ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on four related aspects of the financial crisis. It maps a series of sharp changes in how the collective memory of colonialism was referenced in public debates during the early bailout period compared with the Celtic Tiger period. Using Zandberg, Meyers and Neiger's concept of reversed memory, the chapter argues that the trauma of the bailout changed the triumphal narrative of the past that had emerged during the economic boom. This narrative stressed how Ireland had left the oppression of colonialism behind in its prosperous present and it was particularly evident at the time of the commemoration of the Irish Famine in 1995. The chapter also argues that the trauma of the financial crash put Irish citizens more directly in touch with the more painful elements of their colonial past. The possibility that this renewed engagement with painful memories of colonialism contributed to a delayed protest response to austerity is the second key theme explored.
