places.í^45 This begs the question posed by Gayatri Spivak in ëCan the
Subaltern Speak?í (1988), where she asks who is included in the
ësubaltern voice of the peopleí, when do we hear ëthemí, and does not
the fixed label ësubalterní itself homogenize difference and the
performance of identities in process?^46
As writers turn to the inbetween for political inspiration, this
silent, differential and dissonant gap defies definition and remains an
untheorized space of some future potential. Recognizing the ideo-
logical terrors of the script, the writer turns to this less scripted space.
Heaneyís exiled Sweeney, Paulinís existential preoccupation with
edges in Walking a Line and Muldoonís borderland figures, suggest
that the poetic periphery where a freer space may be imagined as an
impetus for change is as important for male Northern Irish poets as it
is for female Southern Irish poets. But inbetween, marginal and
differential spaces that have yet to be spoken can be met only with
suspicion: free space is defined by unfree space. Who is authorized to
fill in the gaps and silences, and of what use is the mute or unscripted
to feminism when, in the first place, women have been silenced by
patriarchy?^47
Misrepresentation and Loss
In ëDeath in the poetry of Eavan Boland and Audre Lordeí (1997),
Margaret Mills Harper notes connections that can certainly be made
between Boland and American poets. She also discusses how ëthese
poets sounded a note of death as the inevitable accompaniment to the
act of speaking [Ö]í.^48 Harper argues that ëBoland writes herself as
small and mortal, subject to absence and death.í Harper suggests that
for Boland, the ëact of self-revelationí will occur in ëthe context of
45 Ibid., p.157.
46 Gayatri Spivak, ëCan The Subaltern Speak?í, pp.66ñ111.
47 Cf. Cora Kaplan, ëLanguage and Genderí in Walder, p.313. Here, she discusses
the picture by Odilon Redon entitled Silence. p.313.
48 Margaret Mills Harper, p.181.