Agents of national memory revisited: Women writing prison in the Irish Civil War

By James Little
Published in Memory Studies, January 2025.
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Abstract

This article investigates how the role of archival texts as agents of memory requires memory scholars to expand the concept of agency beyond human agency. Revisiting Aguilar’s and Budrytė’s concept of human individuals as ‘agents of memory’, it draws on actor–network theory, colonial archive studies and book history to track the shifting ‘memory capital’ of forgotten archival texts. Taking as its case study the jail writings created by female prisoners during the Irish Civil War, the article contends that taking into account archival texts – as well as their creators – as agents of memory can provide a richer understanding of how cultural memory is created, stored, forgotten and – sometimes – reanimated in the wake of national conflict.