CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2011
| Author | Peloquin, Nicole Marie |
|---|---|
| Title | Splintering Stories: Deconstructing Narratives about Belfast by Movements through Space |
| Summary | The city of Belfast is more than a collection of buildings, it is a built environment created by and for inhabitants who have been affected by thirty years of political and ethnic conflict within the city. In one narrative, the city government conceptualizes Belfast as a body. Some areas of the city, such as the city centre, embody health. These areas are thriving physical spaces which exude well-being and fiscal strength. Yet as one moves from the city centre to the political neighbourhoods, the outer limbs of the city, scars from the years of political turmoil begin to appear. These scarred areas on the extremities of the city contradict the notion of perfect health that the city officials try to portray, and many members of these scarred areas do not even promote the narrative of Belfast as a body. I argue that the city government’s narrative of Belfast as a body, or an organic whole, is contradicted as an individual moves through space. Furthermore, this research will question whether narratives, such as the one that the city government produces of a unified, ‘body politic,’ leads toward a healthy future or is simply a ‘strategy’ to erase certain aspects of history and culture within Belfast. Each of the individual chapters will represent stories about the different parts of the “body” of Belfast, beginning with the city centre which exudes vitality, moving to the interface areas which are marked by healing scars and finally to the political neighbourhoods which are located on the extremities of the city, and are still places which display wounds and visual displays from the ‘Troubles’. |
| Supervisor | Dafinger, Andreas; Monterescu, Daniel |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2011/peloquin_nicole.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University