Description
This paper poses the question of how incorporating the subjugated knowledge of queer histories of the Troubles in Northern Ireland affects understandings of the conflict in International Relations and Security Studies. It argues that while the centrality of the ‘two communities’ model drives all other issues to the political margins and perpetuates division, adopting a queer approach can deconstruct the identities of those communities and move beyond that model. It uses Halberstam’s queer methodology as ‘scavenger methodology’ to draw on existing published interviews, combined with plays and films representing queer experiences during the Troubles, and a queer theoretical approach which seeks to both foreground queer experiences and challenge normative and binary understandings of identity in this context. It finds that focusing on queer lives during the conflict reveals that: constructing the identities of the two communities depends on excluding the queer subject; LGBTQ people’s security during the conflict was shaped by their queer identity; queerness can and has been mobilised to deconstruct received narratives and the apparently essential identities of the two communities; and there are opportunities to transcend the unionist/nationalist dichotomy in theory and practice.
