McGuckianís aspen poetry protects itself against the domination or
colonization of any one particular level of understanding. Her
secretive hermeticism plays ëcache-cacheí with readers whereby she
writes snaky and delirious lines that run off ëpointlesslyí with the
effect of challenging how we interpret and choose to assign meaning.
McGuckianís poetry can be read in terms of an ambush at the
borderlands where the unruly woman walks along the beach chal-
lenging more rooted conceptions of a stable Motherland. Kristeva
imagined a ëspace-time of infinite expansioní which is located in a
semiotic realm.^51 That is, a realm always defined by and a part of
rather than apart from the Symbolic realm of representation which is
precisely why the feminist poet should be a keen and critical reader of
dictionaries. McGuckianís poetry alludes to less identifiable spaces
where the ëbeingí rather than the ësubjectí can be determined by her-
storicity rather than by fixed, eternal or transcendental claims upon a
true identity.^52
Without denying the specifity of McGuckianís experience, a
connection can be made between the footloose figures in ëThe
Heiressí, ëThe Over Motherí, ëSmokeí and ëOn Ballycastle Beachí,
and Rosi Braidottiís view of identity in Nomadic Subjects (1994)
which discuss the (post)modern crisis of identity alongside feminist
debate. Braidotti notices the problem of using Deleuzeís work on
ëpoli-sexualityí and multiplicities to argue that Deleuze tends to leave
gender out of the picture. Braidotti happily uses and abuses his work
on the ërhizomeí to constitute a feminist nomadic politics that adopts a
critical attitude towards ëany complete and unconditional alliance with
any philosophyí.^53 Braidotti writes: ëFor if Ariadne has fled from the
labyrinth of old, the only guiding thread for all of us now, women and
men alike, is a tightrope stretched across the void.í^54 Ariadne or the
51 Kristeva, ëWomenís Timeí, p.192.
52 This sentence is a slight reworking of a comment by Docherty in ëPostmodern
McGuckianí, p.204.
53 Rosi Braidotti, ëNomadic Philosopher: A Conversation with Rosi Braidotti,
Utrecht, The Netherlands, August 1995 with Kathleen OíGrady, Womenís
Education des Femmes, Spring 1996 Vol.12 No.1, pp.35ñ9. Republished on the
internet at http://bailiwick.lib.uiowa.edu/wstudies/Braidotti/index.html, p.4.
54 Braidotti, Patterns of Dissonance: A Study of Women in Contemporary
Philosophy, trans. Elizabeth Guild (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), p.15.