Towing the Line: Migrant Women Writers and the Space of Irish Writing

• DOI: 10.1353/eir.2012.0010
• Publication Date: 2012-06-17T23:17:03Z
• Authors: Alice Feldman; Anne Mulhall
• Keywords: Psychic; Deterritorialization

Towing the Line: Migrant Women Writers and Space of Irish Writing* Alice Feldman (bio) Anne Mulhall The imagining nation as a space in which "we" belong is not independent material deployment force, forms governmentality control, only boundaries between states, movements citizens aliens within state, but also repertoire images allows concept to come into being first place. sara ahmed, strange encounters (98) shape both real imagined depends on "strangers" who mark internal external limits "skin" that keeps it From perspective assumed constitutive parts national body, "stranger" she already constituted such her arrival at border— whether physical borders juridical state or borders, [End Page 201] material, cultural, psychic, distinguish are "at home" from "out place." For Sara Ahmed, whose work we drawing here, categorical error delineation stranger undergirds logic migrant reception multicultural aspiration. Whether gesture one rejects welcomes, effects an erasure specificity out place, incorporated "as figure unassimilable" now appropriated "ours"—the sign "our" inclusivity (Strange Encounters 4). As such, this fetishizing occludes histories have produced incorporating desire self-image invested stranger. It elides "the political processes whereby some others designated than other others." 6) Elsewhere, Ahmed describes these terms alignment with particular direction, falling line lineage, particularly lineage that, through repetition, forgets its own has been constituted: Being "in line" bodies extend spaces were, taken their shape. Such extensions could be described extension body's reach. . We might speak then collective direction: ways nations communities "going certain direction," facing same way, things get our attention. Becoming member community, then, mean following requirement turn others. follow followed by others: repetition act makes disappear view point emerge. (Queer Phenomenology 15) In article, will explore confluences context women writing Ireland. Our specific focus for exploration New Ireland Network (WWINI), network writers was initiated seed project 2007 Research Council Humanities Social Sciences hosted Migration Citizenship Initiative University College Dublin. Several comprise make explicit involves toward reorientations 202] process inevitably—not necessarily often intentionally—disorienting reorienting imaginary "national culture," visible "out-of-place-ness" writer. Thus article doubled focus, exploring re orientation devices it, while making impossible constraints imposed woman writer totalizing constructions culture" "shared common academic and, sometimes, literary proscriptions writing. WWINI inspired our...