ABSTRACT
A 'spatial turn' is increasingly observed as taking place across a range of disciplines such as sociology, psychology, history, geography and education, going beyond an emphasis on socio-historical relativism. This chapter discusses the framework of this spatial discourse in relation to myth and traumatic memory, building on a reinterpretation of the work of Levi-Strauss and Freud in particular, through integrating this framework with an aspect of Foucault's early work. A particular spatial logic of the unconscious, distinctive spatial discourse of trauma and healing, to overcome spatial splitting process, arguably has particular resonance in an Irish context with regard to a number of the dominant myths of modern Ireland. Governing myths, organising collective memory and meaning in Irish society, have included nationalism, Catholicism and the Celtic Tiger. A new experiential and educational calibration is needed in Irish society to balance the fluidity of individual identity depths with a collective assumed connection to actively change diametric structures and systems of social exclusion.
