends, to enjoy control, to benefit from violence and revel in victim status. I consider the unconscious attraction to disloyalty below.

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Disloyalty McKay highlights the role of the ‘Lundy’ or traitor in loyalist narrative. Protestants celebrate and commemorate the Siege of Derry bi-annually with an Apprentice Boys march in Derry. They burn an effigy of the officer, Lundy, who was accused of capitulating to the Catholic forces that fought on behalf of King James II. According to McKay, for the participants at the march, the burning of Lundy’s effigy is a symbol of loyalist triumph, for in spite of Lundy’s recommendation to negotiate with the enemy, his men held out until William’s forces arrived to relieve them. It is also a warning to traitors. It is a conscious attempt to distance themselves from disloyalty. McKay notes how in recent times loyalists have murdered men they have perceived to be disloyal, including RUC men and a loyalist prisoner at the Maze. She claims that it is easy to become a ‘Lundy’ because Protestants are unforgiving to those who were ‘disloyal’. A reading of the unconscious dynamics at play in the Apprentice Boys celebration brings further insight into loyalist identity. In the hoisted Lundy, one could argue in the light of analytic theory that while Protestants condemn disloyalty they unconsciously ‘celebrate’ their contemporary and historical lack of cohesion, divisions, the disloyalty in their community, the inherent weakness in their ranks, their trauma, their failure. It is more than ‘ the resolution of a crisis of conscience’, as A. T. Q. Stewart calls it.96 It is the unconscious enjoyment of doubts and anxieties, confusion and fragmentation, and a scapegoat must be found, as Stewart remarks, and the Catholic community is the contemporary version of this scapegoat. Lundy’s effigy is thus the externalisation of the unconscious anxieties that Protestants experience around their perceived sense of weakness and division. Their reliving of the events of the Siege of Derry is an unconscious expression of the enjoyment they find in the threat to Protestant unity, for this threat is what produces excitement for them. The burning of Lundy plays out the unconscious paranoia and feeds into their fears of an apocalypse. There is an imagined certainty in the perpetuating of their uncertainty. McKay concludes that the reaping of bitter harvests was a Protestant preoccupation and that they had a liking for a ‘fatalism that revels in predicting the reaping of whirlwinds’.97 Psychoanalysis argues that there is an unconscious explanation for such revelling. 188

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The loyalist obsession with enjoyment involves a fear that others will steal what is theirs, what it is Protestants enjoy – their imagined unity, their Protestant heritage, their successes, identity, territory, culture, etc. This fear, too, even of insiders, is what brings unconscious pleasure and also serves as that which in part binds Protestants together. They enjoy the threat of destruction that they see the Catholic Other as embodying. Paradoxically then the Catholic Other is that through which Protestants find enjoyment. The threat of Catholic revolt, the apocalypse, is what binds Protestants together. The bad Catholic externalises this threat. And whatever it is that Catholics are thought to enjoy, Protestants want. The ‘bad’ Catholic Other is accompanied by the beatific side of fantasy, the imagined unity of the Protestant people, the ‘Protestant state for a Protestant people’, a utopia in which Catholics are called upon to, paradoxically, do the honourable thing and become Protestants, and where the stereotype of the respectable, upright, decent and hard-working Protestant persists. Protestants unconsciously fantasise (and hate) the Other’s enjoyment, in this case betrayal and disloyalty, which is what is understood to unite Catholics in a common political and cultural vision. They attribute excessive enjoyment to Catholics based on Catholic disloyalty. (Even Roman Catholicism is viewed as binding people together in a form of disloyalty to the truth.) In this way Northern Protestants enjoy the repressed Lundy. Thus, disloyalty threatens loyalist ideology because it is symptomatic of fragmentation, but it is also what legitimates it because it is what Catholics appear to enjoy and the fantasy of the Other’s enjoyment binds a community together. It is the object of Protestant hatred and yet also the unconscious object of desire, that which makes loyalty paramount and the loyalist, indeed Protestant identity, valid. Thus in their public discourse Northern Protestants disavow disloyalty but unconsciously find their strength in it. An unconscious attraction to disloyalty then is one of the unwritten rules of loyalism. It is that which maintains the sense of Catholic threat that serves as the power base for loyalism and unionism. The notion of a ‘Protestant state for a Protestant people’ effectively permanently rules in disloyalty to the Protestant narrative, and disloyalty is projected onto Catholics who are seen to embody this.98 References to the people of Ulster etc. that fail to acknowledge the Catholic community simply serve to make the tiniest transgression from the fold huge. If identifying positively with Catholics is the ultimate betrayal or disloyalty and is prohibited, the ultimate enjoyment is also this positive identification, for as Lacanian psychoanalytic theory demonstrates, people are unconsciously compelled to enjoy whatever is prohibited. The attraction to Catholics is repressed. It returns in the many comparisons that McKay’s interviewees made between Protestants and Catholics, which 189

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placed Catholics in a more favourable light than Protestants. These conscious identifications are themselves rationalisations of the paranoid sense of threat that Protestants feel in relation to Catholics precisely because Protestants are attracted to Catholics for what it appears to Protestants Catholics enjoy. Protestants are attracted to the forward-looking, tolerant, communitarian, purposeful, successful, self-confident Catholic – the ‘uninhibited’ Catholic they imagine in contrast to their experience of themselves as law-abiding, conforming, moral citizens. Catholics are everything that Protestants are not. Protestants feel the weight of loyalty. The uninhibited Catholic appears thus precisely because she/he is perceived as disloyal. The more traditional negative interpretation of Catholics as being subordinated by Rome, dependent, backward, etc., is being replaced by this new view which, as I pointed out earlier, still involves a rationalisation of Protestant sectarianism. The degree to which Protestants unconsciously enjoy disloyalty and deny it in themselves is proportionate to the ferocity of their violence as much towards Protestants who have been judged as treacherous for rejecting the lie upon which loyalism is based, namely that Catholics cause Protestant lack and are out to steal more from Protestants, as Catholics who are the enemy within. The more they are in denial of their unconscious attraction to disloyalty, the more violent they become. The ultimate transgression is for one to become a Catholic. Any positive Protestant identification with Catholics – such as living with Catholics, working in community development with Catholics – feeds the Protestant desire to exclude those who identify with Catholics in this way. They are all viewed as the empirical obstacle to Protestant satisfaction. If loyalty is about toeing the line, as McKay understands this, then disloyalty brings unconscious guilt. The author points out that ‘comfortable’ Protestants fear incurring the wrath of loyalists. She provides the example of an interviewee who asks her not to write down that she referred to Paisley’s followers as fundamentalists, and then after the author expresses support of this tag the interviewee accepts that it would be alright to print it. This switch in opinion is an indication that the real issue has more to do with unconscious guilt over being disloyal than with fear of others. This guilt is typically rationalised. This unconscious guilt explains why Protestant victims of loyalist violence are blamed for the pain inflicted upon them, thus avoiding any responsibility for violence in their own community. An RUC officer kicked to death by a group of loyalists is accused of being either disloyal to his wife or to the Protestant community because of being on duty at Drumcree.99 The RUC’s disloyalty is blamed for the deaths of Chrissey Quinn’s children in a petrol-bomb attack on their home 190

