THE RELEVANCE OF ERROR:
DYNAMIC DIALETHEIA IN THE "ITHACA" EPISODE OF JAMES JOYCE'S ULYSSES
A Thesis
Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of
Master of Arts
In
English
University of Regina
By
Myron Soloduk
Regina, Saskatchewan
July, 2011
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FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES AND RESEARCH
SUPERVISORY AND EXAMINING COMMITTEE
Myron Anthony Soloduk, candidate for the degree of Master of Arts in English, has presented a thesis titled, The Relevance of Error: Dynamic Dialetheia in the "Ithaca" Episode of James Joyce's Ulysses, in an oral examination held on June 29, 2011. The following committee members have found the thesis acceptable in form and content, and that the candidate demonstrated satisfactory knowledge of the subject material.
External Examiner: Dr. Bela Szabados, Department of Philosophy & Classics
Supervisor: Dr. Marcel DeCoste, Department of English
Committee Member: Dr. Noel Chevalier, Luther College
Committee Member: Dr. Christian Riegel, Campion College
Chair of Defense: Dr. Philip Charrier, Department of History
*Not present at defense i
ABSTRACT
The fundamental observation in this thesis is that error - both on an abstract discursive level, and on an interpersonal level - conveys more information, more directly than a factual exegesis. I contend that we learn more about Bloom by paying attention to how he deviates from proper discursive reasoning, and that the particularity of these deviations reveal the unique personality of Bloom. Further, that there are errors in the application of discourses that stem directly from inconsistencies within the discourses themselves, and that paying attention to these errors reflects a broader sociological point about Dublin life specifically, and the modernizing effects of urban life generally. The notion of parallax, as developed by Hugh Kenner, combined with the philosophical work of Graham Priest on dialetheism provides a conceptual hinge that reconciles conflicting points of view and introduces the term 'dynamic dialetheism' to describe the threefold dynamic between competing ideological discourses and an individual human consciousness. In this schema, error is relevant in that it signals the presence of contradictions in the application of ideological discourses and reveals the unique subjective consciousness of Bloom. This reading embraces the inconsistencies of the text as an expression of the uncertainty the average citizen faces in his phenomenological existence and provides the groundwork for a reimagining of Ulysses as a creative project in its own right, where the novel is an exploration of ways of moving beyond subjective phenomenalism toward public consciousness. ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My achievement with the completion of this study, small as it may be, has come with a greater investment of faith from those around me than is likely deserved. Such gestures can never be well enough articulated. Nonetheless, I here attempt a worthy failure.
Preparatory to any thing else I would like to sincerely and wholeheartedly thank
Dr. Marcel DeCoste for his patience in what must have, admittedly, at times seemed an exercise in futility. His willingness to supervise my project and endurance in that endeavor is a testament to the depth of his insight and fine skill as a mentor. Though more than a few hairs on my head owe their demise to the most offhanded of his editorial comments, I remain confident I am better without them.
As well, more people than can be thanked here have coerced my development. In particular, I would also like to thank my supervisory committee, Dr. Noel Chevalier and
Dr. Chris Riegel, for their provocative questions throughout. As well, I would like to thank Dr. Lynn Wells for encouraging me into Graduate School. Without her extending an olive branch in my direction, kind prodding during the admission procedure and helpful advice throughout, I would not have lasted as long as I did.
To William Soloduk, Danielle Jeancart, and Mark: without you nothing would be possible. William, your steadfastness and shining exuberance in the face of adversity has provided me with a lasting awe that has informed my work more than I can describe.
Danielle, your encouragement throughout the writing process, much needed comic relief, and dozens of small acts of kindness mean more to me than anything. I have cherished all we have shared, and hope for many more evenings in the sun. And Mark, for always being there in a pinch. Thank-you. TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS ii
INTRODUCTION: ELUSIVE REALITY
CHAPTER 1: FROM THE KNOWN TO THE UNKNOWN H 1.1: Encountering Error I. 1.2: In Bloom - Dynamic Dialetheia 21
CHAPTER 2: CONFLICT AND COMPARISON 3 2.1: Formal Dialogue 3! 2.2: Fixiri A Hole 4! 2.3: Right in Two 6
CHAPTER 3: A TANGLE OF HIERARCHIES 6 3.1: This is the End 61 3.2: The World at Large 8
CONCLUSION: RATIONALIZING ERROR 9
WORKS CITED INTRODUCTION
ELUSIVE REALITY: Joyce's Realism and the Importance of Error
Avoid this error: that so many chances die when the one choice is made: to be! Silk thread, you were drawn into the fabric.
