“The Memory of Parnell”: Juridical and Ethical Testimony in “Ivy Day in the Committee Room”

Abstract

In this essay, I analyze the methods Joyce’s characters employ to bear witness to Charles Stewart Parnell’s political decline and death in “Ivy Day in the Committee Room.” Using Giorgio Agamben’s writings on juridical and ethical testimony, I argue that Joyce depicts his canvassers’ insufficient commemorations of Parnell to highlight the limitations of testimony grounded in legal concepts of judgment, responsibility, and guilt, and he juxtaposes this legal testimony with pervasive scenes of Irish domestic decline to argue for a more ethical testimony for everyday and extreme trauma under British imperialism. I thus conclude that Dubliners is both a text about testimony and a testimonial text, and, by evaluating the witnessing strategies of Joyce’s characters alongside the author’s narrative approach, we see the extent to which Dubliners functions as a “nicely polished looking glass” that reflects the suffering of Dublin back to its readers.