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in Ballymoney because it would not have happened if the police had not prevented Orangemen from marching at Drumcree. There is also an inference that Chrissey Quinn is disloyal (and thus that the death of her children is somehow justified) because she refused to come back to the area in which her home was. This is a rationalisation of unconscious Protestant guilt and anxiety at their own unconscious disloyalty. Such Protestants are not simply in denial of the motivation for loyalist violence as meted out to their own community members, i.e. people are punished because they are perceived as disloyal, as McKay suggests,100 they are also in denial of guilt over Protestant disloyalty. Some members of the Protestant community cannot face the reality that Protestant victims of Protestant violence are being punished for betraying their community. Betrayal involves a pain that they wish to repress. Betrayal is not in keeping with their self-image. Which is why another interviewee stresses that the RUC must not be seen to take on loyalists at Drumcree. The reality is, however, that each denial of betrayal reinforces loyalism’s raison d’être, the self-fulfilling prophecy of apocalypse, as McKay describes this, because each denial increases paranoia. This is a rationalisation of one’s identification with disloyalty. At the unconscious level Protestants identify with the traitor: they are the traitor. This is their unconscious experience of their fragmented self. Fear of one’s own community, as is to be found among McKay’s ‘comfortable’ interviewees, is the unconscious fear of being the Lundy or traitor but which enters consciousness as a fear of violent loyalist retribution. Their conscious loyalty is built on an unconscious disloyalty, their particular primordial lie. Being disloyal is the traumatic kernel that defines loyalism and around which Protestant identity coalesces. Protestant society requires that the individual sublimates their sense of disloyalty and their pleasure in this. ‘You mustn’t be disloyal’ is the voice they hear. They repress here an attraction to disloyalty in order to obtain a cohesive political identity. Betrayal is therefore a transgression that attracts them. It does it for them, which is why so many of the interviewees who initially refuse to be critical of aspects of their community actually go on to express the criticism. In this act they unconsciously enjoy the betrayal. In the following quote Malcolm provides a good example of enjoyment. Malcolm said of Billy Wright, the former Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) leader, and his ‘cohorts’ at Drumcree, ‘“Terrible people. Of course, you can say nothing about them. You’d be afraid”. He whispered one last word: “Vicious”’.101 Malcolm contradicts himself – you can say nothing, yet he says a lot. At the conscious level unconscious anxiety and its contingent enjoyment are rationalised in a variety of ways. Catholics are typically viewed as superior, as we have seen, and thus Protestants present themselves as 191

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tolerant of Catholics and as being full of admiration for Catholics. Protestant divisions and lack are almost always seen in opposition to imagined Catholic strength and cohesion, which is symptomatic of the fear of the Other that shapes the Protestant self. The unconscious anxiety and fragmentation is also rationalised as Protestant suffering: Protestants are the victims, discrimination in Northern Ireland is primarily against Protestants, Protestants are making all the concessions in the peace process etc. What this also covers up is their identification with violence against the Catholic community, the excitement with which certain interviewees speak of rioting or living on the edge, and their disappointment with peace and stability. Conflict is desirable. As McKay remarks, God’s chosen people, the ‘good’ Protestants, defend, while the evil republicans or Catholics attack and must be disarmed. This idealised view of the Protestant self as defender further consolidates Protestant identity. The IRA is evil because it is disloyal and thus its actions are unjustified. Loyalist violence is based on loyalty and is thus moral. What Protestants either beatify or vilify in Catholics is that which they themselves want at the level of the unconscious. Protestant references to the control of the Roman Catholic Church, Catholic unity and authoritarianism, Catholic solidarity, their sense of strategy and purpose, their sense of community, etc. – these are all things that Protestants experience as lacking in themselves. What they perceive in Catholics is an inverted form of Protestant disloyalty that they are in denial of. Catholics have excessive enjoyment in Protestant eyes. On a conscious level, in opposition to the authoritarianism of the Catholic Church, the sheep-like behaviour of Catholics, the conspiratorial nature of pan-nationalism, the gleaming monolithic machine of which McKay talks, etc., Protestants traditionally imagine themselves as independent, respectful of the individual and freedom of conscience, respectable, law-abiding, God-fearing, loyal etc., while on an unconscious level, the pride taken in these characteristics gives rise to anxiety reinforcing their envy of Catholic cohesion. These characteristics therefore also reinforce the disloyalty that Protestants unconsciously enjoy. Their loyal identity is rooted in its opposite – unconscious disloyalty. What they envy is the Catholic whom they perceive by definition as having transgressed the law. CONCLUSION

Conflict resolution theory is going nowhere so long as it fails to deal with the unconscious dynamics of conflict. McKay’s ‘comfortable’ interviewees basically regurgitate standard conflict resolution analyses to the conflict: prejudiced, ignorant, unlawful, immoral people are to blame for the conflict. Disloyalty is simply another reading of this. 192

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Kimbley Kimbley interviewed five loyalists active in local community affairs and regional development in July 2000. These comprised three men and two women. They all saw themselves as working class. In excerpts of the interviews, ‘A’ stands for the interviewer, while the interviewees are numbered 1–5. Kimbley notes that the loyalists he interviewed expressed rivalry and jealousy with Catholics over the ‘victim card’. He quotes interviewee 5 who claims that loyalist women are saying loyalists should bomb London as the IRA did: ‘What you actually have now are working class [loyalist] women who never had a political idea in their head saying, “What the loyalists should go and do now is bomb London” [because this strategy is perceived as having worked for nationalists] [laughter]’.102 Kimbley notes that the interviewee’s laughter indicates guilt because attacking Britain does not fit in with the loyalist self-image. I would go further and say that the laughter is an indication that loyalists unconsciously oppose Britain. Unconsciously, loyalists, no more than anyone else, are not who they say they are. Kimbley also remarks that the above claim that ordinary citizens are forced to consider the use of violence because of Britain’s alleged tendency to cave in to nationalists places loyalists in the Slave or victim position vis-à-vis Britain. The self-idealisation of innocence that is clear in the above reference to women who have never had a political idea in their head reinforces this sense of victimhood, providing unconscious pleasure. Kimbley also notes how the interviewees rival with Catholics over jouissance: Catholics are getting everything and Protestants, nothing. Interviewee 1 puts it in the following terms when speaking of the right of Orangemen to march at Drumcree: ‘No matter when you turn on the T.V., “Catholics are getting this”, “Catholics are getting that.” Now, do you see a couple of men [i.e. Orangemen] marching along with a flag to stop all this trouble, it’s a height of bloody nonsense’.103 The interviewee unconsciously believes that Catholics who oppose Orange marches are robbing them of their pleasure. Kimbley also notes how the interviewee idealises Orangemen to the point of claiming above that they are marching at Drumcree to stop the conflict. They are the victims here. Interviewee 2 also idealises Orangemen. She claims they have re-routed marches for the sake of Catholic residents through whose neighbourhoods they used to march whereas, as Kimbley remarks, the Parades Commission had ruled that the parades were unlawful and forced their re-routing. She is rationalising here as the dead-end demonstrates: ‘There’s nine parades 193

