Transitional optics: Exploring liminal spaces after conflict

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to engage in a new conceptualisation of liminality, as it applies to space and place in societies emerging from conflict but not yet at peace. We adopt a case study approach of two urban environments: Derry/Londonderry, a city that experienced acute levels of violence during the Northern Ireland conflict, and Bilbao, the largest city in the Basque Country, which has been at the crux of the cultural and economic struggle for Basque independence. The visual, built environment has been significantly reconfigured in both cities to communicate the transition from conflict. Yet the optics of peacebuilding does not necessarily reflect the experiences of communities as they move through complex processes. A more nuanced and critical reading of the urban environment often reveals stagnation within peace processes and the existence of liminal, inbetween spaces. This paper suggests that ‘transitional optics’ in societies moving out of conflict can physically illuminate the complex nature of building peace, and argues that the idea of permanent liminality can offer new ways of understanding the ways in which transitional processes can become trapped. An ‘end-point’ is not always achievable, or perhaps, for some, desirable. The characteristics of permanent liminality can be identified in three main areas: political imagery, physical regeneration and public space as a conflict arena.

It Never Ends: Vulnerable Consumers’ Experiences of Persistent Liminality and Resource (Mis)Integration

“…Although liminality is characteristically contingent and temporary, paradoxically, it can become permanent in certain instances (Appau, Ozanne, and Klein 2020) where transition is impossible or unsuccessful (Murphy and McDowell 2019). To characterize such an enduring form of liminality, Appau, Ozanne, and Klein (2020, p. 167) propose the term permanent liminality, which describes “transitions that can span years and even a lifetime with no anticipated end.” Permanent liminality comprises a social space “when a temporary suspension of the normal, everyday, taken-for-granted state of affairs becomes permanent” (Szakolczai 2009, p. 233).…”

Troubling places: Walking the “troubling remnants” of post‐conflict space

“…2 Ebrington was a British army base and command centre during the Troubles that is presently undergoing a state-led mixed-use redevelopment, though one beset by lengthy delays and partially fulfilled ambitions. This transition renders Ebrington particularly relevant to contemporary policy challenges in post-conflict contexts, especially over the creation of "shared space" and the mobilisation of heritage for regeneration and conflict transformation (Doak, 2020;Murphy & McDowell, 2019). McClelland employs non-directive one-to-one walks with local residents, business owners, and regeneration professionals, allowing them to lead the way through a familiar place.…”

“…Public space in Northern Ireland is striated with the co‐presence of the material, political, and cultural semiotics of post‐conflict transition, spatial regeneration, and/or urban renewal and the persistent troubling remnants and spectral traces of the Troubles. Murphy and McDowell argue these spatial co‐presences must be examined with “transitional optics” if Northern Ireland is to break free of “permanent liminality,” of being perpetually “stuck between a violent past and a future which is still emergent” (2019, p. 2).…”

‘We have long memories in this area’: Ulster Defence Regiment place-memory along the Irish border

“…are dismissed as anachronistic and can become fixed in permanent liminality’ (Mueller-Hirth, 2017: 203). Murphy and McDowell (2019) also mobilise ‘permanent liminality’ to argue for a new ‘transitional optics’ that can subvert ways of viewing post-conflict space and the ways in which people act, move and assert interests within that space. Castillejo-Cuellar (2014) examines transitional legal initiatives, arguing that they work to circumscribe the temporal frame through which longue durée processes of structural violence are enacted on marginalised people.…”