McGuckian and Berkeley whose poetry lends itself to a criticism that
cannot find an easy foundational positioning. Even so, no critical
framework is entirely exempt from placing certain limits upon the
text.
Bearing in mind then, the uneasy complicity between criticism,
delimitation, mastery, the nation-state and the institution, which is
outlined by Smyth, the dissonance played out at a critical level in
OíLoughlin and NÌ Dhomhnaillís ironic revision of the myths of
Cuchulainn and Cathleen can be recalled. In ëIreland and the
Persistence of Authenticityí, Colin Graham describes the possibility of
ironically deconstructing the Irish authenticity of the folkish, rural and
legendary in an attempt to posit a revised, ironic authenticity as a
replacement.^37 Such ëan ironic authenticityí is written out as a critical
methodology in ëCuchulainní, ëC ̇ Chulainní and ëCathleení. As they
debunk ideas of ëWomaní and ëNationí, these poets posit no saved
space for pure critical strategies but rather an awareness of complicity
and subversion in the face of what have been perceived as authentic
modes of cultural expression. In this way, their poems are comparable
with the strategies of displacement, dis-positioning and dis-
identification that are utilized in differing ways by the other poets
under discussion.
A conclusion can therefore be provided that does not offer a
straightforward celebration of the transgressive aspects of contem-
porary Irish poetry, post-colonial and feminist criticism. Unlike
Marshall Berman, the argument cannot hope to hold up a ëpolitics of
authenticityí as an exemplary ëdream of an ideal community in which
individuality will not be subsumed and sacrificed, but fully developed
and expressedí.^38 Rather, an ending can be found by recollecting
Bolandís cautionary poem ëThe Necessity for Ironyí (1998) as it
writes out an ironic critique of the pressures of inauthenticity by
which the poet is constantly troubled. In this poem, Boland
acknowledges her complicity with historical erasure and this is
precisely what she has hoped in her career to avoid. Bolandís ëThe
Necessity for Ironyí outlines the need for a critical vigilance, the
37 Graham and Kirkland, eds., Ireland and Cultural Theory, p.22.
38 Marshall Berman, The Politics of Authenticity (New York: Atheneum, 1970),
ix.