Representation and resistance: writing gender, ethnonationalism and the working class in the theatre and novels of the ‘Troubles’

The literature of this period is dominated by working-class communities, characters and issues, and the cumulative effect has been that the Troubles appear as a war between two factions of the working class, with the colonial, political and structural causes of the conflict largely negated.

As such, drama and fiction have often bolstered hegemonic narratives that construct Northern Ireland as ‘a place apart’, and representations of the working class bear influence on ideologies of the conflict. Despite their centrality to the literature of this period, however, analysis of class in Troubles literary scholarship has been relatively scant, and a sustained examination of working-class representation across the three decades of the conflict has been largely avoided.<br><br>“Representation and Resistance” addresses this omission by identifying the dominant tropes and stereotypes of the working class in Northern Irish drama and fiction, as well as highlighting how writing could serve as a form of resistance to dominant narratives surrounding class and the conflict.