Trans-Generational Memory: Narratives of World Wars in Post-Conflict Northern Ireland

People situate their personal lives in a macro history through crafting trans-generational narratives. Trans-generational historical narrative is simultaneously about personal micro interactions and emotions, and about the large process of macro history. It lies between ‘small’ and ‘big’ narrative spheres and plays an important role in the formation of the ethnic, national and cultural identities of individuals. By examining carefully this type of autobiography, collective social experience and large cause-effect relationships in social processes that are beyond personal will and control can be explored. This is what Charles Tilly encourages narrative researchers to do. This paper analyses World War stories told by two persons living in post-conflict Northern Ireland who were born after the end of the Second World War. It shows that the World War experiences of the storytellers’ parents or ancestors, and the storytellers’ own experiences during and after the conflict, are interwoven to form a macro historical consciousness. In these narratives, the past is evoked to become a basis for the storyteller's life to be re-interpreted. These are narrative practices in which an individual becomes a historical subject by telling his or her own life: in one sense, becoming subject to the macro memory framework, and in another sense, becoming a subject of the practice of crafting history.