Depoliticisation and the post-conflict state in Northern Ireland : sovereignty, citizenship and universality

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the transformation of the state in Northern Ireland (NI) and what is at stake politically in that transformation. More specifically, it is an empirically grounded social-theoretical investigation into the relationship between state universality and depoliticisation in the transformation of the NI state. I address this question by investigating historical depoliticisation, sovereignty and citizenship. I am interested in a specific dimension of the state: the ‘idea of the state’. This refers to the production of the symbolic identity of the state such that the state is disassociated from any particular group, raising it to the level of universality. I thus focus on the way in which the identity and the universality of the post-GFA state are constructed. In terms of what is at stake politically, I analyse a process of what I call depoliticisation in the transformations under investigation. I draw on the work of Alan Badiou (2005; 2010) and Jacques Ranciere (1998; 2001), both of whom allow us to conceptualise the specificity of politics and therefore to clearly conceptualise depoliticisation. Depoliticisation is conceptualised in two senses. On the one hand, depoliticisation refers to the reduction of political subjectivity to the logic of identification, a move which eliminates the universal dimension of political subjectivity. On the other hand, depoliticisation refers to the monopolisation of universality by the state.