Embodied and Remembered Lives

Abstract

This article approaches the theme of 'life and narrative' from the perspective of cultural memory studies and argues for a less individualized approach to the analysis of narrative self-fashioning. It uses the case of Bobby Sands, who died on hunger strike in Northern Ireland in 1981, as an example of the complex interactions between embodied and remembered lives, and between individual and collective identities. It shows how Sands modeled himself on the remembered lives of predecessors within the Republican tradition and how he, in turn, has been memorialized as an icon of that tradition.