13/10/2023: Síobhra Aiken, Trauma Testimony from the Irish Civil War

Keynote : Síobhra Aiken, 13 Octobre 2023

The Keynote given by Síobhra Aiken, professor at the University of Queen’s Belfast tackled writings and testimonies written about the Irish Civil War in Ireland. The War of i-Independence which lasted from 1919 to 1921 was triggered by converging opinions on the Anglo-Irish treaty, proposed by the British empire. The Irish new state was marked by violence and the civil war was seen as an event somewhat unspeakable. This notion of unspeakablity and memory is the topic of Síobhra Aiken’s latest monograph Trauma Testimony from the Irish Civil War (Irish Academic Press, 2022)

This monograph is based on the analysis of testimonies of actors during the Irish Civil War whether pro or anti-treaty, ultimately challenging mainstream discourse’s overemphasis on silence. Indeed, most of the testimonies were neglected at the time, resulting in the false assumption that writings about the Irish Civil War did not exist. However, Aiken demonstrates that a plethora of works were written about the events, whether during or after the civil war. Most testimonies were found in autobiographical novels, plays, short stories not necessarily made accessible to the public. The wide range of writings were kept in archives and had barely, if ever, been studied. Therefore, a major part of Aiken’s work was focused on this excavating work.

Aiken notably reflects on the notion of silence, inherently linked with a traumatic event by quoting Roger Luckhurst’s The Trauma Question (Routledge, 2008): ‘if trauma is a crisis in representation, then then this generates narrative possibility just as much as impossibility, a compulsive outpouring of attempts to formulate narrative knowledge .’ Aiken argues that traumatic events in the world were met with silence as a d efault response, mainly the Holocaust, the aftermath of the Second World War, but especially in the case of Ireland with the Great Famine or the Irish Civil War. Realism was the prominent genre in writings associated with traumatic events; furthermore, while reflecting on the myriad of tropes in these works, Síobhra Aiken noted that the dominant aesthetic of trauma stories were centered around the fragmentation of time. 

The title of the monograph, Spiritual Wounds, contrasts the physical pain of the veterans with the spiritual one, insisting that the deepest wounds, are in fact, psychological. Moreover, she pointed out the issue of the term ‘trauma’ and its stigmatization, as only a small portion of privileged people were granted care related to their ‘nervous conditions’. She also mentioned how different terms were used to define people from different classes; the term ‘hysteria’ often defined men from the working class who suffered from post-traumatic symptom. This term was seen as emasculating, as it excluded their suffering from the one felt by the upper class, which was not defined by such terms. Women were often redirected towards gynecologists regarding their psychological ‘distress’, as a common belief was that psychological issues in women were tied to reproductive matters.  The new state did not want to be associated with these these ‘shameful’ psychological responses as they wanted to build a newly pristine image. 

Therefore, writings about the civil war were seen as ‘therapeutic’; writing through experience revealed to be a cathartic experience. Síobhra Aiken particularly mentioned the works of Francis Carty, Padraig O’Horan, Ellish Doran and Seamus McCall.

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