IN-PERSON: Prague – Section B

Abstract

In 2000 the President of Ireland unveiled Home, a sculpture memorialising the heroin epidemic in Dublin’s North Inner City. A brass torch set in a limestone frame stood on a street corner which had been a centre of heroin dealing in the city. The design had been chosen by the family members of the more than 300 people who had died as a result of heroin-use. Home marks the beginning of a period of memorialisation by the Irish State, and in Irish culture more widely, which sought to reframe heroin-use as a tragic heritage of the pre-Celtic Tiger past. This process involved shaping the discourse around heroin-use through the creation of sites of memorialisation and changes in drugs policy. However, the period is also marked by the destruction of both public and private spaces which had come to symbolise heroin in the public discourse. This discourse, which had solidified in the early-1980s, localised heroin-use in specific working class housing estates which became known as ‘heroin supermarkets’. The period from 2000 to the early-2010s was marked by the demolition of structures which had become iconic in the visual language of the ‘heroin epidemic’ – including the Ballymun Towers and Fatima Mansions – and the dispersal of the communities that lived there. This paper will explore the how the state was forced to memorialise this unwanted heritage, how its efforts reshaped the discourse around drug-use in Ireland, and the effect that its efforts had on already marginalised communities.