PG445 – THE ETHICS OF MEMORY IN A VIOLENT WORLD

How Are Our GirlsRemembered?

An Exploration of the Relationship between Memory, Justice, andReconciliation Focusing on the Social Memory of the Magdalene

Laundries.

Kate Higgins-Jackson11/13/2013

“Memory is constitutive of the human person. Biologically

we are memory, our DNA inherited from a complex set of

ancestral cells.” 1 Memory explains how we learn and retain

information and experiences. The memory of experiences,

whether good or bad, decisively shapes and attributes to

forming identity.2 Our identity is formed in two ways:

“inwardly, in our own self-perception… [and] outwardly, in the

way others perceive us, we are what others remember about us”3

[Author’s emphasis] However, if memories are forgotten or

hidden from us then a part of our identity is also forgotten.

This forgetting can be especially disabling for the victims of

traumatic events, whose identity can be significantly altered.

When the alteration is then ignored or outright denied the

victim can be left without recognition. Looking at the

Magdalene Laundries as a case study, this essay will explore

1 Ethna Regan, Theology and the Boundary Discourse of Human Rights (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2010), 100.

2 Miroslav Volf, The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World (Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006), 24.

3 Volf, The End of Memory, 24.1

the relationship between memory, justice, and reconciliation

by viewing memory as healing, the need for acknowledgement and

accountability; memory as solidarity, the call on Irish

citizens to recognise their involvement, and finally; memory

as forgetting, the need for both society and victims to move

on. This essay will go on to explain the time and place and

under what circumstances, if any, that ‘forgetting’ an event

may be permitted. "There are biological, psychological,

spiritual, cultural, and political dimensions to human memory;

and despite many explanatory models of memory, it is difficult

to describe exactly how this constitutive dimensions works.”4

Most explanatory frameworks have tended to focus on just one

form of confinement; as a result, the developed explanations

may fit the experience of one form of institution but fail to

work universally. Another issue is that some of these

interpretations restrict their focus to “the pre-independence

period or confine themselves to an analysis of either the role

of the state or the Church (rarely both, and seldom

recognising the part played by the family).”5 Looking at all

4 Regan, 100. 5 Eoin O’Sullivan and Ian O’Donnell, Coercive Confinement in Ireland: Patients,

Prisoners and Penitents (Manchester: Manchester University Press: 2012), 262.

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three contributors: state, church, and family, this essay

purposes that we have “a moral obligation to remember

truthfully”.6 [author’s emphasis] If this statement is correct

then we not only have a moral obligation to remember the

events but also all the parties that were at fault or

involved. There is a notable absence of official

historiography in relation to the Magdalen Laundries;

religious orders, who ran the asylums, deny access to their

archival records.7 Given that there is little access to

official records of the Magdalen Laundries, it is important to

note that each memory that is retold is done so from a

particular perspective and this can sometimes alter the

validity of the memory. This essay is not denying the abuse

that some victims suffered, however, it will attempt to show

how Irish society as a whole was also responsible. Miroslav

Volf emphasises that reconciling to memories of the past can

begin the process of justice. Justice, for both individuals

and society, is, to our knowledge, the only means of advancing

the common good for all.

6 Volf, The End of Memory, 51.7 Religious congregations refuse access to their archival records:

‘penitent’ registers and convent annals-of women entering asylums after 1900. James Smith, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries and the Nation’s Architectureof Containment (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), xvi.

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The common good, as considered in this essay, is not an

objective goal, rather it is similar to Catholic social

teaching that argues “the common good is a state of the

system- the sum total appropriate institutional arrangements

that guarantee, enable and facilitate human and social

flourishing… while the state has important roles to play in

defining and promoting the common good, it enjoys no monopoly

on either its definition or embodiment.”8 In the Christian

context, the common good is angled towards God because God is

believed to be the source of all goodness. Positioning the

common good in this way requires of the Christian a further

consideration; for to love God is to love his creations. “Men

and women are created in God’s image and by virtue of that are

inclined to all that which is good.”9 Every person created by

God has a fundamental human dignity, and is equal when it

comes to inclusion in the common good. Consequently the

Christian approach has a double commandment- to love God and

to love ones neighbours as brothers and sisters. This

definition, thereby excludes the utilitarian formula, the

8 William A. Dyrness and Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Global Dictionary of Theology: A Resource for the Worldwide Church (USA/London, Nottingham: Inter-Varsity Press, 2009), 138.

9 Douglas W. Kmiec, Can a Catholic Support Him?(The University of California: Overlook Press, 2008), 61.

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greatest possible happiness for the greatest number of people,

as a means of understanding the common good. Historically, the

common good was considered under natural-law theory,

associated with figures such as Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas,

to be “the sum total of conditions that help people to pursue

human flourishing.”10 While agreeing with this objective,

pursuing human flourishing, this essay rejects Aristotle’s

Nicomachean Ethics argument which considers human life to be good

when it is orientated toward ends that are themselves good.11 A

good end cannot be the ultimate goal for a Christian because

“human beings flourish and are truly happy when they centre

their lives on God”.12 In a wider context, “the flourishing of

each was tied to the flourishing of all and the flourishing of

all tied to the flourishing of each”.13 Flourishing goes beyond

mere survival, and so within societal systems there must be in

place that allows flourishing to happen. By definition, the

Magdalene Laundries failed to support human flourishing

10 Samuel Gregg and James Harold, “St. Andrews Studies in Philosophy and Public Affairs”, Vol. 19 in Natural Law, Economics and the Common Good : Perspectives from Natural Law (Luton, Bedfordshire: Andrews UK, 2012), 12.