Whatever single image you made yourself part of (be it even a moment from a life of torment), feel how the whole carpet is meant, its glorious weave. - Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus. Pt II, No. 21
The opposite of every truth is just as true! You see: A truth can be uttered and clad in words only if it is one-sided. One-sided is everything that can be thought with thoughts and said in words - everything one-sided, everything half, everything is devoid of wholeness, of roundness, of oneness. - Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
Searching for unity in Ulysses, critics have tended to view its vast stylistic inventiveness as either an anticipation of post-modern tenets or a critique of "styles and values that Joyce does not sanction - in fact, that he wishes to expose as insufficient or distorting" (Thornton 94). That is, as playful stylistic manipulation without purpose or as a nearly nihilistic effacing of societal norms and values. However, I maintain that Joyce's aesthetic engages many conflicting points of view in an effort to convey a broader, more general sense of reality. The mediating force in this endeavour is error. This is particularly emblematic of the penultimate "Ithaca" episode, where the discourses of theology and science/mathematics are subject to some of Joyce's most radical stylistic constructions. "Ithaca" holds a constant tension between discourses with no promise of reconciliation. Yet, it is precisely in this lack of reconciliation where Joyce's aesthetic technique is at its finest. The juxtaposition of antithetical discourses is exemplary of what Hugh Kenner calls Joyce's charactersitic parallax view that is the presenting of "two different versions ... [that] render one another substantial" (Kenner 75). Each discourse is 2 kept in constant counterpoint to the other and substantiates the errors of the other. By foregrounding this dynamic, the oscillation between perspectives that is the under- remarked heart of "Ithaca"'s technique comes into focus. With the aid of Graham Priest's notion of dialetheism, for which true contradictions are not only possible but are, in certain circumstances, rationally valid, the unresolved tension in "Ithaca" is seen as integral to Joyce's realistic aesthetic in writing Ulysses. Indeed, "Ithaca" reveals Joyce's use of error in fostering a parallax view, pitting form versus content, and characters against the ideologies that influence their lives. This delays the possibility of privileging one over another and suspends judgment so as to make both perspectives integral to each other. To understand "Ithaca", and Ulysses as a whole, is to view the text as an exercise in theoretical pluralism; to do so requires the approach of dynamic dialetheism.
This thesis will argue that error is the primary mediating force in "Ithaca" that captures the pluralistic reality of the Dublin metropolis. I maintain that Joyce's aesthetic fosters a parallax view that suspends advocacy of either one of the episodes's two discourses in favour of an appreciation of both. This works in two ways in "Ithaca": firstly, on an ideological level between the discourses of theology and science/mathematics, where error acts as a bridge between the two discourses; secondly, between Bloom's psyche and those background ideologies that continually influence that foregrounded consciousness. Bloom's interactions with these abstract discourses, on both a conscious and unconscious level, are a muddle of errors that enact a parallax view between the figure of Bloom and the wider discourses circulating in and about the Dublin of his time. My approach will thus shed light on Joyce's incessant layering in the text. In this respect, my thesis' orienting premise is akin to the notion that English Modernism 3 can be fruitfully studied as many distinct modernisms rather than a coherent unified movement1. Many elements are simultaneously at work, each foregrounded to the point where the text promotes contradiction. Thus, the relevance of error lies in its ability to accommodate and showcase contradiction, a dynamic that is inherently dialetheic.
Dialetheism is a term that was coined by Graham Priest and Richard Routley in
1981 to refer to a sentence that is such that both it, A, and its negation, -A, are true. The classic example here is the Liar's Paradox: 'this sentence is not true' is true if it is false and vice versa. Such a statement is, in Priest's formulation, dialetheic. Thus, dialetheism is "the view that the LNC [Law of Non-Contradiction] fails, that some contradictions are true" (Priest "What's So Bad" 29), as in the Liar's Paradox. Priest's book In
Contradiction: A Study of the Transconsistent is the touchstone work on dialetheism, and is the work that I will consult most often. In it Priest develops a dialetheic logical theory in answer to logical paradoxes and applies this theory to various philosophical dilemmas of language, mathematics, and law, among others. While the history of dialetheism as a coherent theory is rather short, it has in practice, if not in name, deep roots in historical reactions to Aristotelian logic.2 This makes Priest's philosophy apposite to "Ithaca". The two discourses (science/mathematics and theology) simultaneously illuminate and embrace contradictions that occur within and between them. This advances pluralism in the sense that the importance of any single discourse varies in direct relation to its application.
