ABSTRACT
In chapter one of this study we saw that Kristeva’s argument, in Nations without Nationalism, that women are often particularly well situated to combat totalitarianism since they are frequently positioned as strangers and exiles within the public life of the nation, was relevant for much of the twentieth century to the situation of Irish women, prevented as they were from shaping the discourse of their nation. In an interview given in 1985, Kristeva envisages that, from their position on the boundaries, women will make raids on the notion of a homogeneous nation. By becoming unsettling presences in the text of the nation’s life, women will, she argues, contribute to the flexible, heterogeneous and polyphonic nation states which she sees as the states of the future:
Applying Kristeva’s analysis to Irish women it follows that, from their position on the margins of the nation, Irish women have the opportunity to use their voices to subvert entrenched Irish nationalism and open it up to a more fluid identity. In this way Irish women may avoid on the one hand complete identification with a nationalism which may be oppressive for them and, on the other, total ostracism from the life of their nation. This chapter begins by looking at two Irish novels, Stars in the Daytime by Evelyn Conlon and Approaching Priests by Mary Leland, which illustrate just this point by portraying women on the margins of their nation’s life, skeptical about much that goes on in their nation, yet wishing to remain in dialog with it.
