What is it about?
This article analyses Lucy Caldwell’s representation of the turn from female trauma to affect in her debut novel Where They Were Missed (2006) within the discourse of female writing after “the Troubles”. Drawing on theoretical frameworks on trauma and affect developed by Caruth, Massumi, Ahern and Ahmed, among others, and especially Magennis’s and Dawson’s choice of affect as an analytical framework to approach Northern Irish post-conflict fiction, this article examines Caldwell’s re-examination of the former experiences of women in "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland, away from more hegemonic accounts of the conflict. The analysis concludes that Caldwell’s novel moves beyond the representation of trauma within the fiction of “the Troubles” in order to navigate into transformative discourses of female intimacies and affect.
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Why is it important?
Approach to Lucy Caldwell's debut novel through the prism of affect.
Perspectives
Unique post-conflict representation of The Troubles through affect.
ASIER ALTUNA GARCIA DE SALAZAR
Universidad de Deusto
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Workings of Affect in Lucy Caldwell’s
Where They Were Missed, English Studies, October 2025, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/0013838x.2025.2572213.
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