In view of Kristeva, it is interesting that Longley genders sect-
arianism, the attention to boundaries and delimitation as male while
ëfluid and relational kinds of identityí are implicitly connected with
the female. However, it is short sighted to suggest that women are not
also at some level involved with a frontier mentality. Women can be
just as complicit with attempting to contain space, meaning and
people as are men; just as men are equally able to conceive of fluid
and flexible ways of thinking. This has a bearing on how we read the
work of Kristeva as she outlines two different ways of thinking: a
sensible mode of knowing and a non-sensical mode of unknowing.
Hence, the possibility of adopting a more critical position towards
restrictive ideologies can be undertaken by both genders while bearing
in mind that alternatives to rational and enlightened thought have been
culturally encoded as feminine.
Longley sees the North as a ëfrontier region where Ireland and
Britain penetrate one another.í The notion of penetration between
nations links uneasily with notions of the rape of Mother Ireland by an
imperial aggressor and Longley overlooks the unequal distribution of
power between different cultures within a sectarian community.
Having said this, Longleyís identification of over spilling borders is
important as it redefines the relationship between North and South.
Looking to the less separatist and more integrated her statement
questions the colonial and nationalist containment of Irish space,
moving towards more flexible modes of identification or passages
between identities.
In an interview entitled ëThe Third Spaceí (1990), Homi Bhabha
explores translation and hybridity to argue that ë[w]ith the notion of
cultural difference, I try to place myself in that position of liminality,
in that productive space of the construction of culture as difference, in
the spirit of alterity or otherness.í^47 Bhabha explains this further by
remarking how the ëdifference of cultures cannot be something that
can be accommodated within a universalist frameworkí.^48 Here,
Bhabha draws attention to the contradictions within imperialism and
47 ëThe Third Space: An Interview with Homi Bhabhaí, Identity: Community,
Culture, Difference, ed., Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence & Wishart,
1990), p.209.
48 Ibid.