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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the evolution of anti-nostalgia – a mode of remembrance that Emilie Pine (2011) argues demarcates the past from the present by constructing the former as a site of trauma and the latter as an idealised space of progress – in the years after Ireland’s 2018 abortion referendum.

Paper long abstract:

On 25th May 2018, the Irish public voted overwhelmingly to repeal the Eighth Amendment, overturning the country’s near-total ban on abortion. Popular reporting at the time often framed this result as a watershed moment: proof of Ireland’s “coming-of-age” as a secular, modern nation and “the final nail in the coffin” of Catholic Ireland. Speaking to Repeal supporters in 2021-22, however, many were sceptical about these narratives of cultural renewal and rebirth. In this paper, I examine this scepticism through the lens of anti-nostalgia. Emilie Pine (2011) defines anti-nostalgia as a mode of remembrance that demarcates the past from the present by constructing the former as a site of trauma and the latter as an idealised space of progress and prosperity. By examining the persistence and evolution of anti-nostalgia in the years since the abortion referendum, my paper demonstrates how such temporal demarcations, which rhetorically powerful, are difficult to maintain in practice. I do this by analysing the experiences of three Irish women whose votes for Repeal were informed, to varying degrees, by anti-nostalgic desires for cultural transformation that have yet to be fulfilled. Taken together, these accounts point to a national project of historical reckoning that is still very much ongoing, and a past that continues to bleed into the present and reshape visions of the future. The paper also highlights the analytical importance of attending to the afterlives of referenda, and how their historicising and temporalising work can evolve over time.