Introduction to Part Three
We must try to save the republican heritage by transcending the limits of the
nation-state.Post-colonialism is no longer bound to celebrate the advent of the nation [Ö]^1Migrancy
The impetus of this section is taken from Heaneyís poem ëTollundí
(1994) as it indicates the necessity for reading the poetry of Berkeley
alongside Heaneyís desire to be ëat home beyond the tribeí.^2 It is
noticeable how a number of the poets under discussion have lived and
worked away from Ireland. Seamus Heaney and Eavan Boland have
both taught in the USA. Like Paul Muldoon and Tom Paulin, and
James Joyce and Samuel Beckett before them, Sara Berkeleyís move
is long term as she relocated to San Francisco. Her writing has also
moved away from the environment of Ireland and provides us with a
stark contrast to the place-logic that informs Lloydís criticism of
Heaneyís early poetry from Wintering Out (1972).
In Nations Without Nationalism (1993), Julia Kristeva notices
how: ëWomen [...] are particularly vulnerable to a possible support of
volkgeist. The biological fate that causes us to be the site of the
species chains us to space: home, native soil, motherland (matrie).í
Here, Kristeva notices the role of women within ethnic nationalism as
1 Jürgen Habermas, ‘The European Nation-State – Its Achievements and Its
Limits. On the Past and Future of Sovereignty and Citizenship’, Mapping the
Nation, ed., Gopal Balakrishnan, intro., Benedict Anderson, New Left Review
(London: Verso, 1996), p.293; Colin Graham, ‘Post-Nationalism/Post-
Colonialism: Reading Irish Culture’, Irish Studies Review, No.8, Autumn, 1994,
p.37.
2 Seamus Heaney, ëTollundí, The Spirit Level (London: Faber, 1996), p.69.