interpret or mistake.í^34 When traditional forms of nationalism take the
act of political representation as given or natural, decolonizing
counter-narratives, even in their marked antithesis, follow the
structures of representation and oppression provided by colonialism as
they try to speak for ëthe peopleí. A strategy of resistance lies not in
claiming that a given narrative is incorrect and thereby producing a
new originary narrative, but in critiquing the legitimacy of
mythmaking or the authenticity of history. This is one of the problems
initiated in ëThe Tollund Man.í In Dochertyís words, the poetry goes
ëcritical, differential, historical rather than antiquarianí.^35 For the
poetry to be critically historical and move towards the present
moment, it must attempt to free itself from the temptations of the
curator who catalogues a museum culture or the archaeologist who
digs for the dead.
Frontiers of Writing
At the end of the sequence ëStation Islandí, the figure of James Joyce
appears and stretches a hand out from the jetty to lift the pilgrim-poet
back on land. Joyce takes an iconoclastic stance appealing to the poet
in his work to break free from the land, ëto swimí
out on your own and fill the element
with signatures on your own frequency,
echo soundings, searches, probes, allurements,elver-gleams in the dark of the whole sea.^3634 Heaney, ëIrish Eyesí, Listener, 28 December, 1967, p.851.
35 Docherty, ëAna-; or Postmodernism, Landscape, Seamus Heaneyí, Contem-
porary Poetry Meets Modern Theory, eds., Anthony Easthope and John O.
Thompson (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester, 1991), p.70. Docherty is referring to
ëThe Grauballe Maní, North, pp.28ñ9.
36 Heaney, Station Island, p.94.