11 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962), 1094b.12 Miroslav Volf, A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good

(Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2011), 58.13 Volf, A Public Faith, 59.

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because they did not operate a system that allowed for

emotional and psychological growth.

To understand how the laundry events occurred, we must

form a cultural context of Ireland at the time. Having

achieved independence, the new Irish state wished to establish

a unique identity that would represent its new freedom. The

state, given the persuasion of the vast majority of the

public, aligned itself to presenting a national identity of

Catholic ideology and moral purity. Tom Inglis claims

Ireland’s “obsession with sexual purity was connected to both

cultural and material interest: to an attempt by Catholics to

attain a symbolic victory over their protestant English

colonizers by demonstrating their moral superiority”14 The

level of moral purity expected in society was unrealistic, and

so the state either continued to support or created new

institutions that would coincide with the state’s belief in

morality by church teaching.15 In the beginning, the asylums

14 Tom Inglis, "Origins and Legacies of Irish Prudery: Sexuality and Social Control in Modern Ireland" in Éire-Ireland vol. 40:2 (Ireland: Irish-American Cultural Institute, 2005), 23.

15 Catholic congregations operated reformatory schools, Magdalene Homes, Mother and Baby Homes, orphanages, and industrial schools. Allthese organisations, with the exception of the Mother and Baby Homes,predated the establishment of the Irish Free State. O’Sullivan and O’Donnell, 268.

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were meant to rehabilitate women back into society, but by the

early twentieth century the homes had become increasingly

prison-like. Magdalen laundries were workhouses in which the

state incarcerated Irish women who were perceived to be a

threat to the moral fibre of society. As the 19th century came

to an end, the number of prostitutes in Ireland was

drastically decreasing. This limited the number of women who

were being forced into the laundries, because only prostitutes

were seen as deviant enough from the sexual standards to be

admitted. The decrease posed a threat to the previously

profitable laundries. In order for the laundries to continue

their mission and remain a profitable asset to both Church and

state, a broader definition of who should be admitted to the

laundries was established. Since there were fewer prostitutes

in need of “rescuing”, the asylums turned their attention to

other sexual deviants: “unmarried mothers, rape victims,

sexually active singletons, adulterers, and women who were

predisposed to sin due their above average attractiveness or

delicacy of mind; the final selection here included women

suffering with mental disabilities”.16 In most homes, the women

16 Maria Luddy, “Abandoned Women and Bad Characters: Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century Ireland” in Women’s History Review Vol.6 No. 4 (Routledge: Taylor and Francis Group, 1997), 499, published online

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were required to carry out hard physical labor, received no

official sentences, had no mandated release dates, and were

forced to give up their individual identities and assume new

names for the length of their incarceration. The women were

named Magdalens to conjure up the traditional image of the

sinner, Mary Magdalene; their hard labour and the washing of

clothes was supposedly to symbolize a spiritual rebirth. They

endured a daily regimen that included long periods of prayer

and enforced silence.17 Although the worked forced upon these

women was completely inappropriate, “it can be misleading to

apply today’s standards to yesterday’s events; that tougher

treatment reflected rougher times and the threshold for

accepting harsh treatment has been raised over time. Not to

recognise this is to paint too bleak a picture of the

past.”18Recognising the mental attitudes that existed in

society is also crucial in remembering correctly the events of

the laundries. 2006, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09612029700200157#.UrBUU3GvnIU.

17 Henry McDonald, “Ireland Finally Admits State Collusion in MagdaleneLaundry System” in The Guardian (Dublin: The Guardian, 2013), accessed 25 November, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/feb/05/ireland-magdalene-laundry-system-apology?INTCMP=SRCH.

18 Marianne Moore, “Social Control or Protection of the Child? the Debates on Industrial Schools Act 1857-1894” in Journal of Family History vol. 33 issue 4(UK: Sage Publications Ltd, 2008), 359-87.

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When someone said the term “Magdalene Laundries” just

seven years ago, the general public would have attributed all

the blame for this traumatic event to the church, but since

2009 there has been a shift of accountability.19 Responsibility

has been equally attributed to the state in light of new

evidence. When we remember a traumatic event it is important

that all the evidence is taken into consideration, so why did

the state evade responsibility for so long? Did people not

know of the state’s involvement or were victims simply mis-

remembering the facts due to their ordeals? And if the state’s

involvement was forgotten what else have we forgotten about

this event? These questions are the backdrop to my discussion

of the state as a key player in the trauma of the laundries.

