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‘Both more than a language and no more of a language’: Michael Hartnett and the Politics of Translation.
(Four Courts Press, 2003)
This essay looks at the politics of translation through a specific focus on the poetry, in Irish and in English, of Michael Hartnett. It suggests a politics of translation that is emancipatory and creative, and deconstructs ...
Ireland in Theory: the Influence of French Theory on Irish Cultural and Societal Development
(Peter Lang, 2004)
This essay argues that the advent of French literary and cultural theory, specifically the work of Barthes, Foucault, Derrida and Lacan, has been responsible for some of the accelerated social changes that Ireland has ...
"Identities in the writer complexus": Joyce, Europe and Irish identities (Pre-published version)
(Rodopi Press, 2003)
This chapter examines forms of negative identity in terms of two intersecting verbal axes: Joyce‟s own term, gnomon and Jacques Derrida‟s term hauntology. Both terms gesture towards forms of negative identity which are the ...
Guests (Geists) of a Nation: A Heimlich (Unheimlich) Maneuver
(New Hibernia Review, 2007)
This chapter examines Frank O’Connor’s story ‘Guests of a Nation’, and looks at how guests often become ghosts in Irish history. The essay then looks at the ghosts of Irish republican ideology, Pearse and Tone, and goes ...
More than a language … no more of a Language’: Merriman, Heaney and the Metamorphoses of Translation
(Irish University Review, 2005)
This essay examines transformative force of translation, by reading Merriman through the refractive lens of Seamus Heaney’s The Midnight Verdict, the juxtaposition of Merriman’s text with that of classical tragedy, itself ...
The Force of Law in Seamus Heaney's Greek Translations
(Careysfort Press, 2008)
This essay examines the use of law in Heaney’s Greek translations: The Burial at Thebes, and The Cure at Troy. For Derrida,, the founding moment of law, in a society or culture, is never a moment ‘inscribed’ in the history ...
‘What ish my nation?’: Towards a Negative Definition of Identity
(Minerva, 1999)
This chapter examines Derrida’s distinction between law and justice, looking at the heritage of Pascal and Montaigne and examining issues of ethical and political responsibility in the process, taking some examples from ...
Decommissioning the Canon: Towards a Deconstruction of the Givens of the Literary Canon
(Teaching Social Justice: Intercultural and Development Education Perspectives on Education’s Context, Content, 2003)
This essay examines the differences between high and popular culture, looking at Joyce and Heaney as synecdoches of cannon-creation and a resultant decommissioning of that canon. This is done through a deconstructive ...
The Body as Ethical Synecdoche in the Writing of Seamus Heaney
(Irish Academic Press, 2006)
This essay examines the imaginative use of images of the violently abused body in the writing of Seamus Heaney. Looking at The Cure at Troy and The Burial at Thebes, this essay also looks at real bodies – victims of the ...
At the Frontier of Language: Literature, Theory, Politics
(Minerva, 1996)
This essay examines the problematics of language and identity. Beginning with a deconstructive reading of Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Broagh’, it moves on to deconstruct the signifier of Ulster, showing how the use of this term, ...