For many, the most interesting and promising approach to these questions is
predicated not on a rejection of, or alternative to, the identitarian discourse of
liberal and racial modes, but on their displacement and performance in what
Said has called an anti-authoritarian, anti-institutional, anti-narrative dis-
course.^35Such a critical strategy is undertaken by the poets as, in their differing
ways, they disrupt ëplace-logicí to provide a ëpolitics of displacementí
whereby, to use Smythís terms, ëthe given categories are (necessarily)
performed, but in such a way as to question their givenness, their
authenticity, their originalityí. Smyth calls this practice a ëparody of
originalsí that claim authority and essence.^36
It is precisely such a dissident practice that takes place in
OíLoughlin and NÌ Dhomhnaillís critical poetic portrait of Cuchulainn
and Cathleen which parody their originals, whilst paying attention to
the mythological nature of claims to be authentic. This is played out at
a significant level in contemporary Irish poetry and, as Clair Wills has
noticed with reference to three of these poets, (McGuckian, Muldoon
and Paulin), they write out ëimproperí poetic discourses. At the risk of
situating the poets within a definitive and conclusive positioning,
(albeit one of dis-position), the thesis of this book, (a noun coming
from the Greek meaning ëto placeí), has sought to show how it is
characteristic of poets from both genders, and from the North and the
South of Ireland, to undermine the placement of identity and utterance
within customary frames of representation.
Such a concluding statement depends upon noticing points of
connection or a similar ëplaceí from which the poets come which at a
certain level juxtaposes with their differing techniques of displace-
ment. In view of the discourse celebrating transgression that informs
the readings of the poets, and the use of feminist and post-colonial
theorization, it is necessary to differentiate between a criticism that
attempts to colonize literature and to delimit a poem in an act of
mastery, and a criticism that endeavours to draw attention to the
instabilities of the text and the way in which the text evades mastery.
This was discovered most poignantly in the discussion of Muldoon,
35 Smyth, ‘Decolonization and Criticism: Towards a Theory of Irish Critical
Discourse’, Ireland and Cultural Theory, p.39.
36 Ibid.