Anarchy at the Wake

Abstract

In this work I examine the relation of Anarchy to Finnegans Wake. Drawing primarily on the writers Max Stirner, Peter Kropotkin, and Benjamin Tucker, I trace the many intertextual echoes between their works and the Wake. The problems of secession, solipsism, and violence are examined in turn. Stirner's philosophy of ‘own’ – a key element in Shem's make-up – is also criticised in the Wake for its tendency toward loveless isolation. Kropotkin's description of a decentralised Anarchist society without government became Joyce's model for an anarchic text in which nothing governs. Finally, I show how Tucker – according to Manganiello, Joyce's principal political authority – is both utilised and criticised. While Joyce learned a lot from Tucker's diagnosis of the ills of coercive government, the latter's endorsement of violence in certain situations was repudiated by Joyce who subscribed to an Anarchism without violence. On the other hand, Tucker's repudiation of force in certain passages became key elements in the Wake's depiction of a possible utopian future.