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in Portadown and the Orange Order re-routed seven of them to please the residents and to suit [dead-end], do you know what I mean, in the Portadown area and they won’t give up the Garvaghy Road march because it’s a 300 year old march, do you know what I mean?’104 The marching issue is about unconscious jouissance, i.e. Protestants believing that Catholics are robbing them of their pleasure. As Kimbley puts this, the main issue for loyalists is not so much loyalists doing badly but nationalists doing well. Interviewee 1 confirms this interpretation. The negation and re-take in the following show how the interviewee idealises himself, claiming he is not bigoted whereas the negation proves that he is, and how he is lying about how bad things are for Protestants in order to embellish the Catholic position which he is criticising: Wait ‘till I tell you, I’m not bigoted in no way [negation], I’ll talk to any Catholic or anything [pause] within reason, but [pause] it puts a salty taste in your mouth whenever you look around and see all the brand new houses built in Ardoyne [i.e. a Catholic area]. If you try to get houses built up here [re-take] I’m getting new houses now but it’s hard to get done, yet they’re [i.e. Catholics] getting new houses.105

One can deduce from this that loyalist alienation is about how well they perceive Catholics as doing. It is rooted in paranoia. The construction of Catholic pleasure by Protestants shows the unconscious pleasure to be found in communal rivalry. Interviewee 5 is also driven by rivalry over jouissance. She attributes the killing of thirteen civilians by British soldiers on Bloody Sunday to ‘a wee bit of inexperience’. The soldiers were doing their job, even if the loss of life was ‘horrible and diabolical’. Given the fact that a mob attacked the soldiers and gunshots were fired at them, she claims that the Saville Inquiry into the killings should be stopped. However, having basically condoned the behaviour of the soldiers it then slips out that she unconsciously believes that soldiers operate a shoot-to-kill policy. So, she in fact identifies with the civilians shot dead on Bloody Sunday but refuses to recognise this because of her unconscious hatred of Catholic enjoyment, which in this instance is the Saville Inquiry. Her comments taper off in confusion as the truth slips forth: ‘I feel this is the only country in the world, and I feel this very strongly, that the soldiers get done [i.e. charged] for doing their job [i.e. as on Bloody Sunday] which isn’t to go out to shoot to kill. God forgive me if you think that’s what I’m trying to explain, it’s not.’106 So, what drives her opinions and worldview is her unconscious rivalry over jouissance. Interviewee 3 says most people in the Republic of Ireland cannot be bothered with the problems in Northern Ireland and remain indifferent. However, some identify with the ‘Brits Out!’ position – a term referring to 194

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the withdrawal of British troops from Ireland. He takes offence at this term when used by a Southerner in conversation with him and describes his reaction as follows: ‘“I’m British, so you want me out of your country? I love my country.” You know, I [re-take], there’s no chance [dead-end]. That Brits Out thing, I just feel it’s fuckin’ [dead-end], it undermines [dead-end]. “Right, so you want me to leave my country. I was born here. I live here. I work here. I want to benefit my country and you want me to fuckin’ get out.”’107 The dead-ends show that he is constructing victimhood. He unconsciously desires it. The fact that he takes the ‘Brits Out’ position as a threat to loyalists or their culture also suggests that he unconsciously wishes to be the butt of the Southerner’s remark. Interviewee 3 idealises Catholic unity and thus remains in denial of the unconscious angst around fragmentation of the Protestant community: A: Do you think Catholics struggle with their identity? 3: No, not at all, not at all. A: Why’s that? 3: Because they’re all [pause], they’ve got one ideal which is the church. I mean it’s [pause] it’s just like, ‘Right, the church – I’m a Catholic.’ It doesn’t matter from what strain. There’s no strain. It’s just ‘I’m a Roman Catholic and that’s it.’ You can be a Roman Catholic from Cork, a Roman Catholic from west Belfast and you’ve still got one thing in common. A: How fundamental then is diversity in the Protestant Church? 3: I don’t think it undermines them in any way. I think if [pause] Protestants were to go to their churches [dead-end].108

Having stated that Catholics are happy with their identity because they are united, he then claims diversity does not undermine Protestant identity, but doubt creeps in as his utterance tapers off. Conclusion Redressing imbalances in justice will always be rationalised as loss or alienation by the other party in conflict resolution. People need to take responsibility for their fantasy of the Other’s jouissance that allows them to unconsciously enjoy paranoia, fear and the Slave position. They need to see that their idealisation of the Other is unconsciously pleasurable. The notion, for example, that Catholics get everything allows those who believe this to wallow in victimhood, freeing them from wrongdoing in the conflict and guaranteeing them a sense of moral superiority. For their part, illusions of tolerance or sympathy for the other side in conflict simply serve to cover up the truth about aggression, making change more difficult. 195

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The more Protestants acknowledge their inner incohesiveness, the less they will invest unconsciously in the Other, particularly in terms of rivalry over jouissance. The less Protestants indulge in the images of ‘the majority’, ‘the people of Ulster’ or simply ‘Ulster’, etc., the less threatening the threat ‘from within’ will be. The less they live out of the stereotype of the ethically upright Protestant, i.e. the character that is tied into the law par excellence, the less their repression will be. The more they recognise Catholic incohesion and indulge less in the idealisation of Catholics, the better. NOTES

