ëresidualí.^27 Heaneyís early poems do not naively tap the roots of the
Irish/Danish soil for an untouched national consciousness. Rather, the
effect of the poems is to investigate what digging the land for identity
might mean.
Thomas Docherty notices a tension within Irish poetry by both
Yeats and Heaney between
That modernist impetus to reduce alterity to sameness (its ëAngloí-impulse; its
search for archaeological roots) on the one hand; and, on the other, the
postmodern impetus to flee the land and to flee ëcultureí as such (the ëIrishí
search for a different hearing, for a new epistemology, a new mode of
inhabiting it). This opposition is that between culture or tradition on the one
hand and flight or history on the other.^28Dochertyís use of ëmodernistí can be understood in terms of ëpost-
colonial nationalismí, while his use of ëpostmodernistí can be
understood in terms of ëpost-colonial post-nationalism.í In his debate,
Docherty discusses the impetus towards flight found in Yeatsís
Byzantium poems in order to provide an understanding of Yeats that
does not situate his writing purely in terms of a modernist interest in
archaeology.
Following his problematization of Yeatsís work in relation to
tradition, Docherty rereads Heaneyís ëDiggingí to argue that ëalthough
Heaney still dabbles with the earth and with digging, the text stages
the defeat of his strategy of attempting to root himself in a tradition.í
How far Heaneyís strategy has been simply to ëroot himself in a
traditioní is unclear since the intentions of Heaneyís essays are ever
fluctuating. What is interesting here is how Docherty claims that part
one of the collection stages the defeat of Antaeus in the poem
ëHercules and Antaeusí (1975), where the poetry finally frees itself
from a Georgic commitment to the earth.^29 Although less apparent in
his earlier poetry, deterritorialization has been haunting Heaneyís
poems before the introduction of the birdman Sweeney into Station
Island, when in ëHercules and Antaeusí strength comes from being
27 Scott Brewster, ëA Residual Poetry: Heaney, Mahon and Hedgehog Historyí,
Irish University Review: A Journal of Irish Studies, Spring/Summer 1998, p.59.
28 Docherty, After Theory (Edinburgh: University Press, 1996), p.222.
29 Ibid., pp.222ñ3.