Silence and violence among Northern Ireland border Protestants

Developing recent ethnographic work on the subjective experiences of those involved in traumatic events, this paper examines the stories that Protestants tell about their experiences of violence along the Irish border in the 1970s and 1980s. These stories are only now beginning to surface, and the paper considers the transition from the private experience of suffering to its public telling. It focuses on how people find a voice for their telling and what happens as a result of breaking the silence. Of special interest is the language and style in which the narratives enter the public domain, and the silences that remain. The paper argues that the narratives are shaped as much by the demands of communal identity as by individual experience, and thereby complements the trauma literature that tends to emphasise the latter.