relationship between the singularity of his writing and the assimilative
politics of a homogenizing nationalist attitude that is, by implication,
inauthentic and desires to turn the poet into a copy of ëusí.
The critics in Heaneyís and Muldoonís poems are anxious about
the way in which the poet is not writing in the way that the national
ëusí would like. Within the context of Irish literature, Gerry Smyth
notices in his analysis, Decolonization and Criticism (1998), how
criticism is linked with colonization. Such mastery has already been
investigated via Luce Irigarayís Marine Lover (1991) and has been
undermined by reading the elusive poetic of Medbh McGuckian.
Smyth draws on Paul de Manís ëCriticism in Crisisí (1971) and
Thomas Dochertyís ëTragedy and the Nationalist Condition of
Criticismí (1996). Docherty argues that criticism is founded upon ëan
anxiety about exteriorityí and is thus ëtied firmly to the place-logic of
the nation-stateí, as criticism attempts to ëmasterí the cultural text.^32
Critical mastery of the cultural text is thus compared with the nationís
attempt to master its ëothersí: ëthe criticís attempt to ìmasterî the
cultural text engages with, and resonates in, political discourse as the
(English) nationís attempt to master its (colonial, specifically African)
Others.í^33
However, Smyth makes the important distinction between
different kinds of critical discourse to argue that some modes of
criticism are more masterful than others:
Dochertyís dismissal of three centuries of literary criticism as essentially
uncritical is [Ö] untenable when it comes to an analysis of how a set of
practices called ëcriticismí has actually functioned in a range of societies over
that same period [Ö] it is a small step from the criticism/nationalism connec-
tion [Ö] to the criticism/decolonisation connection [Ö]^34In view of this, Smyth notices how
32 Gerry Smyth, Decolonization and Criticism: The Construction of Irish
Literature, ed., Gerry Smyth (London: Pluto, 1998), p.45. Cf. Thomas
Docherty, ‘Tragedy and the Nationalist Condition of Criticism’, Textual
Practice, Vol.10, No.3, 1996, p.483, p.493.
33 Smyth, ‘Culture, Criticism and Decolonization’, Decolonization and Criticism,
p.45.
34 Ibid., p.46.