The memoryscape of the metaconflict

Using a sub-geographical case study, this paper explores the nexus between localisation, memorialisation and transition in a Northern Ireland that is still struggling to ‘deal with the past’. Critically engaging with the form, purpose and role in wider memory work of the Kingsmill massacre memorial and the South Armagh memorial garden as two examples, this paper explores how different interpretations of the same violent past are constructed and communicated both internally and externally in an area where the contestation of the local violent past mirrors without inflection that of the wider violent past of Northern Ireland. In locating the discussion within the theoretical overlap between the fields of memory studies and transitional justice, it seeks to interrogate how these two ‘sites of memory’ founded during periods of transition provide an insight into competing interpretations not only of the violent past but also of the present and the future. The paper will identify how and why different macro-level framings of the past have been incorporated into the South Armagh memoryscape that speaks of the intimacy of political violence in the area, the incongruence in competing experiences and interpretations of that violence and the political uses of those memories today.