＂The Living Strut and the Dead Souls Creep＂: Mourning and the Return of the Dead in Patrick McCabe's Winterwood

Abstract

Drawing on Derrida's politics of mourning and Slavoj □i□ek's discussion of the return of the dead, this paper argues that in Winterwood, McCabe uses an individual encounter with a mysterious countryman as an allegory of the dislocation of rural Ireland in the modernizing nation. Through delineating how Ned is romanticized in Redmond's documentary report, the paper first suggests that the idea of romantic rural Ireland in fact is urban creation that fulfills people's desire for a lost paradise.Next, with Derrida's conception of mourning, the study examines how Redmond's mourning brings back to life the deceased Ned through nomination, citation, and questioning. Finally, upheld by □i□ek's analysis of the return of the dead, the paper suggests that Ned returns in order to claim a rightful position in the symbolic order. Redmond's mourning for Ned reveals not only his attempt to uncover the real face of Ned but also the awareness of the cruel reality behind a romantic fantasy of rural Ireland. Ned's spectral return, on the other hand, signals the need to understand rural Ireland before forcing it to adapt to the modernizing nation.