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Article: Rites of defilement: abjection and the body politic in Northern Irish poetry.(Critical essay)
- Article from:
- Irish University Review: a journal of Irish Studies
- Article date:
- September 22, 2005
- Author:
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It might be argued that Northern Ireland--a territorial and signifying space whose meanings and boundaries have been so violently contested, a body politic sustained and racked by anomalous and permeable partition--has been in the condition of abjection since its foundation. Against this disorder, Northern Irish writing has often been posited as a purifying, redemptive force, able to 'hold a plea' with the rage of conflict and crisis. (1) Yet, for Julia Kristeva, it is literature that carries the full power of abjection into effect; all literature
is probably a version of the apocalypse that seems to me rooted,
no matter what its socio-historical conditions ...