1 Critics such as Peter Nicholls and Robert Scholes argue for such an approach. 2 There have been dialetheists throughout history. For more discussion of dialetheic thinking in history, see Priest's Bevond the Limits of Thought which is a series of case studies on Western philosophers from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, through to post-modernists such as Derrida. Priest offers interpretations of their respective philosophical schemata that place them in line with dialetheic thought. 4
Attention to Joyce's use of error has slowly grown in the critical scholarship since
John Maddox first put forward the idea that error as stylistic obfuscation is a major motif in "Ithaca"3. Frontrunners of this trend are Patrick McCarthy and Tim Conely. Both, however, take a reductive approach to Joyce's text. McCarthy treats the discourse of science/mathematics as being revealed by Joyce as unreliable but nonetheless
"humanized by its own unreliability" ("Joyce's Unreliable Catechist" 616). McCarthy maintains that the more stridently we engage with the text on an ideological level, the more we try to interpret it through one lens we take to be reliable, the more we become engrossed in a kind of ideological solipsism. It is thus error that "exposes[s], for the reader, a particular vision or logic that bears a skewed relationship to the larger truth expressed, indirectly, by the novel" (McCarthy Ulysses-Portals of Discovery 35) that any viewpoint is ultimately inadequate. Similarly, Tim Conley writes that "paralysis ... is the enemy of the Joycean artist and an effect of the crippling fear of imperfection" (38).
Conley emphasizes error as an active aesthetic principle that flouts accuracy in favour of expressiveness. This is similarly true for readers of Joyce. For in Joyce, Conley sees a writer who "demands participation" (149), and who provides his reader "an opportunity
... to recognize his or her own cognitive abilities" (147). For both McCarthy and Conley, error functions critically and at times accusatorily, repudiating advanced critical engagement that teeters on triviality.
There is indeed much truth in these claims; but while Joyce himself was no ideologue, he was no relativist either. In Ulvsses. Joyce created a text remarkably
3 See Maddox's book, Joyce's Ulvsses and the Assault Upon Character, pp. 184-201, where he argues that "Ithaca" "reveal[s] most fully the abstract configuration of Stephen, Bloom, and Molly and simultaneously questions] the ability of the mathematical spirit to account for the complexities of the characters' behaviour" (187). 5 complex and open to interpretation, but also squarely rooted in a particular time and a particular place. It engages contemporaneously with the ideologies and politics of its time. If the text of Ulysses ridicules these discourses, it does so with the knowledge that its characters are still embedded within those frameworks. As Richard Ellmann notes,
"there is none of the active, external, conclusive life" (3) in Joyce's fiction, and this applies to conclusive critique as much as to conclusive advocacy. Ulysses is a work of the reality of the commonplace, of introversion and "grudged heroes" (Ellmann 3) who are embedded in a world of conflicting ideology, history and politics that, by and large they are unaware of; indeed, precisely what they believe they do know is as likely as not to be wrong. The distinct styles of each episode of Ulysses often reflect and grow out of the immediate social surroundings in the text: the boisterous rhetoric of "Aeolus" reflecting the self-inflating speech of the newsroom; the sentimental flowerings of
"Nausicaa" reflecting Gerty's and Bloom's sentimental musings, etc. This is part of
Joyce's method: a presentation of man in society that shows both the inadequacy of any single viewpoint and the necessity and relevance of a variety of discursive methods of knowledge.
