Offaly History lecture on Civil War takes place tonight

THE grand daughter of leading War of Independence and Civil War figure, Frank Aiken will give this month's Offaly History Lecture.

Dr Síobhra Aiken (Queen’s University Belfast) talk entitled “Was there a silence about the Irish Civil War” will be given tonight (Monday, April 17) at 8pm in Offaly History Centre, Bury Quay, Tullamore.

People can attend in person or watch via zoom. For the zoom link:  email  info@offalyhistory.com

This speaker's book  Spiritual Wounds  ‘challenges the widespread belief that the contentious events of the Irish Civil War (1922–23) were covered in a total blanket of silence. The book uncovers an archive of published testimonies by pro- and anti-Treaty men and women, written in both English and Irish. Most of the testimonies discussed were produced in the 1920s and 1930s, and nearly all have been overlooked in historical study to date.

Revolutionaries went to great lengths to testify  to the ‘spiritual wounds’ of civil war:  they adopted fictionalised disguises,  located their writings in other places  or periods of time, and found shelter  behind pen names. This wealth of  published testimony reveals that  the silence of the Irish Civil War was  not necessarily a result of revolutionaries’  inability to speak, but rather reflects  the unwillingness of official memory  makers to listen to the stories of civil  war veterans.’

The jacket of  Spiritual Wounds  is of special interest being a portrait of Catalina Bulfin McBride. 

Síobhra Aiken  is a lecturer in Queen’s University Belfast. A former Fulbright Scholar, her publications include  The Men Will Talk to Me: Ernie O’Malley’s Interviews with the Northern Divisions  (Merrion Press, 2018) and  An Chuid Eile Díom Féin: Aistí le Máirtín Ó Direáin  (Cló Iar-Chonnacht, 2018).  Spiritual Wounds  is based on her doctoral research at NUI Galway, which was awarded the American Conference for Irish Studies Adele Dalsimer Prize for Distinguished Dissertation 2021. She is a regular contributor to centenary debates on television and radio. 

Praise for  Spiritual Wounds

‘This is an original, timely, fresh and significant work.’ –  Brian Hanley,  Assistant Professor in Twentieth-Century Irish History, Trinity College Dublin

‘Spiritual Wounds  is a brilliant book that unsettles the notion of silence about the Irish Civil War…The analysis is sharp and insightful, resulting in a vividly written study that challenges critics to reconsider the relationships between literature, memory and history.’ –  Oona Frawley, editor of  Women and the Decade of Commemorations  and author of  Flight

‘An excellent literary and historical review of our responses to the civil war.’ –  Alan Titley,  Emeritus Professor of Modern Irish, University College Cork

‘A path-breaking study, which brilliantly exposes the blind spots of historical scholarship on the legacies of the Irish Civil War…Síobhra Aiken’s compelling exploration of how reticence was confronted by a tenacious unwillingness to forget is an innovative historiographical intervention that stands out among the publications of the Decade of Centenaries.’ –  Guy Beiner, author of  Remembering the Year of the French  and  Forgetful Remembrance

Books of the Year 2022 – ‘Síobhra Aiken’s  Spiritual Wounds  recovers a mass of prose fiction and memoirs written by survivors of the Civil War. She demonstrates that the trauma of conflict did not, as is often asserted, suppress discussion, but encouraged it, creating richer deposit of testimony (notably about the experience of women) than historians have assumed. –  John Kerrigan,  Times Literary Supplement 

‘What struck me most upon completing  Spiritual Wounds  was how Aiken generously offers up her own lexicon and approaches to Irish Studies as an interdisciplinary field more broadly. Her study provides a bilingual model for researchers, at any stage of their career, to query truisms, destabilise silos, and infuse a deep ethic of care towards both the practices that create, and the subjects of, academic investigation.’ –  Gabrielle Kathleen Machnik-Kekesi,  Journal of Irish Studies