Resumen de The Stormont House Agreement and the New Politics of Storytelling in Northern Ireland

Cillian McGrattan

• This article explores recent proposals to deal with the past in Northern Ireland. Focusing, in particular, on the 2014 Stormont House Agreement, I argue that it is possible to begin to discern a movement within policy design to respond proactively to what I term a new politics of storytelling. This consists of an emphasis on testimony-work as a means of dealing with unresolved legacies relating to the Troubles. I suggest that that new politics lies at the centre of the proposed legislation but that it could give rise to a range of potential unintended consequences. An alternative to dealing with the past is also contained in the legislation based on historical and forensic methodologies that could act as a counterweight to those problems that I associate with the storytelling approach.