‘“We’re getting the victory we fought for” we were told’: retrospective subjectivities in oral histories of Irish republicanism

This article draws upon twenty-two life-history interviews with Irish republican ex-combatants. Present-day republican fragmentation shapes retrospective subjective analysis. Oral histories today represent and reinforce imaginary binaries in the republican past, tapping into the politics of place an...

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Main Author: Hepworth, J
Format: Journal article
Language:English
Published: Oral History Society 2020
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author Hepworth, J
author_facet Hepworth, J
author_sort Hepworth, J
collection OXFORD
description This article draws upon twenty-two life-history interviews with Irish republican ex-combatants. Present-day republican fragmentation shapes retrospective subjective analysis. Oral histories today represent and reinforce imaginary binaries in the republican past, tapping into the politics of place and class as part of a broader discourse around the distribution of power within republicanism. Following linguist Mikhail Bakhtin’s conception of heteroglossia, these oral histories navigated republican leaders’ monological representations of republicanism and polyphonic micro-dynamics through the heterogeneous movement. Interrogating how interviews represented what Alessandro Portelli termed ‘the past in the present’, this article examines representations of milieux and power dynamics in oral histories which variously collapse and complicate the internal dynamics of Irish republicanism.
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spelling oxford-uuid:80f7bc8c-1133-42b5-8bbd-0fc46b8c9a7a2022-05-13T10:36:57Z‘“We’re getting the victory we fought for” we were told’: retrospective subjectivities in oral histories of Irish republicanismJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:80f7bc8c-1133-42b5-8bbd-0fc46b8c9a7aEnglishSymplectic ElementsOral History Society2020Hepworth, JThis article draws upon twenty-two life-history interviews with Irish republican ex-combatants. Present-day republican fragmentation shapes retrospective subjective analysis. Oral histories today represent and reinforce imaginary binaries in the republican past, tapping into the politics of place and class as part of a broader discourse around the distribution of power within republicanism. Following linguist Mikhail Bakhtin’s conception of heteroglossia, these oral histories navigated republican leaders’ monological representations of republicanism and polyphonic micro-dynamics through the heterogeneous movement. Interrogating how interviews represented what Alessandro Portelli termed ‘the past in the present’, this article examines representations of milieux and power dynamics in oral histories which variously collapse and complicate the internal dynamics of Irish republicanism.
spellingShingle Hepworth, J
‘“We’re getting the victory we fought for” we were told’: retrospective subjectivities in oral histories of Irish republicanism
title ‘“We’re getting the victory we fought for” we were told’: retrospective subjectivities in oral histories of Irish republicanism
title_full ‘“We’re getting the victory we fought for” we were told’: retrospective subjectivities in oral histories of Irish republicanism
title_fullStr ‘“We’re getting the victory we fought for” we were told’: retrospective subjectivities in oral histories of Irish republicanism
title_full_unstemmed ‘“We’re getting the victory we fought for” we were told’: retrospective subjectivities in oral histories of Irish republicanism
title_short ‘“We’re getting the victory we fought for” we were told’: retrospective subjectivities in oral histories of Irish republicanism
title_sort we re getting the victory we fought for we were told retrospective subjectivities in oral histories of irish republicanism
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