{"id":2016,"date":"2026-06-05T08:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T08:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=2016"},"modified":"2026-06-05T08:19:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T08:19:06","slug":"notes-on-identity-memory-and-being-northern-irish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=2016","title":{"rendered":"Notes on Identity, Memory, and Being (Northern) Irish"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Chris Cotter\u00a0<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

In May 2016, I took a short flight from Edinburgh to Belfast to sing in a farewell concert for my secondary school\u2019s retiring Head of Music. It was quite an emotionally charged evening and, fittingly, the final piece on the programme was an arrangement of \u201cAnthem\u201d<\/em> from the musical Chess<\/em>. The final lines of the song run as follows:<\/p>\n

\u201cLet man\u2019s petty nations tear themselves apart<\/p>\n

My land\u2019s only borders lie around my heart \u201c<\/p>\n

(Rice, Andersson, and Ulvaeus 1986: 64)<\/p>\n

Before we sang, my former teacher suggested\u2014perhaps joking, perhaps not\u2014that this should really be \u201cour\u201d national anthem (whatever \u201cour\u201d might mean in a Northern Irish context), rather than the rather uninspiring God Save the Queen <\/em>(now \u201cKing\u201d). In a place as politically and culturally layered as Northern Ireland, that comment carried weight. It also stuck with me.<\/p>\n

In this post \u2013 which is a blogified version of Cotter (2017) \u2013 I\u2019ll attempt to unpack that moment and reflect upon the notion of identity: how we construct it, perform it, and shift it depending on context. I\u2019ll return to Anthem<\/em> (the final eight words of which I now have tattooed on my forearm) after I have offered some reflections on my memories of growing up Northern Irish, living in Scotland, and learning\u2014slowly\u2014that identity is never quite as fixed as we might think.<\/p>\n

History and Memory<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember really learning much, if any, Northern Irish history at school. I could tell you about the Great Famine, and I could say a bit about the First World War, but beyond that, my formal education feels oddly silent. Given Northern Ireland\u2019s complex and often painful past, that silence feels significant. I now suspect that this wasn\u2019t accidental. Teaching recent, politically sensitive history is difficult, especially in a divided society. And maybe my parents were keen to keep sectarianism at arm\u2019s length and didn\u2019t go out of their way to fill in those gaps at home either. However, this remembered absence is worth reflecting on, especially when I think about just how present sectarian divisions were in my everyday life.<\/p>\n

I grew up in the 1990s in what I\u2019d describe now as a middle-class Protestant (Church of Ireland) household. And like many Northern Irish people of my age, I was aware of \u201cthe Troubles,\u201d even if I didn\u2019t fully understand them. I knew about the violence. The murders, the bombs, the annual tensions around marching season. I remember the visual markers such as flags and painted kerbstones which marked different territories. And I remembering being puzzled that so many of my primary school classmates supported Glasgow Rangers (the \u2018Protestant\u2019 team) when I didn\u2019t think Scottish football was that good (sorry!), and being teased for supporting the supposedly \u2018Catholic\u2019 Manchester United.<\/p>\n

More positively, the cul-de-sac we moved to in the mid-90s was roughly half Catholic, half Protestant, and I don\u2019t remember this fact causing any issues. Far from it. However, importantly, this information was still known<\/em>, even if not really mentioned, and we also learned to be careful with using certain friends\u2019 \u2018Irish\u2019 names when we crossed the bridge to go to the shop in the nearby \u2018loyalist\u2019 estate.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Looking back, I have to acknowledge that these memories aren\u2019t neutral snapshots of the past. They\u2019re shaped by who I am now: someone who likes to think he\u2019s a bit more \u201cabove\u201d sectarian divisions; someone who has gone on to specialize in Religious Studies and even authored some materials on Northern Ireland for OU\u2019s new module \u2013 DA332: Religion and Global Challenges in the Past and Present<\/em>\u2013 which has just finished its first presentation.<\/p>\n

Did school actually avoid Northern Irish history, or have I just forgotten it? Were my classmates consciously expressing (their parents\u2019) religious or political identities through football, or am I projecting that on to them? What I can say is that identity mattered<\/em>, even when I didn\u2019t fully grasp why, and I had my own tactics <\/em>for navigating it.<\/p>\n

Two Flags, One Photo<\/strong><\/p>\n

A wonderful illustration of this comes from another memory of a 2003 family holiday in Normandy. The owner of the holiday home we were staying in had a quirky habit where she would fly the national flag of whoever was staying in the cottage from a flagpole in the garden. Misunderstanding our \u201cNorthern Irish\u201d identity, she first raised the Republic of Ireland flag and then, upon realising her \u2018mistake\u2019, she added the Union flag below it on the same pole.<\/p>\n

For what might have been the first time in my life, I saw those two flags \u2013 each of which I associated with violence, bigotry and claims to territory \u2013 flying together. So, I took a photo. And, as many teenagers did at the time, I immediately set this quirky image as my MSN Messenger profile picture when we returned home.<\/p>\n

