Dorothy Hunter: Tethering Time: Chronopolitics and Extractive Capital in Northern Ireland

 

Advisor/tutor: Ana Teixeira Pinto

August 2021

Abstract

Northern Ireland’s strange temporality is often considered only in terms of its relationship to its past, and therefore an unavoidable consequence of the post-conflict condition. Its relationship to landscapes of time in modernity and the nation-statist international system is, however, pertinent to its chronopolitical position. This thesis examines the cyclical temporality of Northern Ireland in the political sphere, the challenges it faces in the inscription of national identities in Brexit, and its attempt to “catch up” to the neoliberal western landscape and the dying liberal international order through the means of extractive capital. In so doing, the long-lost peace dividend can (only ostensibly) be achieved.