8 Performative violence and the politics of violence in the 1641 depositions
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John Walter
Abstract
This chapter concentrates on the 'performative violence' in the 1641 depositions, in an attempt to get behind the biases in the archive and to recognise the statements made through the violence. It seeks to bring together and build upon the findings of the distinguished group of historians whose work has done so much to recover the value of the 1641 depositions. The chapter argues that, while both sections of Irish landed and urban society became entangled in the violence, popular participation suggests a greater level of popular political engagement. In what Clodagh Tait has called the 'politics of disinterment', the attack on churches involved the desecration of the Protestant bodies buried there. The chapter recovers the dramaturgy of the 1641 violence. The victims of violence testified within the discourse of godly suffering and racialised representations of the native Irish as duplicitous, barbarous and savage.
Abstract
This chapter concentrates on the 'performative violence' in the 1641 depositions, in an attempt to get behind the biases in the archive and to recognise the statements made through the violence. It seeks to bring together and build upon the findings of the distinguished group of historians whose work has done so much to recover the value of the 1641 depositions. The chapter argues that, while both sections of Irish landed and urban society became entangled in the violence, popular participation suggests a greater level of popular political engagement. In what Clodagh Tait has called the 'politics of disinterment', the attack on churches involved the desecration of the Protestant bodies buried there. The chapter recovers the dramaturgy of the 1641 violence. The victims of violence testified within the discourse of godly suffering and racialised representations of the native Irish as duplicitous, barbarous and savage.
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- List of figures ix
- List of contributors xi
- Series editors’ preface xv
- Acknowledgements xvii
- 1 Introduction – 1641 1
- 2 Early modern violence from memory to history 17
- 3 The ‘1641 massacres’ 37
- 4 1641 in a colonial context 52
- 5 Towards a cultural geography of the 1641 rising/rebellion 71
- 6 Out of the blue 95
- 7 News from Ireland 115
- 8 Performative violence and the politics of violence in the 1641 depositions 134
- 9 Atrocities in the Thirty Years War 153
- 10 Why remember terror? 176
- 11 Language and conflict in the French Wars of Religion 197
- 12 How to make a successful plantation 219
- 13 An Irish Black Legend 236
- 14 Afterword 254
- Index 274
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- List of figures ix
- List of contributors xi
- Series editors’ preface xv
- Acknowledgements xvii
- 1 Introduction – 1641 1
- 2 Early modern violence from memory to history 17
- 3 The ‘1641 massacres’ 37
- 4 1641 in a colonial context 52
- 5 Towards a cultural geography of the 1641 rising/rebellion 71
- 6 Out of the blue 95
- 7 News from Ireland 115
- 8 Performative violence and the politics of violence in the 1641 depositions 134
- 9 Atrocities in the Thirty Years War 153
- 10 Why remember terror? 176
- 11 Language and conflict in the French Wars of Religion 197
- 12 How to make a successful plantation 219
- 13 An Irish Black Legend 236
- 14 Afterword 254
- Index 274