One could attempt to argue that the state was unaware of the

asylums deterioration, but that would simply be incorrect. In

1930, the state commissioned the Carrigan Report, the report

was to review sections of the Criminal Law Amendment Acts of

1880 to 1885, focusing on “the age of consent…and for new

19 The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, also known as the Ryan Commission, was established in 2006. In April 2009, it published a 2,000 page report that affirmed claims from hundreds of Irish residents that they were abused between the 1930s and 1990s in state administered and church-run institutes that were meant to protect thepoor and vulnerable members of society. http://www.childabusecommission.ie/index.html. Accessed 25, November 2013.

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legislation to deal with juvenile prostitution”20 The results

of the report found an alarming rise in sexual crime including

rape and infanticide, that “presented a picture of Ireland

which was the reverse image of the idealised, pious country of

the Eucharistic Congress”.21 In the cases involving a criminal

act, Diarmaid Ferriter states that less than 15% of these

cases were actually prosecuted and even less were convicted,

much of this was because of the anxiety of parents to keep

them secret and protect the children from the difficulty of a

public court appearance.22 The Department of Justice, upon

evaluating the shocking report, responded with stoic

criticism.23 The report “was a formative moment in establishing

an official state attitude toward ‘sexual immorality’” and the

subsequent legislation authorised the nation’s containment

culture.24 However, the most significant reaction by the

Department of Justice was the prompt decision to conceal the

report, refusing to release it to public debate. This

20 Diarmaid Ferriter, Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Ireland (London: Profile Books Ltd, 2009), 134.21 Dermot Keogh, “Twentieth-century Ireland: Nation and State” in New

Gill history of Ireland Vol. 6 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1994), 71.22 Ferrier, 138.23 The competence of the Committee’s judicial experience, as well as

its “impartiality” was questioned. Smith, 6. 24 Ibid., 2.

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concealment shows the level of trepidation of releasing such

damning evidence against Irish national identity by the

fledgling church-government state. Additionally, a new

government established in 1932 also failed to act on the

findings of the report. Subsequently, the report faded into

obscurity until the Criminal Law Amendment Act (1935) and the

Dance Hall Act (1935) were legislated.25 Obviously, the state

evaded responsibility for so long because they actively denied

any knowledge of wrongdoing in the public sphere.

As with the aforementioned legislation, if a trauma is

not remembered or named it fades into obscurity. The victim of

the trauma is not recognised and neither is the persecutor. It

is here that Volf claims “a double injustice occurs-the first

when the original deed is done and the second when it

disappears”.26 The state intentionally supported a double

injustice by denying the women of the laundries a voice.

Victims strive to have their trauma recognised because, as

this essay as stated above, it becomes an intrinsic part of

the person’s identity. Public acknowledgement can therefore

restore the civic and human dignity to victims. “Since the

25 Ibid., 8.26 Volf, End of Memory, 29.

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public remembering of wrongs is an act that acknowledges them,

it is therefore also an act of justice.”27 Acknowledgement,

although an element of justice, does not promote

reconciliation or peace. Instead, it could fuel resentment

because victims, having been heard, now feel they have a right

to hold the parties involved accountable.28 Nigel Bigger, in

his essay Making Peace or Doing Justice: Must We Choose, proposed that

one way to elevated the tension between justice and peace is

to simply negate the matter and forget it every happened. This

has the advantage of not perpetuating resentments or

continuing an air of mistrust in society. In some instances,

this approach has advantages but Bigger claims that overall

this is not the norm. He makes three clear points as to why he

believes this: forgetting does not do justice to the victims

who can never forget, the government by allowing an event to

be forgotten does not allow justice for these victims and

thereby fails in its basic political duties, and thirdly

“grievances without redress tend to fester”.29 By burying the

27 Ibid.28 See Joe Egan, “From Misery to Hope: Encountering God in the Abyss of

Suffering” in Studies in Theology, Society and Culture Vol. 5, eds. Declan Marmion, Gesa Thiessen and Norbert Hintersteiner (Oxford/New York: Peter Lang, 2010).

29 Nigel Bigger, “Making Peace or Doing Justice: Must We Choose” in Burying the Past: Making Peace and Doing Justice After Civil Conflict ed. Nigel Bigger (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2003), 5.

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Carrigan Report and refusing to do justice for victims, the

Irish government actively failed in its duty to the people.

The government allowed victims of abuse to suffer and to

fester hatred in silence. Victims could have felt abandoned

since no distinct perpetrator was identified; because of this

victims indiscriminately directed their anger at authoritative

structures. The church was the main target of victims’ rage,

but a deep mistrust for the state, having failed in its

protective duties, also arose. The state denied any

responsibility for the events, so victims and general society

perceived the state as equally unable to protect future

victims.30 The members of society, whom also mistrust the

government because of its involvement, are called the

“indirect victims”. Indirect victims can include both the

wider community and the persecutors next victim.