1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

It is clear from the literature that Northern Protestants have suffered a great deal. McDonald and Cusack note how the unionist Stormont regime ‘misruled and discriminated against the Protestant working classes of Belfast’ such that ‘[i]n the Shankill, as late as 1960, 90 per cent of houses had no bath, inside toilet or hot water’ (Henry McDonald and Jim Cusack, UDA: Inside the Heart of Loyalist Terror (fully updated edition) (Dublin: Penguin Ireland, 2005), p. 9). The authors also list a number of fatal IRA attacks on Protestant civilians and pubs from mid- to late 1971 (ibid., pp. 8–9) and describe IRA attacks on Protestants in the border area as a ‘genocidal campaign’ (ibid., p. 113). Other atrocities against the Protestant community were the slaughter of Protestant civilians including ten Protestant workmen at Whitecross in 1976, eleven Protestants in Enniskillen on Remembrance Sunday 1987, eight men at Teebane in 1992, and nine Protestant civilians in a bomb at Frizzel’s fish shop on the Shankill Road on 23 October 1993. Hundreds of Protestant members of the security forces were also killed throughout the conflict, while feuds among Protestant paramilitaries also resulted in scores of deaths. Anthony Kimbley, ‘A Lacanian psychoanalytic approach to loyalism in Northern Ireland’, MA thesis, Department of Politics, University College Dublin, 2000. Susan McKay, Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 2000). Peter Shirlow and Mark McGovern (eds), Who are ‘the People’?: Unionism, Protestantism and Loyalism in Northern Ireland (London: Pluto Press, 1997). Ibid., p. xii. Ibid., p. xii. Ibid., p. xii. The authors’ own belief that historians’ ability to ‘influence a long-established and commonly held perception of the past is somewhat limited’ (ibid., p. 6) surely militates against the possibility that people will give up these claims. Ibid., p. 2. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid., p. 137. The UUP was all but wiped out in the May 2005 Westminster general election. Shirlow and McGovern, Who are ‘the People’?, p. 138. Jennifer Todd, ‘Two traditions in unionist political culture’, Irish Political Studies, 2, (1987), 1–26.

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20 This would mean that the results of a study of loyalist identity like the current one can be generalised to enable us to say something of the ideological identifications or structure of the Protestant community as a whole. 21 Bruce notes that loyalist violence is viewed by loyalists as a matter of retaliation even though ‘[t]he first explosions of the Troubles were set up by UPV and UVF men pretending to be the IRA’. There is no ‘inconsistency’ here according to Bruce (Steve Bruce, The Red Hand: Protestant Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 31) because for most of their history Ulster Protestants have felt threatened by Irish nationalists. From a Lacanian perspective, the presence of consistency is an indication of rationalisation. 22 Todd, ‘Two traditions in unionist political culture’, p. 6. 23 Ibid., p. 2. 24 Sarah Nelson, Ulster’s Uncertain Defenders: Protestant, Political, Paramilitary and Community Groups in the Northern Ireland Conflict (Belfast: Appletree, 1984), p. 12. 25 Ibid., p. 37. 26 Ibid., p. 70. 27 Ibid., pp. 91–3. 28 McKay, Northern Protestants, p. 368. 29 Ibid., p. 10. 30 Ibid., p. 366 31 Ibid., p. 11. 32 Bruce offers a different set of reasons for loyalist violence against Catholics, though, in my view, no more convincing: territoriality, working-class male culture, the belief that the Other is not human, anti-social tendencies and social reward (Bruce, The Red Hand, pp. 185–7). 33 McKay, Northern Protestants, p. 369. 34 Perhaps this hatred of the self in part explains why community development is so difficult for the Protestant community and why divisions among loyalists are so strong. 35 English notes that the psychopathological reading of the Northern Ireland conflict involves ‘implausible simplicity’ (Richard English, Armed Struggle, A History of the IRA (London: Macmillan, 2003), p. 338). 36 McKay, Northern Protestants, p. 336. Bruce puts this well: ‘The whole credo of unionism is a journey from Eden to hell.’ Things have got so bad that any innovation (or giving ground) is suspect (Bruce, The Red Hand, p. 243). 37 Bruce remarks that for loyalists to promote ‘a political position that had any support (no matter how qualified) on the Catholic side of the divide was to lay oneself open to the accusation of treason’ (Bruce, The Red Hand, p. 243). 38 McKay, Northern Protestants, p. 187. 39 McDonald and Cusack claim that the general unionist population is infected with ‘nihilism’ and ‘defeatism’ and unionists see themselves as ‘the new downtrodden people’ (Henry McDonald and Jim Cusack, UDA, p. 342). 40 McKay, Northern Protestants, p. 270. 41 Ibid., p. 142. 42 Ibid., p. 111. 43 See Kimbley ‘A Lacanian psychoanalytic approach to loyalism in Northern Ireland’, on how the reform of the RUC only became an issue for one interviewee when the latter understood that Catholics were making a fuss about it. 44 McKay, Northern Protestants, p. 153. 45 Ibid., p. 26. 46 Ibid., p. 365.

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47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

57 58

59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67

68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

77 78 79

80 81 82 83

Ibid., p. 365. See the reference to Chris McGimpsey. Ibid., p. 111. Ibid., p. 237. Ibid., p. 304. Ibid., p. 256. Ibid., p. 194. Catholics see themselves as the oppressed people, identifying with the blacks in South Africa etc. McKay, Northern Protestants, p. 66. Ibid., p. 22. In 1984, UDA leader, Andy Tyrie, blamed unionist liberals for loyalist violence, accusing them of making out that all Catholics were in the IRA (Henry McDonald and Jim Cusack, UDA, p. 83). McKay, Northern Protestants, p. 52. Paul Dixon argues in his paper presented at the Institute for Irish–British Studies at University College Dublin (23 March 2001) that unionism has continually relied on the support of loyalist violence throughout ‘the Troubles’. McKay, Northern Protestants, p. 54. Ibid., p. 102. Ibid., p. 199. Ibid., p. 21. Ibid., p. 25. Ibid., p. 38. Ibid., p. 86. Ibid., p. 265. Ibid., p. 44. This, as Bruce notes, would go against the self-image of loyalists who ‘compete with the security forces of the state for legitimacy’ (Bruce, The Red Hand, p. 173) and who see themselves as ‘decent law-abiding and reluctant “soldiers”’ (ibid., p. 277). Bruce remarks that ‘respectable’ members of the UDA and UVF are ‘well-meaning people motivated only by a spirit of patriotism and social responsibility’ (ibid., p. 273). McKay, Northern Protestants, p. 148. Ibid., p. 121. Ibid., p. 223. Ibid., p. 252. Ibid., p. 301. Ibid., p. 302. Ibid., p. 94. Bruce also notes that in the case of the UDA, ‘[t]aking out prominent republicans is the part of its operations . . . most easily tolerated by the unionist middle classes’ (Bruce, The Red Hand, p. 259). McKay, Northern Protestants, p. 24. Ibid., p. 300. Bruce gives the example of an ex-brigadier of the UDA who ‘enthusiastically offered the development of the IRA as a model’ to him (Bruce, The Red Hand, p. 266). Bruce also claims that republicans are intellectually brighter than loyalists (ibid., p. 281). McKay, Northern Protestants, p. 42. Ibid., p. 61. Ibid., p. 20. Ibid., p. 43.

