and such a dis-positioning provides a critical practice for evaluation of
the intellectual agenda of Berkeleyís poetry.
Nationalism, Internationalism and Post-Nationalism
Theodor Adorno commented that nationalism no longer quite believes
in itself.^6 A contentious remark for emerging post-colonial nations,
this is important since it alludes to the insincerity and inauthenticity of
nationalist rhetoric. It is precisely such a tension between the nation-
state, being and inauthenticity, with which Bolandís poetry battled
without being able to posit a more authentic sense of subjectivity in
relation to History and nationality, with which to fill the gaps of
modern ëfantasyí and ëinsincerityí. In this way, Bolandís poetry
remains trapped within the limits of the nation-state, positing no
redemptive truth beyond to be staged as a moment of Being or the
Real, save a resonant silence. It is only in the poetís oscillation
between belonging and dispossession, the heimlich and unheimlich,
that the reader can be provided with a ëdouble-timeí or dissonance by
which an ironic critique of the subjectís positioning within the history
of the modern nation-state can take place.
Declan Kiberdís essay ëModern Ireland: Postcolonial or
Europeaní (1997) goes some way to acknowledging the limitations of
the nation-state. He cites Patrick Pearseís essay ëThe Murder
Machineí in which one of the founding fathers of Irish nationalism
states anxieties that are akin to those of Bolandís essays: ëthe very
organizations which exist in Ireland or champion freedom show no
disposition themselves to accord freedom; they challenge a great
6 Cf. Theodor Adorno, ëThe Meaning of Working Through the Past (1977), Criti-
cal Models: Interventions and Catchwords, trans., Henry Pickford (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1998), p.98. In Pickfordís translation, Adorno says:
ëNationalism does not completely believe in itself anymore, and yet it is a
political necessity because it is the most effective means of motivating people
to insist on conditions that are, viewed objectively, obsolete.í