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

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.