‘Recognisability’, Collective Remembrance and Transitional Justice
Dr Micheàl Hearty currently lectures in the School of Applied Social and Policy Sciences. He completed a PhD at the Transitional Justice Institute at Ulster University in 2024.
m.hearty@ulster.ac.uk
This INCORE Blog is Based on elements of his PhD Thesis "How and why do we (not) collectively remember non-combatants in Northern Ireland?"
‘Recognisability’, Collective Remembrance & Transitional Justice
I arrived at the first finding of my PhD in a way unlikely to rival the folklore of Newton and his apple. My PhD examined the collective remembrance of those killed in the North of Ireland/Northern Ireland (NI) conflict who were neither state nor non-state armed actors. As repeatedly typing and reading “the collective remembrance of those killed who were neither state nor non-state armed actors” would quickly become tiresome, I reasoned a more suitable (and shorter) term was needed.
I identified three possibilities from the literature: “victim”, “civilian”,
and “non-combatant”. I discovered that each term was not without issues. An
inclusive definition of “victim”, for example, would encompass all
actors injured or killed whilst an exclusive definition would depend on a
subjective judgement of innocence and blamelessness. Although useful to
precisely outline the population under study, the term “civilian collective
remembrance” would prove problematic as armed actors can be depicted as
civilians within memorialisation; for instance, a mural and plaque to the New
Lodge Six does not distinguish the two IRA volunteers killed from the four
civilians.
Image: New Lodge Six Plaque and Mural: Image Supplied by CAIN https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/victims/memorials/static/photos/233.html
Lastly, there are issues applying a definition of “non-combatant” derived from International Humanitarian Law as the asymmetric nature of the NI conflict makes determining what constitutes “not taking a direct part in hostilities” extremely difficult.
With an incontestably suitable term unattainable, my task shifted to evaluating the limitations of each and accordingly selecting a preferred one. I settled on “non-combatant" for two reasons:
1. It establishes the parameters necessary for the study without a
subjective judgment on innocence and blamelessness
2. With its use largely confined to the legal realm, "non-combatant"
being devoid of any social meaning meant that armed actors were not depicted as
them within collective remembrance.
It was the
latter reason which proved the catalyst for my first finding; actors are memorialised
through social identities, not through abstract categories and definitions. Or
to draw on Judith Butler’s observation surrounding ‘grievability’[1], an
actor must be narratively framed as ‘recognisable’ to be ‘collectively rememberable’. This process requires memory-makers to
sift through an actor’s ‘resumé’[2] to
highlight aspects that make them recognisable to various communities of memory whilst
simultaneously encouraging the ‘unremembering’[3] of
the contradictory and problematic ways in which they could be alternatively
framed.
In the NI conflict, a range of social identities were used to make non‑combatants recognisable in public memory. These identities included age and family roles, ties to particular places, membership of local institutions, and, importantly, the identity of “victim”. This narrative framing was often layered and intersectional rather than singular or simple.
A good example comes from a
photographic exhibition by Relatives for Justice. In this It is Different
for Mothers exhibition, one woman is shown visually as a painter, framed as
a mother through the exhibition’s title, and described in the central panel as
both “forgotten” and a “contributor to our peace”. In a single display,
multiple identities are woven together to shape how she is remembered.
The need for people to be recognisable in
collective remembrance raises important questions for how stories are framed
within transitional justice. Different communities often highlight different
parts of a person’s life to support their own narratives. The example of Hugh
McCabe (the first British soldier killed in NI)[4], indicates
that the usability of a person’s story can shape whether they become
publicly memorialised at all. Competing groups can end up in quiet
“ownership struggles” over how that memory is presented.
Equally, depicting actors as “victims” furthers
transitional justice goals like acknowledgment and accountability but the failure
to recognise aspects beyond their victimhood risks perpetual ‘dehumanisation’ and
distills their collective remembrance down to the circumstances of their death[5].
Consequently, consideration must be afforded to the management of recognisability
in collective remembrance.
[1] Butler J (2010) Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? London:
Verso.
[2] Verdery K (1999) The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and
Post-Socialist Change. New York: Columbia University Press.
[3] Hyun-Lim J (2016) Victimhood. In: Corner P and Hyun-Lim J (eds) The
Palgrave Handbook of Mass Dictatorship. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, pp.
426–440.
[4] Hearty M & Hearty K (2024) Naming and Framing Victims:
Identity, ‘Usable’ Victimhood, and the Spectral Turn in Transitional Justice.
International Review of Victimology 30(1): 70-88.
[5] Robinson J (2018) Transitional Justice and the Politics of
Inscription: Memory, Space, and Narrative in Northern Ireland. Abingdon:
Routledge.
