"Lurking at the Edge of the Map, the Siren's Song": A Report on the 2019 North American James Joyce Symposium, "Joyce Without Borders," Mexico City, Mexico, 12-16 June 2019

Abstract

"Lurking at the Edge of the Map, the Siren's Song":A Report on the 2019 North American James Joyce Symposium, "Joyce Without Borders," Mexico City, Mexico, 12-16 June 2019 Gabriela Villanueva The streets surrounding the premises are dingy with an almost obvious Joycean tinge. The songs from the modern city invade them: other-worldly murmurs that speak the sound of Korean headphones, recently bootlegged Hollywood films, Mexican fondas, and gentrified coffee-shops. But the old house remains as if arrested in time. A large parlor leads to the grand staircase where people stand and wait in open sunlit rooms, broad balconies, to have a sip of coffee and continue the conversation on whatever else might be said about the Irish author. The murmur of the crowd has a feel of English sprinkled with notes of Spanish. The Mexican waiters used to catering loud weddings and graduation parties stare at these people, these Joyceans coming from remote lands to this city to discuss the books of this strange-looking man. White-suited pirate. The Symposium is about to begin again. Students, scholars, and artists from around the world met at this 1920s mansion, the Casa Universitaria del Libro (CASUL), during the 2019 North American James Joyce Symposium, an event co-hosted by the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM-Cuajimalpa) and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM): two public universities where students from all sorts of backgrounds have a chance to meet James Joyce for the first time. And in these spaces, the works of the author become, in fact, borderless; according to the Ambassador of Ireland to Mexico, this is a city that Joyce would have never been able to traverse in just one day. The varied Spanish-speaking audience is perhaps the most tangible proof of the ongoing work of the teachers in these universities, including Aurora Piñeiro (UNAM), James Ramey (UAM-Cuajimalpa), Argentina Rodríguez (UNAM), and Mario Murgia (UNAM). They have devoted their lives to introducing these daunting works of literature to hesitant students who, little by little, become independent [End Page 231] mariners learning the art of getting lost in Joycean oceans all by themselves. With the aid of the International James Joyce Foundation, the teachers were also responsible for bringing this event to Mexico City and building a place of encounter for people interested in the works of Joyce around the globe. The sessions themselves were organized around matters of importance and considered the ways in which words like "borders," "nationalities," and "identities" have turned leaden in today's world: a world in which Joyce's anticolonialist, frequently pacifist writings seem more necessary than ever. Most of the voices heard between 12 and 16 June found ways to overcome the narrow boundaries under which we have been told to move, to stay, to accept. According to the organizers of the event, there were 192 proposals from twenty-four countries (Mexico, Ireland, United States, Canada, Turkey, France, New Zealand, Fiji, England, Denmark, Belgium, Australia, Germany, Japan, Peru, Scotland, Uzbekistan, Brazil, Czech Republic, Russia, Spain, Netherlands, Italy, and Qatar) coming through the border to get to this city. Such numbers seem to refute the idea of a solitary center. From Joyce's presence in the political art of Rita Duffy, where she explored the ambivalences of Irish identity to sessions on African, Asian, and Latin American readings of Joyce, the Symposium suggested that there might be something to be learned if we turn away from the concept of North and South and listen to sounds of the sirens beckoning us to let go of narrowly defined divisions. In the words of Samuel Beckett—who was quoted by Ambassador Barbara Jones, the kind sponsor of a social event on behalf of the Irish Embassy—the danger might, in fact, be "in the neatness of identifications," an overarching warning that seemed to prevail throughout the Symposium as readers of Joyce repeatedly voiced a reluctance to accept such "neatness" and opted instead for the openness of the Joycean text, thereby breaching borders that are the basis of narrow-minded policies that represent much of today's international relations.1 Ambassador Jones insisted on the relevance that Joyce might...