Performing trauma in post-conflict Northern Ireland: ethics, representation and the witnessing body

Abstract

This article evaluates the role of the body in the performance and reception of trauma testimony in post-conflict Northern Ireland. It explores how the body is exploited in public performances of nationalism and unionism, marginalised in psychoanalytic discourses around memory work, and rendered invisible within state-sponsored reconciliation processes. By contrast, the body is central to representations of truth recovery and remembrance in fictional theatre, and in the performed testimonies of applied theatre. Analysing three recent productions, this paper argues that the strategic use of the body as a site of witness facilitates an ethical form of empathy that respects the alterity of trauma.