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84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

92 93 94 95 96 97 98

99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108

Ibid., p. 54. Ibid., p. 54. Ibid., p. 23. Ibid., p. 249. Ibid., p. 344. Ibid., p. 349. Ibid., p. 368. McDonald and Cusack remark upon how Sinn Fein and IRA gain during the peace process ‘was magnified [by loyalists] and then dressed up to look like another milestone on the road to a United Ireland’ (Henry McDonald and Jim Cusack, UDA, p. 343). Loyalists wanted to see themselves as victims no matter what. McKay, Northern Protestants, p. 126. Ibid., p. 197. Ibid., p. 324. Ibid., p. 326. Ibid., p. 320. Ibid., p. 363. Thus there is no ‘irony’ involved in English’s claim that unionists, anxious about the threat of Catholic ‘disloyalists’ at the outbreak of ‘the Troubles’, actually reinforced disloyalty among Catholics by means of discriminatory practice (English, Armed Struggle, pp. 66–7). Catholic disloyalty is unconsciously desired as it maintains the threat. McKay, Northern Protestants, pp. 280–1. Ibid., p. 280. Ibid., p. 141. Kimbley, ‘A Lacanian psychoanalytic approach to loyalism in Northern Ireland’, p. 27. Ibid., p. 28. Ibid., p. 29. Ibid., p. 30. Ibid., p. 31. Ibid., p. 36. Ibid., p. 39.

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Conclusion

Introduction The preceding analysis demonstrates that the dynamics of the conflict in Northern Ireland are more than simply a matter of two ethnic groups suffering from constitutional and political insecurity that causes them to clash over their different national aspirations, McGarry and O’Leary’s view, or a struggle for national freedom, the republican view, or defence of the status quo, the loyalist view. The interpretation and self-interpretation of any group is complex: the formal articulation of their views is never the whole story.1 Ethno-national issues must be seen within the wider framework of the Symbolic, Imaginary and Real. The interplay of all three orders results in totalising socio-ideological fantasies based on self-idealisation and illusion that hide both communities’ unconscious desires from themselves and reproduce division and antagonism. An examination of the unconscious unearthed some of the rationalisations that these fantasies involve. People need to learn to better deal with these rationalisations that prolong conflict and, ultimately, to traverse the fundamental fantasy that plagues both communities, namely that of ‘Union’, be this ‘Union’ with the British mother country or ‘Union’ with the Irish mother country, both of which are believed to guarantee freedom from pain. The picture we have here is at odds with that of the general literature. McGarry and O’Leary write, as we have already noted, in relation to the two communities, that ‘[l]and, power, and recognition are their bloody issues’2 but these issues did not appear to be the burning issues for the interviewees. Nor were they issues for the first sixty years of the State of Northern Ireland. Instead, defence of one’s image and keeping on top of others are important as communities rival over jouissance. Power is an issue but this has more to do with power over others than a desire for political power. In this context the self-confidence of the Catholic community that 200

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Ruane and Todd mention says little about its anxiety, fear, aggression and neuroses,3 while the sense of alienation in the Protestant community says little about its relative power. Political power, economic prosperity and cultural recognition are not the necessary conditions for peace. Indeed, in many countries where huge segments of populations live in poverty there is peace. The successful management of conflict requires people to be aware of the consequences of denial for them and for others, and a constant effort to deal with this propensity for denial. Peace and war can both be built on illusions as both are sustained by rationalisations. When rationalisations predominate the likelihood of sustained violent conflict increases. State and sovereignty mean very little to people in terms of how they readily see themselves. What matters is the socio-ideological fantasy that leads people to dominate others of which the desire for victimhood is, paradoxically, one tool in that it enables one community to guilt-trip the other and at the same time gain international recognition for their cause. Hatred for the other community is generally repressed in this process. Religion is an issue for the interviewees,4 but they largely remain in denial of this.5 It is another expression of the ‘deep chasm’6 that is said to exist between the two communities around the issues of political and national identities.7 The present research has further revealed the intensity of this division.8 People are unconsciously obsessed with the Other’s jouissance. The protection and promotion of political, cultural and moral values are much less significant for the interviewees than the desire, often unconscious, to dominate the Other. My analysis demonstrates that the root of division and antagonism is to a significant degree the unconscious dynamics that underpin the division between the Catholic and Protestant communities, and to a lesser degree the division between the Catholic community and the British. The degree to which the interviewees rationalise, project, remain in denial and indulge in splitting is proof of this. Their worldview is paranoiac and contradictions are often two a penny as they try to rationalise their image of themselves and their community. In this process, the pain they inflict on others is repressed. Interviewees displayed ample signs of neuroses. They appear to be unconsciously happy with their woes, blame those in authority for their fate, side-step their responsibilities, are driven by ideals that inhibit satisfaction of desire, suffer from unconscious guilt and inadequacy and are bathed in certainty. In many ways the Catholic and Protestant community mirror each other. For conflict to be resolved, the rationalisations involved in the construction of communal identities need to be challenged. The unconscious attitudes, feelings and beliefs that sustain these need to be unearthed and then changes in behaviour must be sought.9 This can only be achieved if 201

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programmes to enable people to become aware of what motivates them at the unconscious level are implemented, particularly in the educational system. A Lacanian analysis of the unconscious in situations of conflict helps remove the cloak that communities unconsciously use to protect themselves. People need to speak, be heard and essentially hear themselves. Communities need to take on board what it is that comes into consciousness but that is disavowed, what they project onto others, their fears and rationalisations. In other words, their less positive aspects of their self-interpretation. They also need to take responsibility for the pain they inflict on others, the fictive aspects of their characters, their deceits and the pleasure they find in pain. For Lacan, ethics is a matter of pathological wrongs – the case where evil or transgressions are enjoyed at the expense of one’s neighbours. The challenge of psychoanalysis is to encourage Catholics and Protestants to redefine themselves in an attempt to free themselves from such neurotic behaviour. This is not a matter of replacing one fantasy with another, in other words, one identity with another, but of altering the fundamental socio-ideological fantasy of ‘Union’. Unless people become more and more aware of what it is they are in denial of in the context of the conflict and division in Northern Ireland, it is probable that change will take longer than might be reasonably expected. Should people fail to do this work, politicians pushing for peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland on the basis of the Good Friday Agreement might find themselves ditched by their constituencies who might feel that the Agreement has nothing to say to their fears, their ideals or their sense of rivalry and insecurity. Future methodology Researchers in the political sciences need to re-visit the domain of the spoken word, the locus of the desiring unconscious, rather than text materials. Researchers could be given workshops on the Lacanian framework so as to be in a position to analyse those aspects of socio-ideological fantasy that are the most interesting for the management of conflict, namely the things around which oppositional identities are formed. These include aggression/domination, self-hatred, fear/paranoia, anxiety, blame, dependence, shame, feelings/emotions, mistakes, inconsistencies, contradictions, rationalisations, fictions, idealisation, wilful ignorance and unconscious enjoyment. Measuring change would need to be something more than assessing the differences arising out of a comparative study of different subjects, which would indicate how attitudes or beliefs have changed or, more strictly speaking, diverged over time. Such a study would cause us to rely on external factors to explain differences, which would be to lend social 202