Not everyone appreciated the symbolism as much as I did, and I can remember a \u2018friend\u2019 almost instantly berating me for displaying it, stating that she would rather die than see the Union flag flying beneath the \u201ctricolour\u201d. I asked why this bothered her so much, and she said that this display was offensive to her \u201creligion\u201d, which was \u201cProtestant,\u201d as she put it. I pushed back, questioning what she meant, especially when she admitted she didn\u2019t attend church. In my mind, I had \u201cwon\u201d the argument. Much like I had decided that my classmates didn\u2019t \u201creally\u201d support Rangers, I decided that she wasn\u2019t a \u201creal\u201d Protestant but was just someone using the label as an alternative to \u201cloyalist\u201d.<\/p>\n

Looking back now with my Religious Studies hat on, I can see that I fell right into the trap of what Aaron Hughes calls the rhetoric of authenticity (Hughes 2015: xv). This rhetoric dominates in much public discourse about religion, where \u201cthe operative assumption seems to be that \u2018religion\u2019 or a \u2018religious tradition\u2019 must be essentially good and just, and, a priori, anything that is bad or unjust must therefore be an aberration of religion\u201d (Martin 2010: 3).\u00a0 I thought I knew what Protestantism \u201creally\u201d meant. I thought I was above the politics. But, of course, I now know I was playing the same game, but from a different standpoint. As my doctoral supervisor, Kim Knott (2005: 125), has argued, \u2018there is no \u201cbird\u2019s eye view\u201d\u2019 from which \u2018we\u2019 can study religion (or, indeed, many other social categories).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Strategies and Tactics <\/strong><\/p>\n

When I moved to Edinburgh in 2004, things became even more complicated. My accent was gently mocked, and I gradually lost much of my Northern Irish twang. At the same time, due to \u201cChris\u201d being such a common name, I quickly gained a new nickname \u2013 \u201cIrish Chris\u201d \u2013 which I readily embraced. On the east coast of Scotland, \u201cIrish\u201d came with positive associations, such as friendly, sociable, easy-going, independent, whereas \u201cNorthern Irish\u201d still seemed tied (in my mind at least) to conflict and division. So, I leaned into the version of identity that felt more comfortable: I started celebrating St Patrick\u2019s Day, hung an Irish flag in my flat, and began \u2013 in Michel de Certau\u2019s terminology \u2013 to tactically <\/em>identify as Irish.<\/p>\n

In de Certeau\u2019s (1984) social theory, strategies are approaches to situations that are utilized by the powerful, whereas tactics tend to be more reactive and improvised. For example, we can think of the strategies of the war room versus the tactics of the battlefield, or the strategies developed in the training ground versus the tactics on the pitch. A passport, or a census form, or a social researcher might strategically place each of us in a fixed identity container. However, as we navigate the world, positioning ourselves and being positioned by others, each tactical act of identification fabricates a particular authentic self, one that is suited to the particular context.<\/p>\n

Over time, my relationship with identity\u2014and with the UK\u2014has become more complicated. Living in Scotland, studying social science, and experiencing political shifts (like the 2014 independence and 2016 Brexit referenda) have all played their part. I have found myself becoming increasingly critical of many aspects of what the United Kingdom represents (historically and in the present) and am increasingly comfortable aligning myself with Irishness (helped in no small part by my post-Brexit claiming of my Irish passport).<\/p>\n

So where does all of this leave me? Returning to that concert in 2016, of course I cannot comment on whether Anthem <\/em>could or should be \u201cour\u201d national anthem \u2013 although there is something about national anthems that makes me profoundly uneasy \u2013 but it does seem to scan quite well with how I have now come to think about (national) identity after two decades of studying \u2018religion\u2019. \u2018My land\u2019s only borders lie around my heart\u2019 because, just like any other aspect of my \u201cidentity\u201d, my (Northern) Irishness isn\u2019t a stable essence, but rather it is the product of a series of \u201coperational acts of identification\u201d (Bayart 2005: 92).<\/p>\n

And this aspect of identity is something we could all do with remembering as we interact with the never-ending cycle of news out there in the real world, whether we are considering which bathrooms people can or can\u2019t use, what factors have affected police officers\u2019 decision-making when making an arrest, or what team to support at the football World Cup.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bayart, Jean-Fran\u00e7ois (2005). The Illusion of Cultural Identity<\/em>. London: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd.<\/p>\n

Certeau, Michel de (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life<\/em>. Translated by Steven F. Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press.<\/p>\n

Cotter, C. R. (2017), \u2018You\u2019re Greek? Well \u2026 I\u2019m (Northern) Irish, Kind\u2019a\u2019, in R. T. McCutcheon (ed.), Fabricating Identities<\/em>, 34\u201341. Sheffield: Equinox.<\/p>\n

Hughes, Aaron W. (2015). Islam and the Tyranny of Authenticity: An Inquiry into Disciplinary Apologetics and Self-Deception<\/em>. Sheffield: Equinox.<\/p>\n

Martin, Craig (2010). Masking Hegemony: A Genealogy of Liberalism, Religion and the Private Sphere<\/em>. London: Routledge.<\/p>\n

Knott, Kim (2005). The Location of Religion: A Spatial Analysis<\/em>. London and Oakville CT: Equinox.<\/p>\n

Rice, Tim, Benny Andersson, and Bjorn Ulvaeus (1986). Selections from Chess Songbook<\/em>. Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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