Given that the vast majority of state institutions,

including the Magdalene Laundries, were run by religious

congregations, it is not surprising that explanations for the

institute’s existence have tended to focus on the role of the

Church.31 We must be very careful in allocating blame not to

30 Ibid, 5.31 O’Sullivan and O’Donnell, 265.

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absolve those who, at first glance, do not seem connected

because their facilitation of the institutes makes them just

as culpable. While linking the role of the church and the role

of the state, four very clear explanations emerge for why the

church undertook the burden of providing social services,

particularly for women and children: “(1) the Irish state was

unwilling to undertake the development of a range of welfare

services itself and the religious took up the slack; (2) the

state was unable to develop welfare infrastructure due to the

poor economic conditions facing the country after

independence; (3) the state was reluctant to get involved in

running these services as they were seen as the preserve of

the Church, and thus the state failed in its obligations; and

(4) the state only intervened in particular areas of social

policy, primarily those that impacted on the middle class and

was reluctant to intervene in services for the poor”.3233 It is

true that horrific cruelty was committed in these

institutions, but the larger reason as to why the cruelty

occurred is essential in gaining a complete picture of the

laundries. The obligation to act justly by remembering

32 Ibid., 267.33 Keogh, 71-3.

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truthfully, as with remembering the laundries, is most acute

in cases that involve one party’s violation of another.34 [author’s

emphasis] This essay has already shown how the state failed in

its duty to the people by neglecting to provide welfare

service and by failing to recognise the abuse occurring in the

laundries but why did the laundries revert from rehabilitative

centres in the nineteenth-century to centres of long-term and

sometimes lifelong incarceration after Irish independence? One

explanation is that, similar to Irish society and its

political leaders who adhered firmly to the class system, “the

religious who managed the industrial schools until the late

sixties failed to treat the children with due respect because

these same religious were trapped within the social class

structure, and the gospel values did not penetrate the secular

value systems”.35 Although these services were provided by the

Church with the best intentions ultimately “the institutions

shared a common aim: they wished to make respectable working

class adults from rough working class youth”.36

34 Volf, End of Memory, 55. 35 Margret Lee, “Searching for Reasons: A Former Sister of Mercy Looks

Back” in Responding to The Ryan Report ed. Tony Flannery (Dublin: The Columba Press, 2009), 55.

36 Barry M. Coldrey, “A Mixture of Caring and Corruption: Church Orphanages and Industrial Schools” in Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review vol. 89 (Ireland: Indiana University, 2009), 44.

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Holding the church and state solely responsible for the

events that transpired in the laundries is perhaps the most

popular attitude; much of this perception can be attributed to

the growing interest and representation of the Magdalene

laundries in the media, since the early 1990s. Peter Mullan’s

2002 film The Magdalene Sisters reinforced the stereotype of nuns

as evil, money-grabbing, malicious and abusive. The film

presents the nuns as the primary agents of abuse and this idea

has come to represent the true picture of life in the

laundries. As Leanne McCormick explains this makes it

difficult for anyone, including academics, to offer any

alternative position because to do so is seen as condoning the

brutalities of the institution and, moreover the abuse of

power by the Church.37 However, modern society forgets the

enormous input communities and families had in forming an

oppressive environment that perpetuated the incarceration of

young women and children. If we attribute what happened “in

the past as belonging to the past that has nothing to do with

us; to demonise individual nuns and clerics or whole religious

orders and blame ‘the Church’ for what happened; to distance

37 Leanne McCormick, Regulating Sexuality: Women in Twentieth-Century Northern Ireland(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), 68.

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ourselves from it and exonerate ourselves” 38, we act simply

self-righteously and we deny “what happened was the collective

responsibility of society.”39 If we are to remember truthfully

and correctly we must acknowledge our involvement because only

then can reconcile to the trauma we created and establish

justice for what happened. The rural fundamentalist mind-set

of both families and local society played a huge part in

creating a concept of communal shame.40 Women who transgressed

society’s sexual norm needed to be removed from the community

to prevent shame. Similarly, the offspring of such

transgressions needed to be removed and disassociated from the

family. This mind-set caused families to avoid the persecution

of criminals that was mention earlier. The concept of moral

purity advocated by the state and Church was upheld rigorously

by families, who punished any behaviour deemed deviant.

According to O’Sullivan and O’Donnell, any behaviour perceived

38 Stanislaus Kennedy, “Child Care in Ireland” in The Furrow vol. 47:5 (Kildare: St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, 1996), 270.

39 Kennedy, 270. 40 Rural fundamentalism glorifies rural life, seeing it as the

repository of clean living, family values and community stability. Ittherefore goes against, what are seen as, excessive changes in the urban society. This mind set was adopted by citizens of the new IrishFree State because it appeared to celebrate values that were important before Ireland’s colonization. See Conrad M. Arensberg and Solon T. Kimball, Family and Community in Ireland, 3rd ed. (Clare: 2001).

