Ulster’s Political Hauntology and the Forces Research Unit |
Northern Ireland’s unique Troubles horror story also conceals some ingenious state manipulation of the macabre. The emerging academic sub-discipline of political hauntology explores how the past, especially lost or failed futures, can haunt the present. It thus influences political discourse and action. Theorist Jacques Derrida describes the “return of the repressed” or “the persistence of the past in the present”. In the political realm, this can manifest as a fascination with past ideologies, yearning for lost futures, or cultural and political stagnation. A recent film on the Northern Ireland conflict suggests political hauntology might be utilized as a concept, when considering state-actions.
Non-democratic regimes in Latin America and Africa (in particular) were oftentimes criticised for deploying hauntology as propaganda against their opponents. Even the threat of an avenging plague was invoked by one African Prime Minister (Pohamba in Namibia) in his efforts to ensure re-election in 1999. Among indigenous societies the effects were potentially significant forces of social control. Evidentially, the concept might apply to efforts of state propaganda in Ulster.
It is widely known that there was a security forces black-operation colouring public consciousness about the traumascape of Northern Ireland. A British Forces Research Unit (FRU) experimented with operations to discredit republican and loyalist paramilitaries. Operational at least by 1980, the FRU was renamed Joint Support Group (JSG) following the Stevens Inquiries into allegations of collusion between security forces and Protestant paramilitaries. Fisher’s conceptual definition of hauntology might categorize the FRU as “a form of mass-manipulation”. The army drew on tactics which had been utilized by its information sections in numerous post-WW2 conflicts.
In colonial settings, the British Army used military-force and psychological-tactics to quell riots, deploying martial law, and utilizing propaganda. In the riot-strewn streets of Belfast and Derry, the army’s natural impulse was to select from its well-worn strategic playbook. Anything was permissible which portrayed the IRA as sinister, blood-thirsty monsters – like something out of a gruesome horror movie. IRA volunteers were likened in these stills to Ed Gein, the most impactful murderous sociopath of modern cinema. The news media were spoon-fed crime-scenes half-way between the gruesome movie staples of Psycho and the Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Even everyday nationalist neighbourhoods quickly saw........