Framing Blame and Victimhood in Post-conflict Northern Ireland

Abstract

This chapter examines the relationship between the politics of blame and victimhood in post-conflict Northern Ireland and the treatment of politically motivated former prisoners. Using the examples of direct and indirect discrimination in the areas of employment and access to mental health services, the chapter considers how the discursive operation of blaming produces evasions and attributions of guilt. It argues that such blaming practices have very real material consequences for the allocation or withholding of goods and burdens in the community. The chapter notes also that the ‘cause of victims’ is often appropriated by the press and other political actors for their own purposes, frequently to block the provision of public goods to one particular group of ex-combatants, namely former politically motivated prisoners. The chapter concludes by posing a series of questions about blaming, justice and the moral authority of the victim in the post-conflict moment.

What follows is an amended version of an article published as ‘Punition, blâme et stigmate dans une Irlande du Nord post-conflit: l’expérience d’anciens prisonniers politiques’ in Criminologie in 2012. I would like to thank the late Stan Cohen, Kieran McEvoy, Shadd Maruna, Sylvie Frigon, Maritza Felices-Luna and the participants in the 2010 Lab for Critical Justice Studies at the University of Ottawa for their helpful critique of my ideas.