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conditions more value than they merit. Instead, internal subject change needs to be mapped over time. The same interviewees could be interviewed every so many years. The real problem with change is not so much mapping change but encouraging positive change. So the question is how can the results of such a research project be brought to bear on conflict management? One needs to develop a theoretically sound programme for social change and a practical way of implementing this. Having ascertained where people are stuck, one would need to develop workshops that enable others to identify the relevance of these areas to their lives with a view to encouraging them to move away from the pleasure of neuroses, replacing this with the pleasure to be found in mutual respect. Healthy management of neuroses can only be achieved if programmes to enable people to become aware of what motivates them at the unconscious level are implemented. Inter-community and intra-community contact would need to be encouraged and developed. Perhaps school-based programmes for change would need to be developed based on results of the research. People need to become more aware of their rationalisations. Differences that are oppositional can only be desensitised in this way. Through further academic research, further exploration of Lacanian theory, specialised training of small numbers of people from conflict communities who can in turn run workshops that permit large segments of the population in the conflict zone to explore their issues further in the light of this research, and with professional backup in place to deal with psychological fallout, it is possible that significant change can occur in perceptions of others and self and in relations with others. Social scientists and conflict resolution practitioners need to approach interview materials critically by reading slips of the tongue, broken words, silences, repetition, etc. One would need to interview two hundred or so people and analyse their slips of the tongue, jokes, etc. to see if these indicate the kind of areas that need to be examined in an effort to bring participants to a conflict to modify their desires. Trained interviewers should follow the analyst in refraining ‘from offering any kind of advice or trying to influence the patient in any particular direction’.10 There is no point in giving the subject a way out or offering them a different fantasy or acting as the subject supposed to know. The interviewer has to offer the patient the ‘pure mirror of an unruffled surface’11 in order to induce a controlled paranoia. As Schneiderman notes, Lacan eschewed the humanistic model of analysis based on ‘an atmosphere of communication leading to interpersonal and mutual understanding’.12 Lacan is also renowned for the short session, the idea being to disturb the analysand. By analogy, rather than giving participants to the conflict free rein to vent their feeling and 203

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opinions, interviewers should aim to provoke interviewees by being able to close an interview at any point. This approach is contrary to the current approach to conflict resolution that places the participants’ conscious presentation to some extent beyond criticism. Broadly speaking, an examination of interview material should show up a number of key areas, some of which I outline below. What does the Other demand of participants to the Northern Ireland conflict? Does the Other demand that they have to be Catholic or Protestant, unionist or nationalist, republican or loyalist? Is it that they must honour the dead who have fought for their cause? It is clear from the current work that many other demands are relevant, among them the demand to put on a brave face, remain loyal, say nothing, blame others, complain, or the demand for the subject to immerse oneself in folk memory, relive the past or put the past behind, see oneself as moral or innocent, pose as victim or underdog. Subjects are called to be ‘bitter’ or aggrieved, be nice or respectable, be non-political, remain cohesive, to revel in fear of attack, be peace-loving, appear lawful, be blameless, etc. There are calls for normality, civility and reconciliation. In Imaginary relations, the issues of perception of others, fantasy, and the construction of the self are likely to come to the fore. An examination of perception of others will involve filling out the nature of the ‘conceptual Other’ subjects have invented and establishing how they keep the threat of the Other alive. An examination of Imaginary relations will also need to make clear how subjects perceive others as having the power to deprive them of their goods and how this perception influences how subjects organise and perceive their own goods. It is also important to list the unconscious images subjects have of others and to ascertain how the subject’s perception of the Other’s desire affects its self-interpretation. Further questions might include whether subjects idealise as well as repel others – perhaps contradicting themselves in the process? Of whom do they have negative ideological constructs? When do they blame others for their situation? How do they attribute excessive power and pleasure, plots and conspiracies to others? How do they see in others what it is they lack in themselves? When do small differences become big issues and how are these determined by the attitudes of others? Whom do subjects try to control? On whom are they dependent? What are subjects’ paranoid constructions? How do subjects envy others’ jouissance and try to destroy it? What do they accuse others of having stolen (that which they have in fact never had)? What enjoyment do they fear others will steal from them? An examination of interviewee material would bring up several questions regarding fantasy. What are the subjects’ socio-ideological fantasies? What is the fantasmic frame of the conflict that subjects maintain and how 204

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does this help perpetuate the conflict? What ideological fantasies do subjects have that downplay the political? Are these non-political fantasies tied into their perception of the other community? Do they fantasise about other things? Do they idealise their lack of political involvement? How do they interpret politicisation? In what sense do they indulge in these ideological fantasies and rationalise their part in the conflict, seeing themselves as ordinary bystanders or as victims, or simply failing to see how their actions affect others? What small things sustain imaginary ideological identifications for subjects? What imaginary satisfactions do they indulge in? What unconscious images do subjects have of themselves? What ideological effects do these images have? How do people wish to appear? What appearances do they adhere to? How important is image to them? How do subjects mis-see their fragmentation? What illusions of totality do they have? In relation to their construction of self it is important to ask what the inconsistency or lack of cohesion in themselves is that people try to stitch up as they create their narrative. In what sense is the hatred of others a reflection of self-loathing? Are subjects preoccupied with the establishment of a fantasmic point, i.e. the point where they hope to explain where things all went wrong? What is the condition of their ideologies – in other words, what is it they repress in their narrative? What jokes reveal hidden discourses otherwise not touched upon by subjects? Where do they practice self-censorship? When do subjects avoid the truth on pathological grounds, as opposed to being factually or morally wrong? What instances exist of the unconscious expressed in externality? When do subjects claim ignorance in their defence? How do Catholics and Protestants view the gap between them differently and what traumatic antagonism causes them to do so? What are the important spectral apparitions that are the return of the thing? The key to Symbolic relations is to unearth the Symbolic dimension of the social-ideological fantasy. How does the unconscious underpin identification with cultural value or meaning, or ideological discourses? Which rationalisations enable subjects to hold together conflictive ideologies? Answering this will involve pinpointing what it is they beatify, i.e. their symbolic fiction, and what it is they find irritating or are envious of, i.e. their spectral apparition. How does fantasy support their narratives? Does it invert failures as triumphs? What lies do they accept for the Other? Do they idealise their leaders and their community and this way conceal shame? Or is this done through exhibitionism and jokes? What do their narratives try to neutralise? And if fantasy underpins narrative, it is important to establish what beliefs underpin fantasy. What is the transideological kernel of relevant ideologies, i.e. what it is subjects make appeals to as if to deny the hold of ideology on them? In the domain of desire, one 205

