Seamus Heaney’s ‘Hybrid Strategy’ in the Postcolonial Context

Abstract

For the colonization-experienced countries, ‘globalization’ is considered to be another threat of loss of their identity, but it is evident that we are living in the globalized hybridity. This paper is motivated by my personal thinking that the Republic of Ireland and modern Irish history are characterized by making and expanding their identity through the interaction with the hybridized current. And also this paper aims to investigate Seamus Heaney’s ‘hybrid strategy’, -that is, how Seamus Heaney reacted to the hybridization. For this, firstly, Homi Bhabha’s ‘hybridity’ and ‘the third space’ are studied and applied to reading Heaney’s poetry. Homi Bhabha’s concept of ‘hybridity’ offers the possibility of reinventing the cultural identity for the colonized through creating “the third space” where subversion may happen. Heaney’s poetry reflects the phenomenon of re-establishing a culture by negotiating a cultural hybridity while establishing the cultural identity. The development of Heaney’s poetry is characterized by a local writer’s resistance to a large force in an effort to win an ultimate and poetic freedom. Through rereading Seamus Heaney’s poetry, we can make sure that his poetry includes three ‘hybrid strategies’: resistance to hybridity, appropriation of hybridity and creation of a new vision beyond hybridity.