ABSTRACT
This chapter is an investigation into" the competing senses of place expressed in three near-contemporary accounts of the city of Belfast during Northern Ireland's 'Troubles'. Using the examples of three literary 'fictionalizations' as source material, the focus is on place-determined constructs of sectarianism and nationalism. It argues throughout that bi-polar, sectarian constructions of place and identity, set within the discourse of rigidly territorialized rival nationalisms, have been (and still are) at the root of conflict in Northern Ireland. This pervasive sectarianism influences an unproductive, sterile, 'zero-sum' political culture, and is deep-rooted, powerful and institutionalized despite its arbitrary, irrelevant, anachronistic and illusory/imagined nature. Literary fiction is theorized here as a constituent of circuits of culture, in which the qualitative themes of place-cultures are both reflected and constructed. Literature both witnesses/reports place and interprets/re-constitutes it. The chapter analyses Eoin McNamee's Resurrection Man (1994), Mary Costello's Titanic Town (1992) and Ciaran Carson's The Star Factory (1997), in order to investigate sectarian identity politics, and to contest and suggest alternatives to this sterile antagonism.
