Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 12:59:55 -0500 (EST)
From: Orpheus <cwduff-AT-alcor.concordia.ca>
Subject: Re: Irish/becomings/Cela




	It seems to be that one can be Irish being away from Ireland, and
that it is indeed more interesting in this way. By
why 'be' Irish when you can become Irish; when 'being' Irish
is really to become, in the sense of becomings[devenir]-Irish; when one
becomes Irish in this way one becomes Jewish and becomes-woman, and
becomes Arab, so the that the whole notion of citizenship as identity
of one State membership is dropped, abandoned;
one has to say, you have to say, why. bother?; if JJ is a model
of being-away from 'home' country and state, then the actual
state of being-irish is not to be at home; to be in expatriation
accompanied by less of the silence ofthat cunning author;
but the Molloy path of looping and cycling back and forth is
a becoming away toward the no-State status of non-state status
as with the Palestinian-becomings ; away from the sentimentality
of territory and toward a fuller sense of becomings over and
across lines and borders; to be a nation withoutbeing a nationalist;w
work where you live, she lives where she works, feeling
the exclusion[s] of every state; to end stated state,
entering becomings devenir-of language away from id-identity;
becomings-other[s] a la Paul Celan, who needs but to be read
to see his country, Celan like Darwish poetry in exile away
from the scene of catastrophe yet always returning, yet
a return that is away; and JJ with his 'i'll give them back
their englishlanguage when I am finished' butnever finished
but ending and away to return to
'my people bold and bleary' fragment of citizenship
and rejected always by the 'motherland' the 'phallicfather
land' theland who owns itself and is not more
than a becoming not citizen owned but flowed out into exile;
she speaks to be heard in the non-native countries
where best paving is red wedding