The Cartographies of Violence

Belfast's Resurrection Man

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4476216
AutoresNuala C Johnson (Queen's University Belfast, autor de correspondencia)
Año1999
Volumen17
Número6
Páginas723-736
Fecha de publicación1999-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaEnvironment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1068/d170723
OpenAlexW1989028546
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas10
Referencias citadas17

In this paper I seek to examine the relationships between fiction, violence, and the geographical imagination through an analysis of Eoin McNamee's debut novel Resurrection Man. In dealing with a universal theme-the will to kill-but set in 1970s Belfast and narrating the existential journey of a gang of Loyalist killers in their campaign of violence across the city, I suggest that this novel presents the modern city and the characters who inhabit its streets as individuals journeying through familiar and alien territories in search of a stable set of identities. Through an examination of the narrative style employed by McNamee-the structural devices, the metaphorical engagements, the linguistic tropes-I suggest that the novel reads the city beyond the scientific or social-scientific imagination. For geographers interested in the connections between cities, violence, and modernity, the novel invites us to establish a dialogic relationship with the literary text not to advance our own theories but to take seriously those which in structure, form, and content are radically different to our own

Aesthetics · Alien · Art · Dialogic · Epistemology · Existentialism · Literature · Modernity · Narrative · Sociology · Theme (computing · History · Irish and British Studies · Philippine History and Culture · Philosophy · Urban Planning and Governance