My own approach examines the tension between the discourses of theology and science/mathematics in "Ithaca" and the interactions between these discourses and
Bloom's own subjective consciousness as a dynamic dialetheia. This will articulate the internal contradictions in both discourses and will argue that these internal inconsistencies are observable by virtue of the criticism implied by other discourses
Joyce foregrounds. Thus, on a formal level, a plurality of discourses is minimally informative in illuminating the blind spots of another theory. This is the parallax view 6 that is at the heart of Joyce's realist aesthetic. The parallax view is not limited to interactions between discourses; it also articulates Bloom's interaction with these abstract discourses. Bloom unknowingly enacts a parallax view as a part of his own reasoning process, and part of this propensity for parallax is a penchant for error as well. Error is a result of Bloom's openness to the world, his willingness to consider foreign ideas - even if he knows nothing about them. It is Bloom's erring and exploratory nature that opens the door to a pluralistic viewpoint in Joyce's diverse Dublin.
In light of this, what I have termed Joyce's 'realism' is representative of the
Dublin he experienced and made manifest in "Ithaca". The explicit foregrounding of discourses that exert real influence over the lives of its inhabitants is an important part of this representation. Dublin was a city famous for its brothels, as well as its Catholic dogma, for its humour and for its poverty. For Joyce, the city he immortalized in his fiction was no one thing and this is amply reflected in his depiction of it. However,
Joyce's realism is not traditional literary realism. While the literary realists were interested in a type of mimesis capturing a character's fate by portraying external factors that are beyond the control of the individual, Joyce's stream of consciousness explores the interaction between external forces and the internal subjectivity of his characters. In doing so, Joyce engages with the discourses that shape our very conceptions of what external factors are and incorporates these informing discourses into his fiction as real entities that can influence and be influenced by his characters. As such, Joyce's realism is somewhat akin to a philosophical realism where ideas are treated as real entities in the world. Joyce thus brings discourses that were often absolved from reality crashing down into the imperfect reality of an everyday Dubliner. Here, abstract discourses that strive 7 for perfection are seen as being as susceptible to error as people, and not exempt from manipulation or distortion. Joyce's realism is thus elusive and difficult to pin down precisely to the extent that different viewpoints are presented in different circumstances.
It is this multitude of viewpoints that Joyce embraces and depicts so vividly in his fiction. Though many of these viewpoints are indeed erroneous, even superfluous, they are all part of the city he depicts. In "Ithaca" the divergent views are those battling for objectivity, for the whole of the city, so to speak; it is here that error and contradiction are most prominent. Joyce foregrounds the contradictions of both science/mathematics and theology in this episode without resolution. In other words, he has created a true contradiction, with neither theological nor empirical knowledge being the sole bastion of truth in the episode. This dialetheistic element suggests that both discourses are necessary and that both discourses influence the characters of the text. This necessitates a split view that can account for the dynamic interaction between the discourses themselves, and between the discourses and the characters.
Chapter one of my study will introduce the analysis of error in Joyce's text through a survey of existing literature that deals with Joycean error and outline the advantages of such an analysis over other critical viewpoints. These critical views that portray "Ithaca" as a critique will be shown as taking a reductive view of the text. This will establish error as an essential element of the text "Ithaca" that Joyce uses to "create a multiplicity of inexhaustible interpretations" (Anker 669). Such a multiplicity will necessarily involve a rather liminal reading of the text. Given the multiple interpretations made possible by this unstable text, it is necessary to account for the dynamic that creates this instability and uncertainty within "Ithaca". In response to this, I will outline what I 8 will call 'dynamic dialetheia', incorporating the work of Graham Priest with Joyce's use of parallax observed by Hugh Kenner, and illustrate on a basic textual level how dynamic dialetheia captures the inconsistent textual phenomena of "Ithaca" and best illuminates
Joyce's realistic portrayal of the diversifying influence of the modern city.