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outside of the social norms was met with demands of

repentance, as well as concealment: “together with connivance

and rejection, this was enough to keep them out of sight even

when the legal basis for their detention was ambiguous or non-

existent”. 41 The mind-set was so conditioned into society that

victims of it would cooperate even when it went against their

own self-preservation: “if the doors had been left open it is

likely that many of those in convents, hospitals and other

non-criminal-justice institutions would have stayed put”.42

Although guilty of many crimes, Catholic congregations never

actively sought individuals to confine; rather these

institutions continued to operate by the support of the

general public. “The asylums offered an alternative for

families who felt ashamed by their daughters’ behaviour.

However, as many parents in the same position made the

decision not to place their daughters in homes, the Catholic

Church cannot be held entirely accountable or held responsible

for forcing parents to utilise the institutions.”43

Communities, instead of tackling the issues that caused the

unwanted circumstances, scapegoated unmarried mothers and hid

41 O’Sullivan and O’Donnell, 256.42 Ibid.43 McCormick, 69.

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them from view as a way to disguise their own shame at their

failing society. On an individual level, poorer members of

society used the institutes as a way to remove the burden of

troublesome members of the family. Ireland by prohibiting the

sale of contraception and the new cash economy undercutting

the agricultural industry meant increasingly more families had

far too many children then they could afford and institutions

were a means of elevating pressure on families. “[T]hat

Catholic Ireland could allow the institutionalised physical

and sexual abuse that occurred in so many of our institutions

for over six decades raises questions about the quality of our

Catholicism… we need to recognise the bad theology that was

such a negative feature of our religion, unquestioned for

centuries, and face up to the challenge of renewal”44

This essay has emphasised the need to remember

truthfully, for a Christian this is simply to follow the ninth

commandment – “You shall not bear false witness!” (Exodus

20:16), but human nature is full of grey areas that do not

support hard and fast rules. A natural example is when to tell

the truth would result in significant harm to you or others;

44 Sean Fagan, “The Abuse and our Bad Theology” in Responding to The Ryan Report ed. Tony Flannery (Dublin: The Columba Press, 2009), 24.

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but these are generally the exception. Memories are less

reliable then other forms of knowing because they can be

distorted by time and outside influence, as is the case with

modern media and their depiction of the laundries. The time

that elapses between an incident and its retelling can greatly

affect the likelihood for error, whether the teller

intentional commits an untruth is not clear. The possibility

for error also increases with the complexity of the subject

you are trying to recall. For instance, trying to recall the

colour of your friends top as compared to the entire

conversation you had that day. Equally, people are prone to

embellish stories for greater effect, mostly one can consider

this an innocent activity but William James describes how this

“may be motivated by a subconscious desire to present

ourselves in a better light”.45 Presuming the James is correct,

one could argue that society systematically mis-remember the

laundries as a means of making themselves look better because

without this altered memory the community can be held equally

to blame as the church and state, if not more so. This

consideration, however, does not deny the power exerted by the

45 William James, The Principles of Psychology (New York: Dover, 1890), 373. 20

church, in accordance with the state, over social and moral

behaviour.

Having taken the state, church, and society in turn, this

essay has shown the accountability of each party that is

crucial to viewing memory as healing that was set out in the

introduction. Establishing the accountability of each

participant allows acknowledgement, both for the victims and

the perpetrators. The laundries ceased to exist because of a

fundamental shift in society’s mind-set. In other words, once

the laundries were no longer seen as an option by society they

closed. “Social mores and the advancement of female

emancipation are likely to have assisted the closure of rescue

homes…there was a greater acceptance of female independence.”46

Overall, society mentally banded together to remove the homes.

This evolution in thinking is a central component in the

remembering of the events. Irish society moved from an

atmosphere of division to one of inclusion because it began to

recognise all citizens as equal. The significant term that

springs to mind here is solidarity. Solidarity among victims as

well as the universal solidarity to struggle against evil

46 McCormick, 71. 21

committed in our mist. A negative reaction to the events of

the past will make society fight against it happening again.

Volf proposes that remembering past wrongs can motivate us to

alleviate the suffering of others but it does not grantee it

will happen, instead it could cause us to be very

individualistic and selfish.47 Violence is an epidemic in our

world so it is little wonder that individuals are prone to

self-preservation rather than communal assistance. By

recognising our involvement in the laundries, Irish society

has a motivation to create and sustain infrastructures that

support human flourishing.

As individuals and societies, we need the past to

construct and to anchor our identities and to nurture a vision

of the future.48 Memory, in this case, can promote solidarity

to establish justice. A fundamental feature of this model to

promote solidarity is to recognise our involvement, without

that evil can thrive because it is concealed. Concealment of

truth in Irish society has permitted us to feel justified in

committing the present injustices of blaming the Church solely

47 Volf, End of Memory, 31. 48 James E. Young (ed.), The Art of Memory: Holocaust Memorials in History (Munich

and New York, Prestel-Verlag and the Jewish Museum New York, 1994), 9.

