Grad - Dowling

Abstract

In this paper I examine how Erin Mouré, in her collection of poems O Cidadán (2002), focuses on her own inhabiting of the term citizen as a woman, as a lesbian, and as an Anglophone, yet speaks the name citizen in a language that neither refers to her citizenship, nor names a citizenship of its own. By speaking the Galician cidadán, Mouré suggests a citizenship that is radically local, but that also stretches far beyond the nation’s borders. Mouré envisions a transnational public of dissimilar citizens who might find common ground in their status as “harmed” subjects and their ability to do justice to each other. My work in this paper is to consider what potential this conception might offer for feminist theorizations of transnational public space.