Chapter Two will expand the application of dynamic dialetheia to the ideological realm and articulate the inconsistencies within the discourses of theology and science/mathematics as manifest in the reality of "Ithaca". This will require a brief historical summary of the ongoing struggle for ideological dominance between science/mathematics and theology. The chapter will introduce the notion of 'totalizing discourses' in reference to discourses that are both formally well articulated and that conceive themselves as the final coherent accounts of'reality'. These discourses will be shown to be widely articulated in terms of everyday application and active in attempting to eliminate alternative discourses. In "Ithaca," such presumptions are undercut by examples that illustrate inconsistencies within the key concepts of both discourses. These discourses are further undermined by the erroneous understanding of these concepts by the characters of the novel. In response to the consistent undermining of authoritative discourses, it will be proposed that a parallax view mediates the divide caused by the prejudicial error of these discourses. As such, Joyce radically undermines the totalizing claims of both theology and science/mathematics by, ironically, treating them as they wished to be treated: as real entities in the world. However, this realism entails their being subject error. Thus, Joyce's treatment of them illustrates the inevitable erroneous ideological interactions that occur in a pluralistic society. 9
Chapter Three will explore the above ideological uncertainty in terms of the subjective consciousness of Bloom. This discussion will start from the premise that in
"Ithaca", as in other episodes, Bloom's is the central organizing consciousness. I will argue that, in opposition to the standard 'Arranger' thesis first articulated by David
Hayman4, the questions of "Ithaca" are not a type of disembodied voice, an unarticulated other that stems from the interaction between Bloom's stream of consciousness and the discourses themselves. Rather, the questions are a formal expression of the interplay between theology, science/mathematics, and Bloom's conscious psyche. This chapter will argue that Bloom's consciousness is best made sense of as a variety of juxtapositions of abstract discourses and basic sensory phenomena. It is this tangle that leads Bloom in interesting directions. By juxtaposing higher order abstractions within a phenomenological framework, error detotalizes the abstract discourses of theology and science/mathematics, though not to the point of rendering them invalid. Because they are treated as real entities in the world, they reveal Bloom as a unique individual in his own right precisely because of his erroneous relationship with abstract totalizing discourses.
Bloom thus emerges as a paradigm of a pluralistic society that is characterised by a diverse array of ideological discourses. In attempting to deal with Molly's infidelity,
Bloom finds original rationalizations to this situation in the most banal way possible - through error. In a city that would become famous for its ideological divides, Joyce offers a character that is able to circumvent such ideological conflict, not through reconciliation or synthesis, but through encounters with error.
It is error that allows us to see beyond a particular lens. It is error that beckons for other abstractions. It is error that calls these abstractions into question. The
4 See David Hayman, Ulvsses: The Mechanics of Meaning, p. 70 10 articulation of this dynamic elucidates the milieu of Dublin society where the subject interacts with many ideologies in many ways. "Ithaca" represents a conceptual hinge in which the text reflects back upon its method and reveals the precise extent to which error is a permanent feature of Joyce's realist aesthetic. Error engages the dialetheic moment of the parallax view by a forced acknowledgement of the tacit inconsistencies in an average citizen's everyday life and in the most totalizing and absolute of discourses. By featuring error so prominently in "Ithaca", Joyce implicitly promotes a pluralistic worldview, and realistically articulates the relativising effects of the burgeoning era of the metropolis. However, unlike many modernist writers, Joyce's revision offers no manifesto. Instead, like Rilke and Hesse - two writers who also published canonical works in 1922s - Joyce articulates a societal shift from a monist worldview to a pluralist worldview. He features error as the revising force that works without sanction to create something new - the possibility of a broader conception of reality that allows, and even thrives on, conflicting points of view. This revision is brought about by the singular event of Molly's infidelity, destabilizing Bloom's understanding of the world and forcing a challenging rethinking of worldviews on him. Dialetheia emphasizes this dynamic and allows readers to make sense of the episode and all of its elements at once, rather than fixing on one as definitive or important.
5 Both Rilke and Hesse published what are, arguably their best, if not best known works. Rilke published Sonnets to Orpheus, and Hesse published Siddarthatha in 1922. A theme in both works is a move toward a more open and plural notion of metaphysics. In Hesse this is achieved through an integration of Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. In Rilke this is expressed through the themes of flux and the ephemeral nature of experience. 1. 'FROM THE KNOWN TO THE UNKNOWN': Establishing Error as Dynamic Dialetheia
Galileo, beginning with the moon, proved its similarity in every particular to the earth; its convex figure, its natural darkness when not illuminated, its density, its distinction into solid and liquid, the variations of its phase, the mutual illuminations of the earth and moon, their mutual eclipses, the inequalities of the lunar surface, &c. After many instances of this kind, with regard to all the planets, men plainly saw, that these bodies became proper objects of experience. David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
It's the hysterical individual who allows his life to be polarized by simple extreme antitheses. Saul Bellow, Herzog
In "Ithaca", Joyce presents his most radical sublimation of character to external societal influences. The episode contorts its characters around ideological systems that at once distort and illuminate. Throughout "Ithaca," Bloom and Stephen are clouded in an ideological haze that appears, at first glance, to confer a comprehensive objectivity; yet, despite the crisp, cool narration there is a palpable tension between the characters and the objective style. In fact, the ideological saturation of a theological form and scientific/mathematical language fails in its objective task on two levels. Firstly, it fails to capture in a consistent manner the diversity of either Stephen or Bloom's character.
