relies too much on reducing male identities in the name of female
irreducibility. What is interesting, is how Kristeva, Irigaray, Meaney
and Smyth imagine that there remains something supplementary about
female identity and ëwomenís timeí that cannot be troped.
In ëFeverí from The Journey (1987) it is ëas if what we lost is a
contagion/ that breaks out in what cannot be/ shaken out from the
words or beaten out/ from meaningí (p.108). The excess that cannot
be troped is an irreducible female story and it ëbreaks outí like
Benjaminís ëblastí in the continuum of history. The impasse con-
tinues: how essentializing are hopes for the blast of an authentic
female story, is it a truly differential story, and does it always take
place within the confines of the historical continuum or the Symbolic?
On the one hand, attempting to locate a female story at the beyond of
representation is in danger of imprisoning women in a mute realm. On
the other hand, representing ëWomanís Experienceí is also in danger
of delimiting female experience, reducing difference and silencing
other voices with the noise of myth. Boland looks to a space between
the beyond of a sacred and semiotic womenís time, and insertion into
the historical Symbolic. The need for a differential space and this
move towards the inbetween is achieved in her poems in terms of
dissonance, and this can be understood in relation to silence.
The Inbetween, Dissonance and Silence
In ëThe Art of Griefí three women are depicted: a statue of Mary,
Mother of Sorrows, the speakerís crying mother and the speaker
herself. Each woman has the potential to become a trope of some sort
since all three are given symbolic roles within the artifact of the poem.
One woman exists as an iconic signification, another is an element of
narrative, third is the poetic speaker or subject of the poem. What we
see in Bolandís poem is an idea of a woman; a woman who is an
image thought about in terms of an image. The iconized woman is a
translation in Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in the Feminine (London: Routlege,
1991), p.71.