Socio-Ideological Fantasy and the Northern Ireland Conflict: The Other Side

225 Pages·0.824 MB·English

by  Adrian Millar

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SOCIO-IDEOLOGICAL FANTASY AND
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THE NORTHERN IRELAND CONFLICT
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New Approaches to
Conflict Analysis
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Socio-ideological fantasy and the
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4 Northern Ireland conflict
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the Other side
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4111 ADRIAN MILLAR
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9 Manchester University Press
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MANCHESTER AND NEW YORK
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2111 distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave
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 byManchester University Press
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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ISBN 0 7190 6696 4 hardback
EAN 978 0 7190 6696 2
First published 2006
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Printed in Great Britain
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CONTENTS
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6 Acknowledgements — vi
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8 Introduction 1
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1011 1 Psychoanalytic theory 13
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2 2 Conflict resolution 29
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6 4 The republican Real 81
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8 5 The republican Imaginary 86
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2 7 Loyalists 151
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4 8 Conclusion 200
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6 Appendix — 209
7 Bibliography — 210
8 Index — 217
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v
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 even-
tually 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 enthu-
siasm 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 Associa-
tion 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
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4111 Much work has been done in the field of peace-building and reconciliation
5 in a number of the world’s conflict zones, but in many of these same areas
6 antagonism persists and violent conflict continues to erupt in spite of peace
7 agreements, substantial funding to address peace-building and economic
8 disadvantage, and international goodwill. The conflict in Northern Ireland
9 and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are but two such instances. This book
20111 asks why such conflict endures and argues on the basis of an examination
1 of the Northern Ireland conflict that the reason for this is the function of
2 the unconscious in the reproduction of antagonism and division.1 The
3 recognition of this dimension has important consequences for a theory of
4 conflict management.
5 Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, Northern
6 Ireland has experienced an upsurge in paramilitary beatings, loyalist feud-
7 ing and intimidation, and increasingly bitter and violent sectarian con-
8 frontation in North Belfast, East Belfast and Portadown.2 It has also
9 witnessed the growth of a widening gulf between the two communities at
30111 the polls and a growing sense of alienation within both communities, but
1 particularly within the unionist community. As a result, the Good Friday
2 Agreement itself has come under serious threat. Meanwhile division has
3 emerged between victims and perpetrators of violence, and serious questions
4 have arisen about the activities of the Special Branch in its investigation of
35 atrocities.
6 The Good Friday Agreement was heralded as a new beginning but even
7 the above cursory look at Northern Ireland would suggest that the oppor-
8 tunities it has heralded for peace and reconciliation have not been
9 welcomed by all, have been ignored by many more and have been experi-
40111 enced by few. Historically rooted patterns of relationships have remained
1 relatively intact. It is perhaps a fallacy to have ever believed that they
2111 could have been changed by the stuff of high politics alone but who among
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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?3This 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 deter-
mined 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 work-
ings 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 polit-
ical violence in Northern Ireland admit their work is hampered by an abun-
dance of ‘military rhetoric’, the problem of obtaining ‘reliable evidence’,
2
Introduction
1111 and the reality that written documents often offer ‘only a partial insight’
2 leaving one with ‘a very incomplete picture’,4one of the advantages of this
3 study is the use of some of the most candid interview material to date with
4 former IRA members recorded during the 1994–96 ceasefire. I argue that
5 the insights an examination of these materials provides will enable oppo-
6 nents to develop a more effective approach to the management of conflict.
7 It is precisely because Lacanian theory places aggression and rivalry
8 at the heart of human relations that it offers important insights into
9 the management of conflict. However, far from presenting a dark view of
1011 humankind, it offers hope, if not happiness. Lacanian analysis explains why
1 domination and dependence are part of identity construction and demon-
2 strates how bringing the unconscious dynamics of human relations to the
3 fore has the potential for positive change. The violent expression and extent
4111 of antagonism is a matter of how material (violence, inequality, injustice,
5 etc.), imaginary (sectarian, cultural and political representations, etc.) and
6 symbolic (cultural, religious and political ideals, etc.) aspects of reality
7 impinge upon the construction of identity.
8 In Chapter 1 I present an outline of Lacanian psychoanalysis and
9 demonstrate that its development of the unconscious dynamics of identity
20111 construction helps explain the reproduction of socio-political conflict as
1 participants indulge in fantasy and rival over jouissance. As Norval points
2 out, in the construction of social and political identities people need to have
3 theoretical tools which can account for the mechanisms of identification
4 involved in the constitution of imaginaries and symbolic universes of
5 meaning. Conflict resolution analysts need to better understand how the
6 meaning out of which people interpret their own belonging to a community
7 is constructed. Norval herself recommends a Lacanian approach to this
8 subject.
9 Conflict resolution theory needs to have the unconscious at its centre.
30111 I examine traditional conflict resolution theory in Chapter 2 and argue the
1 case for a Lacanian approach to the management of conflict. According to
2 Lacanian psychoanalysis, it is the unsatiated desire rooted in the pre-verbal
3 ‘mirror stage’, i.e.the moment of the construction of the illusory, paranoid
4 ego, that accounts for aggression. Upon the entry of the subject into lan-
35 guage, this is compounded with contradictions, rationalisations, fictions,
6 idealisation and wilful ignorance. Conflict henceforth becomes the norm.
7 Thus, it is not enough to view aggression as the failure of systems to meet
8 ‘inalienable’ needs, as Burton suggests.5 The satisfaction of ‘inalienable’
9 needs will not guarantee peace. Nor is it sufficient to build a theory of con-
40111 flict resolution on ‘profound reconciliation’ and the ‘restoration and rebuild-
1 ing of relationships’ as Lederach does.6 In a world where people dispense
2111 with others with the same passion with which they dispense with objects,
3