Rachel ANDREWS, National University of Ireland, Galway , Ireland
Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland are former carceral sites, where women were hidden from society. These women and their children have also not been remembered in death, as evidenced by of the discovery of the unmarked children’s grave of around 800 children at the former Tuam Mother and Baby Home, Co Galway, Ireland, in 2014 (Corless, 2012). Since this discovery was officially confirmed, in March 2017, former residents and relatives of those of the Home have sought opportunities to create a series of amateur memorials and interventions at the gravesite, (re)asserting their rights to a space (Jonker and Till, 2009) that has been described by former inmates as “a prison” (Barry, 2017).
The article will consider the silent vigil in Tuam, on 26 August 2018, held to coincide with the first papal visit to Ireland in nearly 40 years. The vigil, which involved the speaking aloud the names of the dead children (Irish Times, 2018), represented a many-voiced narrative, an act of public reclaiming at the Tuam site. The essay argues it was also a critical act of memory work (Till, 2005) with those who were once forgotten now allowed to be remembered and found.
Mots clés : Memory|Hauntology |Space |Mapping |Trauma
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