Secondly, the presence of such antithetical discourses as theology and science/mathematics resists reconciliation and presents an inconsistent text that seems at odds with itself. However, I propose that error, as a textual, and as a character-driven phenomenon, proves to be a mediating influence in "Ithaca". Joyce's zealous commitment to realism places esoteric ideas and concepts in play within a physical, or at least phenomenal, reality and in doing so, disturbs the finality that ordering discourses offer. Error becomes a useful analytical tool in both surveying an ideological scenario that is rife with extreme polarities, and providing a precarious resolution of the 12 ideological and character-based errors in the episode. Such a resolution is predicated upon dialetheism. This chapter will argue that error is an important element in "Ithaca" that offers a window into ideological controversies by exposing the limits of individual discourses as an ordering influence on the diversity of subjective phenomena experienced even in a single day. To this end, examples of errors will be given to present error as a proper object of the reading experience. Joyce's realist aesthetic presents a social and subjective reality that is palpably governed by error; dynamic dialetheia offers an approach to this element of "Ithaca" that more fully captures the parallactic tension of the episode.
1.1 Encountering Error
Joyce's realist aesthetic works against hierarchies of knowledge, localizing the lofty, totalizing discourses of science/mathematics and theology within a typical Dublin day. This juxtaposition reveals dialetheia manifest in the everyday. In defining dialetheia as "any true statement of the form: a and it is not the case that a" (In
Contradiction 4), Graham Priest expands traditional truth tables and subsequently removes consistency as an absolute criterion of truth. This is because "there are criteria for rationality other than consistency, and [...] some of these are even more powerful than consistency"1 (Priest, "What's So Bad" 32). Throughout Ulysses. Joyce incorporates abstract ideas and profound thoughts into the typically mundane lives of his characters; by so bringing the life of the mind into the realist mode, these abstract realms are thus examined in the world rather than on the disengaged plane where they are
' For example, Priest cites "simplicity, problem-solving ability, non-adhocness, fruitfiilness" (32) as among the criteria for rationality, and also notes that these criteria "are all independent, and may even be orthogonal, pulling in opposite directions" (32). In such a scenario, where even the criteria of rationality are antagonistic, rationality is something of a balancing act. 13 typically debated. I take this to be Joyce's expression of a sophisticated and highly nuanced realism, inherently contentious, self-contradicting, and pluralistic. This mimics the inconsistencies of thought; the anticlimactic state that "Ithaca" leaves its readers in is an outgrowth of this realist aesthetic and brings about an embrace of irresolute complexity where limited discourses are preferable to totalizing discourses. In bringing the life of the mind squarely into focus, Joyce gives totalizing discourses equal billing with and within the city that surrounds them. Joyce's stream of consciousness technique does not allow for final reconciliation; and with abstract discourses placed alongside, not above or below one another, the irreconcilable differences are presented without a view to reconciliation. Thus, it is error that mediates this irreconcilable divide.
Resolving theoretical divides often involves a kind of metalanguage and is often seen to serve objectivity. Wittgenstein's Tractatus is an example of an attempt by strictly formalized higher order logic to properly formulate paradoxes, identify errors, and subsequently order them into a defined arena of existence.2 Such totalizing theories, however, only succeed in producing more problems to be solved by further abstract analysis. This results in an ever accumulating hierarchy of increasingly abstract systems that are meant to correspond to reality. The Hegelian dialectic is such an example, where the solution to the dialectic - the synthesis - inevitably gives way to its own antithesis, subsequently synthesized, ad infinitum . Such appeal to abstract correspondence can be
2 In the Tractatus Wittgenstein writes that "philosophy does not result in 'philosophical propositions', but rather in the clarification of propositions... its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries" (30) What is presented in the Tractatus is his picture theory of language where the problems of philosophy arise because "one fails to observe some logical distinctions and is thus led to speak nonsense" (Kuusela 56). The Tractatus is Wittgenstein's attempt to make apparent any and all logical distinctions that underlie language, thereby eliminating error. 31 realize this to be a point of contention. Some Hegelians, such as Charles Taylor, argue that the transcendental dialectic can indeed resolve such contradictions, and that Hegel failed to "show reality as contradictory" (Taylor 230). My thoughts are akin to Priest's on this matter, who is not out of step with 14 seen from the start of "Ithaca"s first question-and-answer sequence. The mapping of
Bloom and Stephen's path concludes with "they crossed both the circus before George's church diametrically, the chord in any circle being less than the arc which it subtends"
(776) and presents the final mathematical principle as verification that the duo took the shortest route. The invocation of the scientific/mathematical principle gives the answer a definitive and authoritative cast. This gives the appearance of concretizing the event and giving it a definite shape with distinct parameters by expressing it in a discourse that is intended to be able to express everything that is.
