Butler does not entirely destroy Kristevaís psychoanalytic
theories as does Fraser since, as she uses and abuses Kristevaís work,
she concludes that attention to the ëoutsideí or ëoutsidersí of culture
recasts the Symbolic or the centre of representation as it represses
others, casting them to the periphery.^36 This comment develops
Kristevaís terms by taking Butlerís analysis beyond psychoanalysis
and into the terrain of establishing a politics of resistance for
marginalized groups. Where Butler claims to differ from Kristeva is in
her argument that freedom comes not through the notion of a utopian
semiotic, but through the subversion of constitutive categories that
seek to keep gender in its place by posturing as the foundations of
identity.^37 This antagonistic and anti-foundational stance against
ëconstitutive categoriesí provides Butler with ammunition for the
reconfiguration of identity politics in terms of disidentification. In
view of this it is important to explore how far female Irish poets look
to a utopian beyond and how far their poetry writes from the margins
so as to constitute an antagonistic stance towards oppression.
It would follow from Butlerís analysis that writing from the
periphery becomes a transgressive practice with the potential to
challenge the limits of language and representation. But how far are
the delimited models of ëWomaní and ëNationí challenged by Irish
women writers? The following chapters address how the poets
respond to their positioning within Irish culture to outline how the
body of the nation is critiqued and reinvented within their work.
36 Butler, Bodies That Matter, p.22.
37 Butler, Gender Trouble, p.33.