Plurabelle to demonstrate a cruel, insane, mocking contradiction of the
circumscribed realities of Irish women which is hardly one of
plurability.^20 She asks when ëWomaní signifies/ anything, everything
and nothing,/ how can women signify?í^21 Answering this question, it
is helpful to draw on the work of Kristeva as it informs Smythís
debate when she makes connections between the feminine and
fluidity.
Fluid Identities and Feminism Beyond Ireland
Kristevaís essay ëWomenís Timeí (1979) describes female time as
fluid, cyclical and outside the linear progression of History. Female
time is thought in terms of ërepetition and eternityí, ëcyclesí,
ëgestationí and the ëeternal recurrence of a biological rhythm which
conforms to that of nature [Ö] whose regularity and unison with what
is experienced as extra-subjective time, cosmic time, occasion
vertigious and unnameable jouissanceí.^22 Kristeva positions womenís
time against History, the time of progression, ëtime as projectí, ëtime
as departure, progression and arrivalí. Her idea of womanís time
evades the understanding of History in terms of progress or
modernity. For Kristeva, History is a sacred and sacrificial time that is
part and parcel of ëlanguageí and the ëenunciation of sentencesí with
ëa beginningí and ëendingí. Kristevaís identification of the tension
between a secular, semiotic and playful time, and a sacred, Symbolic
and lawful time can be used to understand the construction of female
subjectivity in the poems of Boland and McGuckian.
Understandably, Nancy Fraser has identified problems with
Kristevaís analysis as it relies on the structuralist narratives of
Freudian and Lacanian versions of psychoanalysis which attribute
gender to certain modes of reasoning or loss of reasoning, whereby the
20 Smyth, ëThe Floozie in the Jacuzzií, p.8.
21 Ibid., p.11.
22 Julia Kristeva, ëWomenís Timeí, The Kristeva Reader, ed., Toril Moi (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1986), pp.187ñ214.