However, when brought down to the street this abstract truth loses its absolute quality. If the 'circus' were filled with people, as it seems designed to be and perhaps would have been earlier in the novel, it would be faster to go around, not through, the center. More, the two have not taken the shortest route to that point - it would have been quicker to go left on Summerhill and then up to Temple St. via Hill St., bypassing
Mountjoy square altogether. Further still, after the tired narration of "Eumaeus," there seems no reason to infer that the two would be in any particular hurry. Nor does what follows in the episode depict the two in any particular haste - rather the contrary. Thus, the invocation of brevity seems rather ad hoc, and the 'chord of the circle' overreaching.
This disparity between the narrative technique and the characters' physical/emotional state immediately calls into question the relevance of the principle. While it is undoubtedly true that "the chord in a circle [is] less than the arc" (776), it is doubtful whether this truth has application in this scenario.
Hegel in asserting that if "perfectly correct reasoning, using legitimate applications of certain concepts, leads to contradiction: the concepts are contradictory. And since a sound argument must have a true conclusion, there must be contradictions which are true" (Priest In Contradiction 3-4). 15
Theological undertones similarly influence the opening passage. The pair passes the church of St. George, who was a Christian soldier and is the patron saint of England.
The 'chord' that is the path of the two Irishmen can thus be read as 'discord' cutting the
'arc' of English rule. This situates the text in a theological/political debate surrounding
Irish home rule that is present in the novel as early as "Telemachus"4. The chord, an abstract symbolic statement of political dissidence becomes, when examined within the context of these surroundings, problematic. Whether either character is aware of the abstract symbolical statements made by walking across Mountjoy Square is unclear.
Though the symbolism remains discernible in the text, it seems imposed. Thus, from the outset both theological and scientific/mathematical discourses impose upon and distort the narrative. The implication is that error and inconsistency, particularly regarding abstraction, is the ground level truth that escapes the breadth of either discourse. Both discourses, with their emphasis on consistency, when brought into contact with the particulars of reality fail to retain a consistent actualization of absolute truth.
As such, from the outset "Ithaca" is involved in an elaborate critique of the imposing discourses of science/mathematics and theology, exposing them as erroneous when situated amongst the pragmatic concerns of Dublin life. Tim Conley promotes this view and sees Joyce's aesthetic development as proceeding "apace with [Joyce's] appreciation and integration of error as a principle of composition and publication" (6).
