Le lycée Champollion organise le mardi 27 mai de 13h à 15h une après-midi d'étude transdisciplinaire publique autour de la représentation des 'Troubles' en Irlande du Nord.
Nous aurons le plaisir de croiser trois approches complémentaires en civilisation, littérature et art grâce aux interventions suivantes:
1) Civilisation: “The representation of the “Troubles” in the United States.” Magali Dexpert, PRCE anglais Institut Universitaire de Valence, Laboratoire ILCEA4, Université Grenoble Alpes
Shortly after being elected President, Joe Biden spoke of a “special relationship”1 between the U.S and Northern Ireland being “alive and well”, as part of his first official overseas trip. On the same occasion, the American President also indicated the U.S would be watching closely to ensure the Good Friday Agreement would be preserved in a context of post-Brexit negotiations2.
Close relations between Ireland and the U.S date back to the 19th Century principally, when, between 1820 and 1920, four million people emigrated from Ireland to the U.S., fleeing hunger and destitution3. Hence, Ireland’s international interactions with North America was first shaped by the island’s experience of imperialism and of settler colonial dispossession, as the Irish population was being forced to leave due to the British exploitation of Ireland. Logically enough, the Irish diaspora in the US was to play a crucial role in supporting and financing the struggle for Irish independence4.
When the Troubles in Northern Ireland began, in the late 1960s, it was money and arms which flew across the Atlantic, in support of the region’s nationalist community5. However, in the early 1990s, in view of the different attempts to put an end to the violence in Northern Ireland, and especially after the 1993 Downing Street Declaration, voices (emanating mostly from corporate Irish-America6) pressing for reforms that would achieve equality for the nationalist community emerged and Irish-America began to argue that the White House should play a role in the emerging Northern Irish Peace Process7. Consequently, President Clinton sent the US Senator George Mitchell, whose role was crucial in chairing peace talks in the Province, but first and foremost, in allowing discussions between political parties who had traditionally refused to directly address one another in the past. As many historians and political commentators pointed out, Senator Mitchell’s role in bringing about the Good Friday Agreement was decisive.
More recently, the Brexit negotiations revived the U.S. implication in Northern Irish affairs and former US President, Joe Biden in particular (proud of his own Irish roots) warned against the threats posed by an Irish border when he tweeted: “We can’t allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace in Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit”8. Indeed, after being elected President of the U.S, Joe Biden actively pushed for a Brexit deal that would not harm peace in the region.
In light of these different elements, this paper offers to answer to the following questions: how were the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland perceived in America? Who and what was at the origin of the US Government’s direct involvement in Northern Ireland in a context of conflict resolution? It will also explore why, more recently, post-Brexit negotiations revived American concerns for peace in Northern Ireland and the U.S. interest in the Province.
2) Littérature: “The bog bodies in Seamus Heaney’s North”. Marie Mianowsky, Professeure d’Université, Laboratoire ILCEA4, Université Grenoble Alpes
Seamus Heaney is one of the most famous Irish poets. He was born in a Catholic family in County Derry, Northern Ireland in 1939 but spent most of his adult life in the Republic of Ireland. Writing poetry about the past, the natural environment, and what he coined ‘the sense of place’, Seamus Heaney also reflected upon the ‘Troubles’ which began during his young adulthood. In North, a collection of poems published in 1975, he attempted to weave the ongoing turmoil with a broader vision of life and history. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 and died in 2013. This talk on Seamus Heaney’s poetry collection North will give me the opportunity to focus on two key aspects of Irish history and Irish landscape : the Troubles in Northern Ireland and a particular feature of the Irish soil : bogland. I will first contextualize Seamus Heaney’s work with regards to the collection North. I will then focus on the bog poems, especially the poems referring to the bog bodies. Finally I will look into the role of memory in Heaney’s work, drawing links in particular with the two poems ‘Aisling’ and ‘Exposure’.
