"Mapping" The Third Space In Brian Friel’s Ireland

Witnessing the persisting conflicts within the (post)colonial Ireland, the greatestliving Irish playwright Brian Friel expresses his liminal experience along the tangibleand intangible borders of the north and the south, the Irish and the English, the pastand the present in Translations and its companion piece The Communication Cord.This thesis attempts to map and remap the contour of the postcolonial Third Space inthese dramatic texts, discussing Friel’s dealing with binaries, consciousness, strategyand identity with the key Bhabharian concepts of ambivalence, translation, andhybridity. Revisiting the initial moment of imperialism in Translations, andforegrounding its psychological aftermath in Cord, Brian Friel presents the historicalambivalence between tradition and modernity, the past and the present as alwaysintertwined, complex and anti-dialectical, together with the psychologicalambivalence that produces indeterminate colonial authority and postcolonialunhomeliness. Focusing on the central metaphor of translation in Translations and itstranslated version of Cord, the thesis then explores the strategic functions of culturaltranslation, highlighting its subversive and renewing capacity in the postcolonialpower struggle. The historical and psychological ambivalence together with thestrategic operation of cultural translation empower the splitting of the subject position,positing cultural identity forever between pedagogy and performativity, word andworld.