Where Did It All Go Wrong? Performing Class in Belfast

This paper explores iconic working class figures from the north of Ireland (Best, Higgins, the Titanic). The commodification of the reputations of those figures by tourism is considered in terms of a romanticisation of heroic lost causes, while the tensions emerging as such figures appear across a range of media (television, theatre, marketing, news media, and contemporary folk art) are also considered. The contradictions of popular aesthetics are both animating and debilitating for working class communities in Northern Ireland. By turns nostalgic and moving, validating and incriminating. This paper will explore these contradictions from a working class perspective and consider the issues at stake in the performance of class identity in a country famous for its lack of class politics.