capitalist ideology. For Bhabha, cultural diversity must be maintained
yet must avoid a situation of cultural apartheid. Respect for alterity or
otherness provides the possibility of the liminal transgression of
frontiers while preserving difference. Residing inbetween contesting
identities, Bhabha argues that if identification is a process of identi-
fying with and through an-other, the subject is itself always
ambivalent because of the intervention of that otherness.^49 In this way,
a liminal space emerges in the process of identification as there is a
necessary oscillation between self and ëotherí. This extends and
translates identities, refusing their strict containment and resulting in
the ëdisarticulation of entitiesí.^50 Post-colonial understandings of dis-
position and disarticulation are built on by feminism with Butlerís
idea of disidentification which suggests that identity needs unpicking
before the writer can express the unheimlich of home with the effect
of constructing a critical her-storicism.
But how useful are the possible respect of otherness and an
abstract notion of another/mother space as a cure for ethnic hatred
when ëthe otherí might threaten you on a daily level? Of course,
McGuckian and the theorists provide no easy answers to this question.
What is noticeable is how McGuckianís poems ëThe Heiressí, ëThe
Over Motherí, ëSmokeí and ëOn Ballycastle Beachí explore the
preconceived boundaries between land and sea, body and space, and
woman and nation, with the effect of challenging our conceptions of
location, Motherland, centre and periphery. Rather than providing a
watertight narrative that relocates and sanitizes the relationship
between woman and nation, McGuckianís poetry runs like quicksilver
beyond the limits of conception in an act of deterritorialization that
challenges foundational thought. In the poems considered, there is no
firm ground from which readers can stake their claim. This refusal of
stable ground has been read as postmodern. However, taking into
account the cultural specificity of Ireland, it is more helpful to
understand McGuckian refusal of stable ground, as both a symptom of
and challenge to a history of colonialism. That is, on an island where
land has been a constant issue, and where in a situation of sectarian
violence in the North, territory and borders are constantly policed.
49 Ibid., p.211.
50 Ibid., p.221.