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for misdeeds that are all our responsibility. There is an

abundance of historical evidence that supports that identity

construction is generally accompanied by the construction of

the stereotyped other.49 Not infrequently, our narratives are

shaped by others. David Lowenthal points out that collective

oblivion is mainly deliberate, purposeful and regulated. ‘The

art is a high and delicate enterprise, demanding astute

judgment about what to keep and what to let go, to salvage or

to shred or shelve, to memorialize or to anathematize.50 We

cannot understand how various groups think of themselves

without taking into account how others have defined them. In

this case, the Church has been painted as the evil ‘other’ so

that it can act as the substitute for our own collective

guilt. Maurice Halbwachs argues that memory is created through

communications with other members of society. Memory is the

49 See Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1990) and Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture (London: Routledge, 2001).

50 Lowental gives examples of such attempts to ‘expunge memory wholesale’. Against the infection of idolatry, he writes ‘ReformationProtestants sought to make “utterly extinct and destroy all shrines”,in the 1547 Tudor injunction, “so that there remain no memory of the same.” Pequot Indians vanquished by 17th- century English settlers were required to forget the very name of Pequot. Old Warsaw was eradicated by Nazi iconoclasts, so that Poles would forget their glorious past. The library at Sarajevo and the bridge at Mostar were destroyed precisely in order to force those who treasured them to forget their heritage.’ David Lowenthal and Susanne Kuchler (eds.) The Art of Forgetting (Oxford, Oxford International Publishers Ltd., 1999),xiii.

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collective memory of society and its ritualization makes the

core of communities.51 Michael Lambek and Paul Antze point to

the ‘interpenetration’ of individual and collective

discourses: how the memory of the individual draws upon

collective idioms and mechanisms in society.52 Collective

memories can assist in maintaining group identity and the

solidarity of community members but collective memory emerges

when those without first-hand experience identify with those

who have such experiences.53 Due to the unauthoritative nature

of collective memory, it can be influenced by controlling

forces, in particular, political authorities and institutions

attempt to foster collective memory that is conducive to their

political projects.54 If collective memory is changed it can

51 Maurice Halbwachs, “Collective Memory” in The Heritage of Sociology Series ed. and trans. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992)

52 Lambek and Antze say that memory is something we all know intimately, but that when we begin to talk about memory, ambiguities and complexities rapidly emerge - what it is, how it works, where it lies. A central idea in their book is to imagine memory as practice, not as the pre-given object of our gaze, but as the act of gazing andthe objects it generates. Memories, they say, are produced out of experience and, in turn, reshape it. The essays in their book explorehow ‘the very idea of memory’ comes into play in society and culture and about the uses of ‘memory’ in collective and individual practice.Paul Antze and Michael Lambek (eds.), Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma andMemory (New York and London: Routledge, 1996), xiii.

53 Hiro Saito, “From Collective Memory to Commemoration” in Handbook of Cultural Sociology: Routledge International Handbooks ed. John R. Hall, Laura Grindstaff and Ming-cheng Lo (New York :Taylor & Francis, 2010), 629.

54 Richard Ned Lebow, The Politics and Ethics of Identity: In Search of Ourselves (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 87.

24

threaten existing orders in society. If the above statement is

taken as correct, with respect to the Magdalene laundries, one

could argue that the state influenced and supported the

demonising othering of the Church by society to protect their

political agenda and to stay in power. Irish society must

recognise the inaccuracies in its’ collective memory. Similar

to the state’s involvement, the collective memory of Ireland

has been altered by media depictions of the laundries as this

essay demonstrated above.

Having established a degree of accountability by all

parties involved, this essay moved on to discussing the

retrieval of truthful memories, and our solidarity in

maintaining and remembering them. But at what point must one

move away from events and let them pass into history? It can

be unfair on victims if society tries to move on too quickly.

It does an injustice to their on-going mental suffering.

Nevertheless, forgetting has a time and a place. Volf, through

his own experience, states that in traumatic circumstances

victims declare to “never forget” the abuses they have

suffered. For Volf, to hold on to a wrongdoing for an extended

length of time can alter how one views their own identity. A

25

victim can become so consumed in the wrong inflected upon them

that they can lose sight of other aspects of life. “Forgetting

thus plays a double role- forgetting the person who sinned,

and forgetting the sin itself.”55 A victim, however, cannot

make themselves forget anything that has happened to them.

Memories, to paraphrase Volf’s words, happen to us rather than

by us. A victim’s only means of moving on and forgetting is

therefore to offer forgiveness. This essay has proved that

Irish society, either consciously or subconsciously, choose to

repress all information about the laundries, thereby hurting

the victims further and not allowing for any reconciliation to

occur. Victims are the first concern in the reconciling

process, for it is with them that things must be made right.

Society must recognise the part it played and seek

forgiveness; forgetting and forgiveness are intrinsically

linked. By asking for forgiveness society can make a positive

step towards achieving justice for all. Forgiveness requires

an active response; it cannot be demanded, nor can it be

forced, it is a freely given action that does not just re-act

to what has occurred rather it acts anew.56 “Forgiveness as

55 Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory (London and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2004), 189.

