‘We’re the goodies’—Lacanian vernacular peace: ideology, Derry Girls, and ontological (in)security in Northern Ireland

This chapter advances a poststructuralist intervention into vernacular security studies (VSS). It articulates a Lacanian reconceptualisation of the vernacular as an ideological site managing ontological (in)security in (post-)conflict settings. It problematises the potential romanticisation, binarisation, and depoliticisation of the vernacular in VSS, arguing instead that vernacular discourses of security and peace are also sites of ideological interpellation, identification, and disavowal. Drawing on Lacanian ontological security studies, the chapter theorises vernacular subjectivities as unconsciously structured by and attached to hegemonic ideologies, narratives, and imaginaries. Through an interpretive illustrative analysis of the series Derry Girls, the chapter examines how non-elite discourses of peace both stabilise and reproduce dominant conflict narratives in Northern Ireland. In foregrounding the unconscious vernacular as a site of multiscalar ideological production, the chapter contributes to repoliticising VSS and suggests that ideology critique is crucial to understanding how everyday cultural artefacts that present themselves as sites of resistance actually sustain, rather than subvert, prevailing security orders.