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needs to examine whether when subjects get what they want they turn disillusioned to something else or not. In their interaction with the Other one might ask for whose gaze subjects perform? In other words, whose wishes are they fulfilling or what voices do they hear, or who do they kill, live or die for? Connected to this is the matter of who the ‘subject supposed to know’ is for subjects. The goal of an examination of the Real dimension of relations is to determine how subjects handle their experience of pain, loss, lack, confusion, fear fragmentation, etc. An important aspect of the Real in the context of the social-ideological fantasy is the matter of domination. How do loyalist and republican ideologies reproduce, challenge or sustain social power and relations of domination via the unconscious? Answering this will in part involve establishing how subjects unwittingly enforce the powers of domination through their participation in its opposition, and deciding whether there is a form of domination that they accept. In relation to power, it is important to ascertain how subjects relate to power at the unconscious level and how they handle authority. Is there an obscene supplement of power at play for subjects that may be evident from confusion over the Master–Slave position? There is also the matter of where power is exercised and whether their control of (moral) goods has negative consequences for others. Researchers will also need to identify trauma. What trauma do subjects wish to forget and which therefore remains in the unconscious? Obvious oscillations or contradictions in their opinions will indicate the whereabouts of pain as will that which both threatens and legitimates their ideology. An examination of the Real will also reveal how subjects manipulate the needs and desires of individuals and how they court failure and seek suffering. Real relations will also help us understand what the subjects’ enjoyment is and the transgressions this involves. Shame serves as an indication of these. Questions include: where is there aggression resulting from blocked enjoyment? How does jouissance reveal the nodal ‘bone in the throat’ that defines an ideology? What are the self-blockages that subjects gain satisfaction from? What un-pleasure are they trying to hide? What pain, lack or trauma do they overlook as they snatch jouissance from the Master? What unwritten and unacknowledged rules and practices do they publicly disavow while all the while these are the ultimate support of their existing power edifice? Conclusion Lacanian analysis offers us important insights into the nature of conflict and how to manage it. In particular, Lacan’s stress on the following themes is important: 206

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• • •

rivalry over jouissance; idealisation and illusion; the emphasis on everyday interaction and the effect of others on the subject; the accessibility of the unconscious, which is structured like language; the notion of rivalry, strife and discord as the norm for human relations; the dynamics of the Master–Slave complex; the notion that people always say more than what they mean.

• • • •

Managing the conflict The management of the conflict is in large part the work of bringing people to achieve the following goals: • •

to recognise the fractured self that lies behind ideology; to face the deceits and operations of the ego (e.g. splitting, projections, rationalisations, etc.); to continually bring repressed desires to consciousness; to make connections between contradictions; to nurture a healthy respect for differences (in part by institutionalising this respect); to become aware of one’s desire to dominate and control; to identify where pain is enjoyed; to become aware of how one thwarts one’s own desire; to persuade people to take responsibility for their satisfaction.

• • • • • • •

It is clear that the application of a Lacanian method of analysis has great potential for informing the way we understand and study other interreligious and ethnic conflicts. It could be integrated with efficiency in peacebuilding processes and thus deserves to be developed in the art of conflict management. NOTES

1

2 3 4

Thus the ‘seamless identification of self and nation’, which English claims has been ‘a persistent part of the Irish republican story’ must be seen for what it is – an idealisation that serves ideology (Richard English, Armed Struggle: A History of the IRA (London: Macmillan, 2003), p. 4). John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1995), p. 355. Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd, The Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland: Power, Conflict and Emancipation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 198. This view confirms A. M. Gallagher’s belief that ‘Religion continues to provide a potent basis for social division in Northern Ireland’ (A. M. Gallagher, ‘Equality, Contact and Pluralism: Attitudes to Community Relations’, in Richard Breen, Paula Devine and

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Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict Gillian Robinson (eds), Social Attitudes in Northern Ireland: The Fourth Report 1994–1995 (Belfast: The Appletree Press Ltd, 1995), p. 30). 5 This conclusion is in keeping with the views of Mary Harris, The Catholic Church and the Foundation of the Northern State (Cork: Cork University Press, 1993), p. 16. Harris notes that sectarian rioting typically occurred in the 1920s and 1930s when religious factors arose as well as when political changes were imminent (ibid., p. 17). 6 See Frederick W. Boal, Margaret C. Keane and David N. Livingstone (eds), Them and Us? Attitudinal Variation Among Churchgoers in Belfast (Belfast: The Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University, Belfast, 1997), p. 169. The authors also rightly note that their survey demonstrates that ‘religion matters in Belfast and that the religious spaces that dot the urban landscape are of immense significance even though they remain largely terrae incognitae to the eye of much scholarly and political commentary’ (ibid., p. 172). 7 According to Maurice Hayes, sectarianism in Northern Ireland is not an exclusively working-class phenomenon. Ulster Protestants suffer from this in so far as they generally wish to live among ‘their own’ (Maurice Hayes, Minority Verdict (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1995), p. 37). Elsewhere he notes that middle-class professional and business people ‘are no less bigoted or obscurantist than those they purport to despise’ (ibid., p. 317) and that ‘[i]t is a mistake to think of Northern Ireland as a society where sectarianism and bigotry are found only in working-class areas. Division and prejudice permeate the whole society. Conflict is endemic’ (ibid., p. 318). 8 Boal, Keane and Livingstone note that in their survey of Catholic church-goers in Belfast four out of ten Catholics believe that ‘the Troubles’ are mainly caused by religion rather than politics. The implication would appear to be that they perceive Protestants and Protestantism to be at the root of the conflict. People who hold this opinion are said to be 10–15 per cent more likely to be unwilling to mix with Protestants than other Catholics are (Boal, Keane and Livingstone, Them and Us?, p. 64). This is an indication of Catholic bigotry among a more traditional section of the Catholic church-going community. 9 In this context, Richard English’s hope that ‘a more layered sense of identity will emerge as a flexible possibility’ (English, Armed Struggle, p. 374) whereby republicans and their opponents will see themselves as being both British and Irish is insufficient for a resolution of antagonisms and oppositions in Northern Ireland. 10 Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 13. 11 Ibid., p. 15. 12 Stuart Schneiderman, Jacques Lacan, the Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 60.