56 Bigger, 6. 26

such is not an act of denial, of amnesia, of overlooking or

even of wiping away the injustices of traumatic past events;

it is rather a creative memorial act that accepts the burden

of past injustices… thereby freeing those burdened to reclaim

the capacity to direct their lives.”57 Offering forgiveness

allows victims to have control and can return to them the

power that was taken from them in their previous passive

situation. Having control allows victims to readjust their own

internal perception of themselves, given that traumatic events

can alter a victim’s perception of themselves. That many

victims do offer forgiveness is astonishing, given the

injustices committed against them. Put another way:

“forgiveness is the power of those powerless ones…they

establish the basis for true hope and open the way to a better

future for all”.58 Justice is not about the punishment of

persecutors, it is about the vindication of victims. There is

a place for a judicial punishment, but punishment alone should

not be the main goal. Bigger purposes three different steps

that come before the search for punishment: (1) the

establishment of direct and indirect victims, as described

57 Egan, 250. 58 Ibid., 285.

27

earlier in this essay; (2) the acknowledgement, support, both

material and psychological, and seek to repair the damage as

much as possible; (3) forming a picture of the truth and

finally; (4) the inflection of judicial punishment were

appropriate.59 However, modern society is quick to promote a

discourse of victimisation without including all the facts.

Victims can become consumed with the idea of punishment that

they can call for too great a repercussion and attempts to do

justice threaten the process of reconciliation. Many victims

feel entitled to act however they wish because of the

injustices committed against them, but to allow victims in

turn to become persecutors fails at achieving justice for

anyone. “Justice surly constitutes a middle way between

forgiveness and vengeance.”60 Primarily, forgiveness allows a

new relationship between the victim and the persecutor to

emerge; true justice exists in healing broken relationships

and re-establishing peace where it has been lost. In other

words, the ultimate fulfilment of justice is reconciliation,

and because reconciliation requires forgiveness, which can

only be offered by the victim, justice must only be concerned

59 Bigger, 9.60 Egan, 243.

28

with helping the victim find peace with the situation that has

happened to them. Forgiveness, although only possible when

giving by the victim, is not a one way street. There is a

response, by the perpetrator, needed if forgiveness is to find

its full validity.61

The repairing of relationships between individuals,

society, and the individuals that make up that society, calls

for a consideration of forgiveness on a larger scale.

Political forgiveness, as is required in the Magdalene

Laundries case, must include a public repentance. Communal

apology must be more than just a speech or an issued press

statement. Attempts must be made to set right what has been

done wrong, on these occasions compensation is generally

offered. Although, compensation is often given to victims of

abuse it is not the only way of expressing an apology.

Equally, the acceptance of such a sum does not imply that the

injustice has been undone, nor that reconciliation has

occurred. There are wrongs that have been committed that some

victims simply cannot forgive nor forget.62 Offering an

61 Jean Bethke Elshtain, “Politics and Forgiveness” in Burying the Past: Making Peace and Doing Justice After Civil Conflict ed. Nigel Bigger (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2003), 47.

62 Elshtain, 48. 29

admission of guilt in the public sphere only seeks to

highlight the limitations of forgiveness. In addition, victims

can feel cheated because no justice appears to have been

achieved; full restitution and compensation are not possible

in the vast majority of cases. Nevertheless, as this essay has

already stated, acknowledgement and recognition are always

achievable. The truth of victims’ suffering is of immense

importance to both victims and larger societies’ understanding

of what occurred. Not to know is a horrible injustice to the

victims. “Truth is a fundamental value because it is a

precondition of all discourse, learning and progress.”63

Unfortunately, for the women of the laundries, access to

records and the location of their children has still not been

released. Keeping this information and not allowing full

disclosure perpetuates the hatred directed towards the Church,

and prevents forgetting because it denies a platform for

forgiveness. Charles Villa-Vicencio writes: “an authentic

historical record of human rights abuse” is vital because it

serves “as a basis for assisting future generations to defend

63 Tuomas Forsberg, “The Philosophy and Practice of Dealing with the Past” in Burying the Past: Making Peace and Doing Justice After Civil Conflict ed. NigelBigger (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2003), 72.

30

democracy and the rule of law in the face of any future

attempt at authoritarian rule”.64

Individuals have little choice in what they remember

because it happened to them but collective memory is a social

construction. Likewise, whether society should forgive a

wrongdoing is different from whether an individual should. If

society offers forgiveness, the persecutor is emitted back

into the “public moral community”; regardless if the

wrongdoing is forgiven in the victim’s private moral

community.65 “Societal forgiveness is not a substitute for

individual forgiveness.”66 Reconciliation, too, has distinct

features when thought of at the universal and individual

levels. “Reconciliation is the process of developing a mutual,

conciliatory accommodation between formerly antagonistic

groups.”67 There is a struggle to find a middle ground between

mere tolerance and an overly emphasised spiritual healing.

64 Charles Villa-Vicencio, “Truth and Reconciliation: In Tension and Unity” in Occasional Paper (Johannesburg: Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 1998), 4.

