female figure has fled from her confinement at Knossos, away from
the labyrinth and the obsession with finding a centre for the subject.
Unlike the monad operating within the vision of one, steady and
central point of reference,^55 the nomad flees the centre: ëNomadic
consciousness is a form of political resistance to hegemonic and
exclusionary views of subjectivity.í^56 For Braidotti: ëNomadic politics
is a matter of bonding, of coalitions, of interconnections.í^57 The
nomadís journey deterritorializes and decentres stabilized systems of
thought in the hope of exploring less limited forms of subjectivity.
As McGuckianís poetry testifies, the creation of alternative
nomadic spaces continues to challenge and develop understandings of
the territory and body of Ireland, leading towards a more hetero-
geneous model of being rather than a delimited and rooted notion of
subjectivity or ëbeing subject toí. Her poetic vision, while problem-
atizing representative spaces, locks itself away from the overtly
political in a secretive act of her-meticism that disallows total
possession. In this vein, McGuckianís poetry is purposefully dis-
possessed as it deconstructs and re-maps understandings of national
territory with poetry that is elusive. McGuckianís retreat into a
secretive space where ëplace-logicí is disrupted and naming is
problematized, has the effect of both confirming and undermining the
implicit grasp gendered national identity has on the Irish female
writer.
55 Ibid., p.111.
56 Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in
Contemporary Feminist Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994),
p.28.
57 Ibid., p.35.