Hélène Cixous's Autre Bisexualité and the Eternal Feminine in the Works of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

Abstract

This article analyses the creative engagement of the Irish-language poet Ní Dhomhnaill with Hélène Cixous's écriture féminine. Ní Dhomhnaill translates Cixousian images and concepts into her texts, returning on several occasions to the concept of l'autre bisexualité (‘the other bisexuality’). Cixous uses this concept to rehabilitate—and celebrate—what she designates as ‘the feminine’, the alterity within and outside the self. For both writers, this alterity comprehends marginalized cultures as well as femininity. Both bring anti-essentialist convictions to their views of gender and cultural identity, but their respective poetics are born of shared preoccupations with biblical and mythological figures, and narratives often implicated in essentialism. Ní Dhomhnaill connects these archetypal figures with the cultural realities of post-colonial Ireland. The author argues that she draws on the works of Cixous to connect the indigenous Irish language and culture with the rehabilitation of femininity. But whereas, in Cixousian texts, ‘femininity’ eludes concrete definitions and stable meanings, in the works of Ní Dhomhnaill, it often signifies an authentic pre-colonial culture that is ripe for rediscovery in post-colonial Ireland. Ní Dhomhnaill simultaneously celebrates this culture and acknowledges its embeddedness in a Celtic patriarchy that her Cixousian tropes work to undercut.

Keywords:

• Cixous
• Ní Dhomhnaill
• écriture féminine
• post-colonialism
• feminism
• bisexuality

Notes

¹ The Innti poets take their name from a literary journal begun in the 1970s at University College Cork. Innti became a platform for Irish-language poets drawing on modern themes and a cosmopolitan spectrum of influences, such as Zen Buddhism, beat poetry and American folk music.

² Cixous's father came from a family of Sephardic Jews who moved from Spain to Morocco and then Algeria. Her mother was an Ashkenazi Jew whose family hailed from various regions of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.

³ In the works of Lacan, the symbolic and the imaginary are interdependent and constantly redefine each other.

⁴ The word dinnsheanchas can be translated as ‘sense of place’, but has a depth of resonance that evokes the numinosity of notable landmarks and the folklore connected with them.