Political memoir-writing and personal narratives

This chapter argues that it can be highly productive to carefully investigate personal narratives from outside the "mainstream", to gain a more nuanced appreciation of the complexities of the lived experience of Northern Ireland's conflict. Personal narratives and testimonies of the conflict in Northern Ireland continue to be an important source for researchers who are grappling with the complex legacies of this period of violence, known colloquially as the Troubles. This is the broad context for research that takes as its starting point the personal narratives of (ex-)protagonists of the conflict, whether political, (para)military, or simply 'ordinary' citizens, whatever the might construe by such a term. Specifically, this chapter reflects on the evolution of the study of political memoir-writing and personal narratives in Northern Ireland since 1998 and examines some of the advantages and pitfalls of using these sources for scholars in the social sciences and humanities.