65 Forsberg, 69.66 Ibid.67 As quoted in Forsberg. Reconciliation is continually instilled with

deeper philosophical and religious meaning then the definition above allows. For the religious community reconciliation is a form of spiritual healing both with God and fellow man. Louis Kriesberg, “Changing Forms of Coexistance” in Reconciliation, Justice, and Coexistance: Theory and Practice ed. Muhammed Abu-Nimer (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2001), 48.

31

“Though social reconciliation differs from individual

reconciliation and though it does not necessarily develop in

the same way, it too has to involve processes and rituals of

repentance and forgiveness, incorporating in some fashion the

key ritual moments of confession, repentance, restitution and

amendment of life and practice.”68 At a societal level,

reconciliation is often confused with national unity;

although, unity may be included it is not a deciding factor in

whether collective forgiveness can be given.

For thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund

Freud, forgetting is an essential part of achieving

redemption. For Freud, so long as memories are not repressed,

they can be permitted to be forgotten. Equally, society can

also repress memories. Victims suffering with PTSD try to

rewire their brains to convert painful memories into factual

experiences without repressing the incident. There is a

distinction between voluntary and involuntary responses: we

can choose to offer forgiveness but we cannot choose to

forget.69 When forgiveness is offered the event is not

forgotten rather the decision is made to longer hold the

68 Egan, 281.69 Margalit, 200.

32

injury as a reason for action.70 This form of ‘forgetting’ can

seem a more individual approach to dealing with trauma. So how

does society move on from the agony it caused by allowing the

laundries to exist? Primarily, society forgets in much the

same manner, by offering forgiveness it has also promised to

no longer hold the evidence against the perpetrator.

“Forgiveness is first and foremost a policy: a policy of

adopting an exclusionary reason with regard to someone who has

wronged us.”71 Through this policy, both individual and

society, can convert forgetting, which is an involuntary

action, into a voluntary one. Choosing to find evidence of

wrongs in admissible does not complete the act of forgiving

rather it can be considered the last step in a process that

has taken much and consideration. In this way forgiveness,

while ending in a form of “forgetting”, denotes both a process

and an achievement.72

To begin concluding, the Ireland of today is very

different from its morally pure obsessed days of post-

independence. The Celtic Tiger presented an image of a much

more liberal and forward thinking nation. The Magdalen days 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid,203.72 Ibid, 205.

33

were pushed into the past and held little representativeness

to the experiences of life in the present. Irish identity was

constructed around these new ideals because we wanted to

achieve a new identity both for the other countries we

communicated and ourselves. Even through many survivors of the

laundries are still alive, Smith points out, contemporary

Irish society, “newly enthralled with commemorating historical

events and ensuring accountability for past injustices,

remains curiously desensitized” to its Magdalen history.73 This

essay has outlined some steps that could be taken towards

achieving justice for these women. However, Ireland’s failure

to respond and provide recognition to the women incarcerated

within them, contrasts with responses to other institutional

scandals that have emerged in recent times, notably the

industrial schools and clerical paedophilia.74 Though much has

changed, attitudes and practice relating to women’s sexuality

is still extremely challenging. Today “women are punished by

73 Smith, 177.74 The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse provides a forum for

survivors of childhood abuse not only to give testimony and thereforewitness the past but also, when such evidence meets certain legal criteria, to pursue legal proceedings against perpetrators of physical and sexual abuse. The Residential Institutions Redress Board, again initiated by government statute, provides reparations tothe survivors of abuse in all state-licensed residential institutions. However, up until recently, the Redress Board does not recognize Ireland’s Magdalen institutions. Smith, 184.

34

inaction, misnaming, and by a phenomenal failure to hold

perpetrators responsible for crimes against women.”75 The

tyrannical history of the control of women’s sexuality is not

exclusive to Ireland. Women’s sexuality has been perceived as

a ‘problem’ by men for centuries. What connects this traumatic

history to the present is the repeated denial, the lack of

acknowledgment and the failure by the Church and state to

address this oppression and violence directed at women because

of their sexuality. The continual lack of responsibility taken

by all parties involves prevents any advancing the common good

and instead leaves us in a system that once again scapegoats

another area of public life so it does not have to deal with

its real problems. “It requires action on the part of those

who witness abuse to challenge individual and collective

denial of abuse and the reproduction of violence.”76 Collective

action can begin the process of establishing human flourishing

as the normal goal for society. In final conclusion, this

essay has shown how memory can be viewed as a means for

achieving healing through both acknowledgement for victims and

75 Evelyn Glynn, Left Holding the Baby: Remembering and Forgetting the Magdalen Laundry (Limerick: Limerick School of Art and Design, 2009), 32.

76 Glynn, 32.

35

establishing truth by uncovering accountability. Throughout

this essay there has been a focus on memory as solidarity.

Looking at both the solidarity of victims and the call on

Irish citizens to recognise their involvement, thereby

preventing the pass from repeating itself has shown how memory

can bond individuals in a connected history. Lastly, examining

forgiveness through the “forgetting” of memories, this needs

to be done by both society and victims to move on.

36

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