English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Abstract. Paul Muldoon's poems "Meeting the British" and "My Father and I and Billy Two Rivers" represent history as a space of reversed allegiances. In these poems, doubling is a constant activity that deceives the viewer or interlocutor. This deception occurs both in the history of British imperialism and in a technological present in which an Irish father and son must make sense of the shifting and uncertain ground of their own cultural identity. Behind the veil of the allegiance lurk obscured differences of both identity and power; Muldoon's poems highlight the importance of being skeptical of all assertions of identity that purport to equate different, opposed and unequal cultural groups. In the end, a knowledge of history is the most important tool for piercing the veil of deception and seeing clearly the working of difference and resisting the deception that is the weapon of those in power. Key Words. Poetry, Paul Muldoon, history, Native American, difference, identity Resumen. Los poemas "Meeting the British" y "My Father and I and Billy Two Rivers," de Paul Muldoon, presentan la historia como un espacio de alianzas cambiantes. En estos poemas, el duplicar es una actividad constante que engana al espectador o interlocutor. Este engano ocurre tanto en la historia del imperialismo britanico como en un presente tecnologico en el cual un padre irlandes y su hijo tienen que comprender su propia identidad cultural, que es siempre cambiante e incierta. Detras del velo de la alianza se esconden diferencias de identidad y poder; los poemas de Muldoon subrayan la importancia de ser esceptico en cuanto a todas las afirmaciones de identidad que pretenden equiparar grupos culturales que son desiguales y que estan en oposicion. A fin de cuentas, un conocimiento de la historia es la herramienta mas util para penetrar el velo de la decepcion, ver claramente como funciona el fenomeno de la diferencia, y resistir el engano que sirve de arma para los que poseen el poder. Palabras clave. Poesia, Paul Muldoon, historia, indigena, indiferencia, identidad.  History is a dynamic phenomenon in Paul Muldoon's poetry. In "Meeting the British" (from the eponymous collection of 1987) and "My Father and I and Billy Two Rivers" (from Quoof, 1983), the past is a space marked by deception and shifting alliances. In the poems, doubling is the primary force behind the events of history. People and their actions repeatedly team up with paradoxical counterparts in an unstable space where action and identity undergo repeated reversals. As we will see, language is a crucial medium for these processes of repetition and differentiation. The The vision of history sketched out in "Meeting the British" is expanded upon in "My Father and I and Billy Two Rivers". The latter poem multiplies the permutations that result from the basic instability established in the previous poem, especially in its enactment of a fusion of past and present. The reversals that Muldoon's doublings enact underline the instability of cultural, national, ethnic, and political identities. To use Derrida's language, this instability emerges from the reality that "... the identity of a culture is a way of being different from itself; a culture is different from itself; language is different from itself, the person is different from itself" (Derrida 1997: 13). These paradoxes are linked; the difference that irrupts into the unity of the national identity is grounded in the difference that fissures language, a fact illustrated in Muldoon's subtle play with metaphor, doubling, disguise and paradox. Beyond what happens in language, though grounded always in language, the difference within cultural identity can also be seen to emerge from an inevitable process of difference operative within individual identity. The implications of this difference within identity for Derrida are potentially quite positive: the constant play of difference, disrupting "unity", "totality" and "community as a homogenized whole" makes possible "responsibility", "decision", "ethics" and "politics", and "prevents totalitarianism, nationalism, egocentrism, and so on" (Derrida 1997: 13-14). …

Shams and Cover-ups: The Spectacle of History in Paul Muldoon’s “Meeting the British” and “My Father and I and Billy Two Rivers”