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APPENDIX

Slips of the tongue Below I list a number of different types of slips of the tongue that are of use in examining the interviews: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

a cut, e.g. ‘there was, there wasn’t’; a trace, e.g. where the text jumps in an effort to cover up material from the unconscious; a mistake, e.g. as when a person intends to use one word but inadvertently uses another without realising it; a hesitation, e.g. ‘eh’; a memory block, e.g. where a person cannot recall a word; a joke; a euphemism; a personal meaning, i.e. where a word or phrase is used in a sense other than the ordinary sense of the word; an obsessional repetition, e.g. ‘you know what I mean’; a silence, i.e. when the interviewee fails to finish a clause; a brief stop, e.g. between two words; a negation, e.g. ‘It’s not that I don’t like television’; a dead-end, i.e. where a clause is left incomplete and the speaker moves on to another subject; a repetition, e.g. of word or phrase; a verbal inability, e.g. ‘the, the, the, the, the, the methods’; a breakage, i.e. where a word is cut and only partly articulated; a metaphor; a re-take, i.e. where something is re-said with a slight, but significant change in meaning; an absence, i.e. where the linguistic structure indicates that something has been omitted; laughter.

All slips are marked in italics in brackets in the interview quotes.

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INDEX

Note: ‘n’ after a page reference indicates the number of a note on that page. aggression 3, 14, 24, 36, 160 see also jouissance; war Brits Catholic perception of 97, 111–15 Burton, J.W. 36–9 Catholic Other Protestant hatred of 185–7, 189 Protestant love of 163, 173, 182–5 change 4 Lacanian 42–5 psychoanalysis and 14, 64–5 socio-ideological conflict and 45–8, 160–1, 203 community 1–3, 63 Catholic 10n.13, 51–2, 65–8, 71–5 construction of 23–4 conflict 14, 16 explanation of 52–3, 62, 75–6 Northern Ireland 51–80 see also division conflict resolution 2–5, 94, 98–9, 117, 144–5, 153–7, 176–7, 195, 204–7 emancipatory approach to 63–5 multiculturalist approach to 39–41 perception in 32 transformation type 29, 34–5 Coulter, C. 159 culture 53, 58, 66 denial 82–3, 87, 91, 117–18n.3, 118n.7, 130, 141, 154, 191, 201 depoliticisation 21, 23, 128–35, 158, 167, 179–82, 184, 187 desire 2, 17–18, 73 disloyalty 188–92 division 33, 177 ego 9n.1, 15–16, 20, 37–8, 69, 79n.35, 80n.39, 93, 169, 185, 207n.1

ethics change and 45 Lacanian analysis and 4, 19, 25 ethno-nationalism 52–3, 58, 61 fantasy 6, 15, 17, 21–3, 43, 111–14, 168–9 Finlayson, A. 158–9 Francis, D. 35–6 Good Friday Agreement 1–2, 10n.3 Graham, B. 157–8 idealisation see also ego ideals innocence 135–9 liberation 139–40 republican 126 identity 17, 31, 32, 59, 69 loyalist 158, 162 Protestant 151, 159, 160–1, 166–7, 170–2 ideology 25, 63 disidentification and 21 jouissance and 22 ‘point de capiton’ and 22 Imaginary 14, 15–16 republican 86–125 interviewees 7 jouissance 22 aggression and 24, 110 Catholics and 107, 108, 115, 148n.24, 149n.30 change and 44, 154, 156 ethics and 25 loyalists and 162–4, 167 Protestants and 173–6, 178–9, 185, 187–9, 193 socio-ideological fantasy and 22–4 Kimbley, A. 193–5

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Lacanian psychoanalysis 13–22, 206–7 language 8, 17–18, 156 Lederach, J-P. 29–35 legitimacy conflict and 58–9 loyalists 151–99 Master 108, 116, 123n.42, 124n.51, 178 see also Master-Slave; Slave Master-Slave 16, 24, 98, 145–6n.6, 149n.30, 176, 183 McGarry, J. and O’ Leary, B. 52–62 McKay, S. 165–70 methodology 8, 10n.16, 70, 73 future 202–7 need for 11n.19, 79n.31 psychological 75 morality British 111–13 Catholic 120n.17, 130–5, 148n.21, 144 Protestant 95–9, 110–11 negation 19, 86–99, 194 Nelson, S. 161–5 non-violence 35 O Connor, F. 69–75 paranoia 14, 16, 110, 112, 125n.58, 174, 176 peace-building 29, 35, 36 in Northern Ireland 39–41 perception 71–2 political republicanism 142–3 prejudice 31 projection Catholic 99–113 nature of 16 Protestants Catholic perception of Protestant ethnic identity 99–106, 113–14 Catholic perception of Protestant morality 95–9, 110–11 Catholic perception of Protestant political identity 109–10 Catholic perception of Protestant religious identity 86–94 Catholic perception of Protestants 115–17

rationalisation 20, 60–1, 74, 105, 138–40, 143, 163, 165, 168, 177–82, 197n.21, 201 Real 15, 20–5 Protestant 196n.1 republican 81–5, 148–9n.29 reconciliation 30–1, 34 religion 53, 54–7, 86–94 republicans 86–150 rivalry 14, 92–4, 106–9, 121n.27, 121n.31, 121n.32, 122n.33, 130 Ruane, J. and Todd, J. 5, 62–9 see also Todd, J. sectarianism 93–4, 119n.14, 141–2, 155, 178–80, 190, 208n.7 self-interpretation Catholic 115–17 Protestant 170–2 critique of 172–82 republican 143–5 Shirlow, P. and McGovern, M. 151–7 Slave 32–3, 98–9, 116, 123n.41 speech 18, 65, 74 splitting 16, 113–15 Symbolic 14, 17–20 republican 126–50 Todd, J. 160–1 see also Ruane, J. and Todd, J. transgression 17, 23 truth 15 unconscious and 19 unconscious 17, 19, 27n.47 conflict resolution and 2–5, 60–2 victimhood 71, 104, 107, 116–17, 122n.34, 123n.47, 125n.62, 144, 150n.37, 175–6 violence 16 violent republicanism 126–8 legitimation of 128–30 morality of 130–5 war 33, 42 Zˇizˇek, S. 15, 17, 20–5, 48

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