All's fair in love and war? Representations of prison life in 'Silent Grace'

Abstract

This article investigates the textual strategies with which Maeve Murphy's Silent Grace addresses viewers in contemporary Northern Ireland. Borrowing Eric Santner's concept of 'narrative fetishism', the analysis examines how the film's representation of the past obscures the historical realities experienced by female political prisoners in Armagh jail in the late 1970s and early 1980s. From this standpoint, its ethical relation to historical 'truth' and responsibilities to its local audience are debated. [author's abstract]