Mapping the Terrain of Isolation in Seamus Heaney’s “Act of Union”

ABSTRACT

To explore the relationship between hegemonic masculinity and environmental degradation, this essay reads Seamus Heaney’s “Act of Union” both inter- and intratextually, emphasising connections between the philosophical contradictions driving anthropogenic climate change, the history of English colonialism in Ireland, and the repudiation of the feminine Other in Heaney’s poetics of masculinity. This essay demonstrates that Heaney’s depiction of masculinity doubles as a soft indictment of the damaging effects of radical individualism, but by reading “Act of Union” in the context of its avant-textes and three of the poems that surround it in North (1975), this essay notes that Heaney’s deep ambivalence towards masculine hegemony is finally resolved through disingenuous rhetorical means. Nevertheless, Heaney’s poetics imply a causal relationship between rape culture and environmental degradation, and in response this essay suggests critics treat Heaney’s failed critique of masculine dominance as a step towards the enunciation of a reformed “ecomasculinity.”

KEYWORDS:

• Seamus Heaney
• ecocriticism
• Irish poetry
• colonialism
• hegemonic masculinity

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Davis, 92.

2 Longley, “North: ‘Inner Emigré’ or ‘Artful Voyeur’?”, 161.

3 Pulé, 313.

4 ceithearnach coille: a term composed of the Irish ceithern, a band of foot-soldiers, adopted in English “Kerne” not only in its collective sense, but also to denote an individual soldier; and coille, wood.

5 OED online, “wood-kerne”.

6 State Papers of Edward VI, vol. 1, 87.

7 Cole and Mitchell; see also Tubridy and Jeffrey.

8 Smyth’s offers useful detail on the environmental implications of colonisation in Ireland, and a special issue of Archaeological Dialogues (December 2006) offers a number of important statements on this subject specific to Ireland, particularly Horning’s “Archaeology, conflict and contemporary identity in the north of Ireland: Implications for theory and practice in comparative archaeologies of colonialism.”

9 Neer, 111. Neer also describes the practice of dropping Napalm into Vietnamese lakes to prove budgetary need in the next fiscal year, which surely had drastic effects on the local environment.

10 Kolodny, 168–9.

11 Cullingford, 1.

12 O’Driscoll, 170. Heaney describes “the big pain” as “almost as a technical term, certainly as colloquial shorthand, between women talking about the different stages of a birth.” Probably it refers to either transition to pushing or to pushing.

13 Regan, 158–9.

14 Ibid., 178.

15 Lloyd, “Pap for the Dispossessed.” Lloyd critiques Heaney’s reliance on sexual difference as a dialectical structure, pointing out that the poet’s assumptions about poetic structure and creation are rigidly dualistic, “and for all the inanity of the content of that dualism- oral, feminine, unconscious image and emotion versus cultured, masculine, conscious will and intelligence- such formulations acutely register the form of integration which is projected;” (26) an integration that presupposes not only sexual difference but sexual complementarity.

16 Brewster, 309–10.

17 Allison, 117. Though this list is necessarily incomplete, other scholars who adhere to the rape reading include Cullingford, “From Seamus to Sineád,” 43–62; Moran; Mahony; Ingelbien, 145–88; Tobin; Houen; Fitzpatrick, Shakespeare, Spenser, and the Contours of Britain; Moloney; Brearton, 73–91; Williams.

18 Armengol, 15.

19 Cullingford, “Thinking of … her,” 3.

20 Allison, 120.

21 Moloney, 78.

22 Aubrey, 265–6.

23 Arendt, 438.

24 ibid.

25 Finucane et al. offer an important statement on what is called the “white-male effect” on risk perception, suggesting that the social dominance enjoyed by white men decreases the perception of personal risk, while McCright and Dunlap, “Cool Dudes” and “The Politicization of Climate Change and Polarization” tie the white-male effect to perceptions of risk related to climate change. There is a significant body of research suggesting that white men’s perception of the risk of climate change is a serious problem in the US; the recent Men, Masculinities and Disaster offers a number of important contributions to the study of links between hegemonic masculinity and environmental disaster.

26 Pimm et al.; Pacifici et al.

27 Howlett; Howes et al., “Towards Networked Governance”; Howes et al., “Environmental Sustainability”; Howlett and Kemmerling; Kraft.

28 Bomberg; Hejny. The U.S. exit from the Paris Accords is an obvious example of this isolationist policy.

29 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration; U.S. Global Change Research Program, Fourth National Climate Assessment.