poets oscillate between being grounded by the national and achieving
imaginative transcendence. How far do they move towards more fluid
assertions of subjectivity in an attempt to destroy the ideological limits
that seek to confine them in the first place? Answering this question,
the work of each poet can be addressed to notice how an anti-
foundational approach to matters of identity results not only in a move
away from colonial delimitation of space but also undermines
patriarchal ëcontrolí over the female body.
Smyth reads the Irish woman as ëthe otherí who is twice
dispossessed by colonialism and by chauvinism: ëThe Irish Womaní
enables a definition of ëThe Irish Maní in a way that is evocative of
the colonial subject acting as ëotherí for the self definition of the
colonizer. The power of the centre to name or to define ëthe otherí is
acknowledged as Smyth writes: ëI am at the edge, defining the centre,
Border country. Margin, Perimeter, Outside.í^18 When Smyth problem-
atically equates the margin with the outside, she suggests that the
feminine is an exiled element and not even humanized. If what is Irish
and female falls into the gap of the non-identifiable then she has not
yet been fully represented. This is different from Frantz Fanonís point
of re-identification as ëotherí whereby ëthe otherí can be named.^19 On
the one hand, Smythís comment erases the possibility of a space in
language from which an Irish woman can represent herself. Smythís
problem is not that there is a crisis of identity for the female subject
but rather that she has never been considered as a subject to begin
with. On the other hand, according to Smythís analysis, as something
that has not yet been identified, ëwomaní is not contained by
representation and this hints at her transgressive potential since that
which has not yet been fully named is uncontainable, allusive and
uncontrollable. Smythís argument operates in terms of a paradox: the
Irish woman is named as ëotherí yet in this way, she is not named and
this bears testimony to both her dispossession and her agency.
As Smythís essay implies, it is problematic to place women
beyond representation in a mute realm of non-identity, especially
when Smythís essay never stops naming ëthe Irish womaní. Smyth
develops her argument as she draws on the figure of Anna Livia
18 Smyth, ëThe Floozie in the Jacuzzií, p.21.
19 Cf. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (London: Pluto, 1986, 1993).