Rewriting Myths through Abjection in Marina Carr’s The Mai

  Contemporary Irish theatre has reflected an identity crisis mixed with a new interest in reconsidering myth and history. The cultural heritage of Irish myth is held responsible for communicating false ideas and misconceptions and creating, as a result, forged identities. Speculating upon the process of identity formation, myth and history are two essential elements that participate in it. If myths inspire the process of identity formation with endless stereotypes, history, which is supposed to give an honest account of past events, authorizes it. However, myth and history alike are subjected to a deliberate distortion and alteration to help privileged groups like males and colonizers to score over minority ones like the females and colonized nations. Altering the past and the present of nations and peoples through the creation of false mythical and historical discourses has become colonizers celebrated method of distorting the real identity of colonized peoples and of justifying colonization as well. Irish female has been stereotyped through a number of myths that depict her as a symbol of land, passive, submissive, unsociable maternal figures. The creation of such myths is meant to empower a male-dominated Irish society. Therefore, society limited men and women by placing them into fixed gender molds that have been greatly influenced by many deceiving gender myths and stereotypes. Though cultural myths are responsible for the creation of misconceptions and false ideas, they remain because people do not analyze or question them. Despite their falsehood, they continue to move from one generation to another and people stop wondering if they are true or not. However, to escape the destructive impact of these myths and those ideas of gender on identity, they need to be critically rethought together with their outcome of gender stereotypes that are equally deceptive and misleading.