These borderline negotiations of cultural difference often violate liberalismís
deep commitment to representing cultural diversity as plural choice. Liberal
discourses on multiculturalism experience the fragility of their principles of
ëtoleranceí [...] In addressing the multicultural demand, they encounter the
limits of their enshrined notion of ëequal respectí [Ö]^26In view of Bhabhaís remarks and the Irish context, a multicultural
vision seems sadly removed from a history of sectarianism, where
ëtoleranceí often wears thin.
In view of this debate, it is necessary to ask how the writing of
Heaney, Paulin and Muldoon responds to the contested nature of their
national space. How far does their work reconfigure the construction
of Partition in Ireland and the more mythological conceptions of
identity drawn on during the Irish Literary Revival? Addressing the
impulse within poetry from the North to take flight out of Ireland in an
attempt to loosen the legacy of a colonial and nationalist inheritance,
the poetry of Seamus Heaney from Station Island (1984) onwards will
be introduced.^27 But first of all, Heaneyís poetic concern with ëflight
pathsí may be considered in more detail by referring to matters of
deterritorialization.
Deterritorialization and the Rhizome
In an essay entitled ‘The Rhizome’, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
introduce the concept of the rhizome which is imagined as a model for
the representation of identity in terms of deterritorialization.
Rhizomatic thought has been used and abused widely by post-
colonial, postmodern and feminist writers as they look to the process
of ‘l’enracinement’ rather than ‘une racine totalitaire.’ Stuart Hall
offers a Deleuzian perspective when he argues that identity is ‘not the
so-called return to our roots but a coming-to-terms-with our
26 Homi K. Bhabha, ‘Culture’s In-Between’, ed., Stuart Hall and Paul Du Gay,
Questions of Cultural Identity (London: Sage, 1996), p.54.
27 Seamus Heaney, Station Island (London: Faber, 1984).