ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the connection between singularity, the absolute nonabsolute and the fragment. It focuses on reading an under, researched section of O'Nolan's work, the Cruiskeen Lawn articles, through the absolute nonabsolute singularity of the fragment. In Derrida's formulation of the absolute nonabsolute, the origins of the poematic lie in an oxymoronic tautology, a contaminated non-originary origin of singularity, where singularity is not understood as that which expends itself in a burst of pure individualism but is conjoined and impure. The broken, disrupted style Myles na gCopaleen employs performs the writing of an absolute non-absolute singularity: the defamiliarizing explosion of a culture from within, a contaminated amalgamation of innovation and cliche, originality and repetition, purity and impurity. The fragmentary form of Cruiskeen Lawn thus presents a singular engagement with the problems and provocations of modern Ireland and evokes, through its fractures and ties to a non-existent whole, the inextricable contaminations between authenticity and inauthenticity in a country's identity.