3) Photographie: “From military resistance to domestic resilience: the representation of the Irish Troubles in photography”. Virginie Thomas, professeure en khâgne au lycée Champollion, chercheuse associée Laboratoire ILCEA4
The purpose of my talk will be to present the different perspectives adopted by war photographers, notably those belonging to the Magnum agency, to cover the period of the Irish Troubles. I will mostly base my analysis on the work by Chris Steele-Perkins, Philip Jones Griffith, Ian Berry, Abbas, Peter Marlow and Colman Doyle. But I will also use some photos made by the BBC.
The pictures that were created alternate between bloody scenes, display of power, portraits of scary IRA warriors or of brave women committed in this war effort. These photos – which might be deemed typical representations in a war context – were accompanied by another type of depiction of this conflict which tended to lay the emphasis on the incongruities of everyday life for the Irish people in such a hectic historical period. Two figures of domesticity then emerged: the housewife having to cope with the presence of the British invader, and more importantly, the child who was regularly staged in two different ways. The child enabled the photographers to underline either the victimisation of a whole community whose innocence had been destroyed by the British, or the impossibility for the latter to kill the Irish quest for freedom that would be passed on from one generation to the next.
This panorama will lead us from the battlefields of military resistance to the battlefields of domestic resilience in an attempt to render the complexity of this traumatic Irish historical episode.
4) Peintures murales: “Murals d’Irlande du Nord: définition d’une identité nationale plurielle”. Agathe Viffray, étudiante Ecole du Louvre, classe préparatoire au concours de conservation du patrimoine de l’INP
L’histoire récente a singulièrement marqué la pratique artistique en Irlande du Nord en faisant des murals une expression représentative du pays. Les premiers d’entre eux sont réalisés dans les années 1908 à 1912 mais c’est véritablement au cours des Troubles des années 1960 à 1990 que les peintures murales se répandent et s’emparent des rues de Belfast et de Derry. La plupart de ces murals ont pour sujet la lutte entre les protestants loyalistes unionistes et les catholiques républicains minoritaires dans le pays. Ce conflit s’exprime par des thématiques commémoratives, revendicatrices ou identitaires mais le plus souvent avec une dimension belliqueuse. Si les murals sont à l’origine strictement protestants, les catholiques s’en emparent pour leur répondre à partir des années 1970. Selon qu’ils ont été réalisés par l’un ou l’autre des deux camps, les sujets et les couleurs des peintures permettent d’identifier avec certitude l’appartenance politique et confessionnelle du quartier. Certaines thématiques sont cependant présentes dans les murals loyalistes et républicains tout en illustrant des valeurs différentes. C’est le cas par exemple du héros de la mythologie celtique Cúchulainn qui incarne pour les républicains la figure du héros de l’indépendance irlandaise contre les Anglais, tandis que, pour les loyalistes, il est représenté comme l’ancêtre défenseur de l’Ulster contre les attaques irlandaises.
Par l’étude de quelques-unes de ces fresques, certaines encore visibles, d’autres détruites et remplacées, seront analysées les thématiques qui interviennent de manière récurrente dans les murals. Il sera donc question de peintures réalisées lors de ces cinquantaine dernières années, certaines exécutées très récemment car la pratique des murals est toujours d’actualité. Ces productions choisies permettront également d’aborder les questions de la situation patrimoniale de ces œuvres éphémères mais aussi de leur statut juridique ainsi que de la paternité, rarement revendiquée, des murals.
1In : Ruy, Donatienne, “A renewed U.S. commitment to peace in Northern Ireland”, Center for Strategic and International Studies.
2Ibid.
3McLoughlin, Peter John, “Good Friday Agreement: how the US came to be a key broker in Northern Ireland’s peace deal”, The Conversation, 6 April 2023. Consulté le 09/09/24.
4Ibid.
5Mallie, Eamonn, McKittrick, David, Endgame in Ireland, Hodder and Stoughton, London: 2001. P. 152.
6Ibid.
7McLoughlin, Peter John. Op. Cit.
8Joe Biden, posted on X, 16 September 2020.