Residual and Emergent Cultures in Joyce Studies

Abstract

Residual and Emergent Cultures in Joyce Studies Sheldon Brivic (bio) Derek Attridge and Marjorie Howes, eds. Semicolonial Joyce. Cambridge University Press, 2000. 269 pp. Kimberly J. Devlin and Marilyn Reizbaum, eds. Ulysses: En-Gendered Perspectives: Eighteen New Essays on the Episodes. University of South Carolina Press, 1999. 345 pp. Peter Francis Mackey. Chaos Theory and James Joyce’s Everyman. University Press of Florida, 1999. 234 pp. $49.95. John S. Rickard. Joyce’s Book of Memory: The Mnemotechnic of Ulysses. Duke University Press, 1999. 240 pp. $17.95 paper. R.J. Schork. Joyce and Hagiography: Saints Above! University Press of Florida, 2000. 239 pp. $49.95. Raymond Williams observes that in addition to the dominant culture, modern societies generally contain residual and emerging cultures. Residual cultures, such as aristocracy and religion, consist of residues of previous social formations. In emergent cultures, such as feminism and psychoanalysis, new meanings are continually created. Either residual or emergent cultures may be either alternative—capable of co-existing with the dominant one—or oppositional—in conflict with it. The oppositional culture of Modernism combined the residual in its mythological aspect with the emergent in its avant-garde features. 1 It has long been customary for Joyceans to oppose the traditional foundations on which Joyce built his works to his revolutionary skepticism, and almost all works of Joyce criticism involve some alignment of the two sides. Because the attitude of opposing the dominant order is shared by residual and emergent cultures, they often overlap, as in the apocalyptic aspect of the revolutionary. It behooves the Joycean to be aware of how the two sides dialogue with each other in critical works on Joyce and in passages by him. Even a straightforward presentation of traditional material, such as R.J. Schork’s Joyce and Hagiography, a valuable compendium of information on Joyce’s references to Christian saints, ends up having an [End Page 575] oppositional side because Schork maintains an awareness of the often scathing irony with which Joyce handles religious elements. This is Schork’s third scholarly study of Joyce’s archaic backgrounds. He is saving the Virgin Mary for his fourth, which will be on scripture and Catholic ritual. Peter Francis Mackey’s Chaos Theory approaches residual culture through emerging ideas. Mackey attempts to use the recent mathematical concepts known as chaos theory to describe Ulysses, and, especially, the role of Leopold Bloom. This theory of complexity recognizes that the events of the world are subject to so many variable forces that they cannot be reduced to a formula of linear logic with determinable cause and effect. Mackey’s account of Bloom’s quest to understand and act on the contingencies of his world is often revealing, but it may impose a frame of its own. The science of complexity, which is often used to describe elaborate physical processes like the weather, develops equations that allow for unpredicatable changes caused by the interaction of many different factors. Chaos theory tends toward the view that if patterns of life are incomprehensible, it is not because we need to know more about them, but because the processes of nature, even if totally known, are inherently incomprehensible. On this basis, Mackey draws parallels between his ideas and poststructuralism (which he calls “postmodernism”) in its emphasis on the indeterminacy of truth. Seeing parallels between the obscurity of Bloom’s life experience and the obscurity that readers of Ulysses encounter, Mackey argues that Bloom follows a method of Aristotelian inquiry into physical reality that Stephen Dedalus develops in the “Proteus” episode. This overlooks Stephen’s rather hostile attitude toward the physical, but it reveals many striking examples of Bloom’s experimental procedures for confronting the complexity of physical reality and explaining it—a new twist on the experimental novel. Mackey emphasizes the idea that tiny changes can result in huge results through random connections, making it clear that this is an important idea in Ulysses. He sees Bloom as recognizing the potential of the improbable and acting on this sense of contingency. In fact, he sees Bloom as using free will to make choices that may cause liberating changes: Mackey emphasizes the possibility of hope for Bloom at the...