it is in this way that the poetic subject becomes sea-borne. Yet the
poem flutters as she is ëborneí in such a way as to be both transported
and trapped. Such a tension also takes us back to the discussion of
levity and gravity identified in the work of Heaney. Previous
discussion of deterritorialization can be developed further in relation
to Berkeleyís poetry by theorizing the ethical consequences of her
flutters with alterity.
Nomadic Subjects and Border Transgression
In ëRevolution in Poetic Languageí (1974), Julia Kristeva has
discussed in psychoanalytic terms the way in which the thetic
boundary between the Symbolic realm of language and a semiotic
unarticulated realm is constantly in danger of being breached by
poetic discourse. Just as the semiotic cannot be spoken, poetry cannot
disavow the limits of language since this would imply the silence that
is acknowledged by Berkeley in ëFall.í Hence:
Poetic mimesis maintains thetic unicity by making it undergo a kind of
anamnesis, by introducing into the thetic position the stream of semiotic drives
making it signify. Mimesis and poetic language therefore do not disavow the
thetic, instead they go through its truth (signification, denotation) to tell the
ëtruthí about it.^63In its transgression of grammatical rules, poetic language challenges
the Symbolic whilst operating within it. Poetry does not disavow
thetic borderlines and leap between the lines, as imagined in ëThe Girl
Who Went To Live On A Wallí, but it does challenge the rationality
of language. This is not writing outside of language but on the edges
or on its outer skin (p.155). So the limits of representation are not
broken but its ëbornesí are paced. Like Boland, when Berkeley claims
to open the floodgates she does so in a fairly coherent way; she still
writes words since to open the floodgates entirely would lead to
63 Kristeva, ‘Revolution in Poetic Language’, The Kristeva Reader, ed., Toril Moi
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), p.112.