feminine becomes associated with lack and the irrational. Fraser
notices how Kristeva deconstructs and decenters feminine identity
using the structuralist tools of psychoanalysis, and this results in an
internalization of the patriarchal repression imposed on women by
Freudís investigations. She argues that this results in essentialism,
biologism and a refusal to recognize the differences between
women.^23 For Fraser, Kristevaís analysis becomes a working example
of how patriarchal oppression tends to turn all women into the same as
they are represented as ëthe otherí.
In spite of objections to psychoanalysis, it is noticeable how
psychoanalytic understandings of feminism have affected the work of
Smyth and Meaney, as they investigate the formation of Irish female
identities. Using and abusing Kristevaís work in the light of the poetry
there is no intention to valorize her theorization as a manual for
feminist politics. Rather, it is necessary to identify the moments of
intersection between her analysis of the female imaginary and the
female spaces presented within the poems. This will lead to the
question of how far Kristevaís theorization can be put under some
pressure in relation to the articulation of a female voice within the
poetry and debate by Irish feminists. For example, can McGuckianís
poetic attention to female experience and her allusive poetic style be
read as creating an Ècriture fÈminine and what would be the
implications of this?
In response to concerns regarding a womanly writing, the
Southern Irish poet Nuala NÌ Dhomhnaill has argued that use of the
Irish mother tongue constitutes ëthe only escape route from the male
languageí since, in a country which has been feminized, Irish is
conceived of as ëthe language of our mothersí.^24 NÌ Dhomhnaill views
the utterance of English language as an internalization of patriarchy
and colonization which is comparable with the concerns of both
Seamus Heaney and Seamus Deane in their work for Field Day, and in
the poem ëThe Ministry of Fearí which Heaney dedicated to Deane.^25
This line of thought connects feminism with nationalist resistance as
23 Fraser, Revaluing French Feminism, pp.1ñ24.
24 Nuala NÌ Dhomhnaill, ëWhat Foremothers?í, The Comic Tradition in Irish
Women Writers (Florida: University Press, 1996), pp.8ñ20.
25 Seamus Heaney, Selected Poems 1965ñ1975 (London: Faber 1980), pp.129ñ31.