5 Medbh McGuckian’s Disidentification
I appeal to the God who fashions edges
Whether such turning-points exist^1Postmodern McGuckian?
In the essay ëPostmodern McGuckianí (1992) Thomas Docherty
suggests that ë[i]t has become fashionable to read McGuckian as a
poet whose language, grammar, and syntax all serve to question
masculinism, and to see her as a poet in a literary lineage deriving
from Joyceís Molly.í^2 Here, Docherty implies that certain feminist
readings of McGuckian, which remain uncited in his essay, are merely
ëfashionableí and his comment problematizes such a mode of criticism
as he argues that McGuckian has been assessed as a poet in a literary
lineage deriving from James Joyceís construction of Molly Bloom.
This example has two main functions: first, it undermines simplistic
understandings of líÈcriture feminine to suggest that since Joyce has
been considered ëwriting the feminineí, this can hardly be considered
as an exclusively female practice because male writers do it too.
Second, the statement imagines that feminist critics of McGuckianís
1 Cf. Medbh McGuckian, ëThe Soil-Mapí, The Flower Master and Other Poems
(Meath: Gallery, 1982, 1993), p.36. This chapter was first delivered as a paper
entitled ëBordercrossings and the Transgression of Spaceí at the IASIL
Conference in GotÎborg in Sweden, 4ñ11th August, 1997. It is to be published
in the COSTERUS Series by Rodopi, Amsterdam. I would like to thank Medbh
McGuckian for kindly agreeing to be interviewed during this conference.
2 Thomas Docherty, originally published as ëPostmodern McGuckianí The
Chosen Ground: Essays on the Contemporary Poetry of Northern Ireland, ed.,
Neil Corcoran (Pennsylvania: Dufour, 1992), pp.189ñ210, p.191. This essay
was renamed and modified in ëInitiations, Tempers, Seductioní, Alterities:
Criticism, History, Representation (Oxford: University Press, 1996), pp.127ñ
48.