The image of the ëtwinsí in the motherís class also produces a
mirroring effect since ëshe could never tell which was whichí, and this
connects back to Castor and Pollux. Although the twins are separate
individuals, their identity is similar and there is confusion between
them. Identity is once more presented in terms of difference and
sameness, and splitting and merging. There is no neat resolution
between identities in the poem but a continual process of hybridity
and separation so that identity is both constructed and deconstructed.
The frontiers of fixed identity both hold and disintegrate. Once more,
Muldoonís poem refuses any stable and prescriptive position from
which to view identity.
Dis-positions
A footnote to Guinn Battenís essay ëThe Borderline Disorders of
Muldoonís Poetryí (1996) recalls Colin Grahamís essay in a special
issue of the Irish Review entitled ëDefining Bordersí (1994). Graham
calls on scholars of colonial and post-colonial culture in Ireland to
follow the example of Indiaís Subaltern Studies Group by exploring
ëliminalí or ësubalterní positions of resistance or ëambivalenceí.^45
Such a move, argues Batten via Graham, shifts the post-colonial
theorist from a critical position ëtied to a narrative which celebratesí a
teleology of revolution to culminate in the formation of a nation-state,
and which makes a fantasized national unity ëan object of sentimental
attachment, cultural pride and community fixityí. The shift Graham
identifies is toward a critique drawn from the ëìliminal spacesî of
colonial discourse or marginal areas, where the ultimate opposition of
Oswald (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962), ‘The relation between the mean and
its extremes’, p.48 & ‘How to attain the mean’, pp.49–51.
45 Cf. Gayatri Spivak, ëPractical Politics of the Open Endí, The Post-Colonial
Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues, ed., Sara Harasym (London:
Routledge, 1990), pp.98ñ112.