Error is thus an active force in Joyce's aesthetic, and as Conley sees it, drives the humour of the text, deflating authoritative forms. However, Conley characterizes error primarily
4 The tension Haines creates by his mere presence is at least in part because he is from England, concretized in Stephen's sentiment that he, himself, is "the servant of two masters. ..an English and an Italian" (24), to which Haines patronizingly responds: "an Irishman must think like that, I daresay" (24). M. Keith Booker picks up on this point writing that one of Joyce's strategies was "the suggestion that the Catholic Church operates in complicity with the Protestant British Empire" (2). 16 as a phenomenon of composition, and does not distinguish from whom or where errors come. Error is a method, Joyce's means of critiquing totalizing discourses through a body of established knowledge assumed in his readership. Discrepancies between discourses and Joyce's Dublin create an ironic conflict between the known certainties of the text and the reader. Conley offers a picture of a highly unstable text that is perhaps more concerned with its readers than with its own techniques and content.5
However, while Joyce's aesthetic is, as Conley notes, palimpsestual, with every word or phrase distorting what precedes it, there is an active engagement with these discourses in the text. For instance, Stephen's moving the true date of Irish conversion to
Christianity from "432 in the reign of Leary to the year 260 or thereabouts in the reign of
Cormac MacArt" (777) deviates from the traditional history of St. Patrick, arriving in 432
AD to convert the Irish. This revision not only challenges the authority of the Catholic discourse but also portrays a more sinister view of the Catholic Church in history. This error maintains its sting with an engagement with a traditional view of the Catholic
5 Critics are divided over whether Ulvsses embarks on a critique or an advocacy of any particular point of view. Clearly, Conley, with his attention to error, aligns with the former group. However, it should be noted that both sides of this division still expect a measure of consistency. Thus, Conley's openness to an ever changing readership takes a reductive view of the text, stabalizing Joyce's unruly text by depicting it as a critique. Weldon Thornton takes a similarly reductive view of "Ithaca" as part of Joyce's continuing project of critiquing "styles and values that [he] does not sanction - in fact, that he wishes to expose as insufficient or distorting" (94). On the other side, critics such as Patrick McGee see Ulvsses as "a symbolic bridge between the modern and the post-modern" (2) and argues for the novel as a positive aesthetic development. More recently, critics have identified a conflict between a stable "Ithaca" "of rest and completion" (Rickard 197) and the inherent instability of the episode itself. Antonia Fritz, and John Hegglund read "Ithaca", respectively, as an Ovidian separation and synthesis where "echo... [is] fixed in catechism" (Fritz 80), and a cartographic middle ground subject to the reader's interpretation, stemming from "Ithaca"'s "end[ing] with a representation of a space that cannot be assimilated to any discernible scale" (Hegglund 184). Such liminal readings capture the dynamic instability of the episode, but they inevitably read the ambiguity in the narrative as a purely literary technique, synthesising discordant elements under a middle-of-the-road critical approach, rather than addressing the anticlimactic dynamic itself. My approach takes the anticlimax of the episode as a signpost of Joyce's realist aesthetic that brings the dialetheic elements of "Ithaca" into focus. 17 history. The Catholic Church still recognizes Patrick as the liberator of Ireland from druidism. Stephen's musings, encountered in relation to traditionally established fact, fall under a revisionist rubric that opposes orthodoxy - not, as Conley would have it, a trivial textual joke predicated upon readers 'getting it'. Stephen's error is a window into a dialetheic situation in which neither Stephen's revision nor the traditional version is clearly advocated. Bloom's ambiguous 'covert assent' creates a version of the disjunctive syllogism6, but with little to no textual evidence for the support, or even negation, of either option, readers are left with the option to remain agnostic about the disjunction. If there is humour here, it is that this provocative historical dilemma need not be accepted as being of primary importance. Thus, Stephen's error illuminates a crevice in the text where alternatives overlap and create a previously unrecognized option by an engagement with, rather than a rejection of, a particular discourse.
"Ithaca" foregrounds errors as points that undermine the discourses that appear within it, but only to the extent they are applied to the rigours of a single day and locale.
In doing so, Joyce thus exposes holes in the totalizing discourses of science/mathematics and theology. This puts him in line with Priest's observation that "no well founded structure can satisfy" (In Contradiction 37) the demands of a cumulative hierarchy. A cumulative hierarchy is a strategy that seeks to address problems - typically logical paradoxes - in a system by appealing to a higher level of abstraction. Priest ultimately views this as wrong and promotes adherence to the naive, or first level "informal deductive arguments from basic statements" (Priest, In Contradiction. 40), and an
6 The disjunctive syllogism, a statement of the form 'a or b', "is not [simply]: a or b is true, but a is not true; therefore b is true" (Priest In Contradiction 114). 18 acceptance of the attendant systematic problems or paradoxes7. Both science/mathematics and theology are themselves cumulative hierarchies stretching their explanatory power over the sum total of existing reality. Such analyses, riddled as they are in "Ithaca" with error, are "forced to admit that there are sets outside the hierarchy"
(Priest In Contradiction 34) since there are large categories unaccounted for. By way of the errors in the text, the inadequacy of hierarchical totalities becomes apparent, revealing that, for instance, the chord may not always be "less than the arc which it subtends"
(Joyce 776) in a particular application. The text leaves unstated what motivated Bloom and Stephen's path - if there was clear motivation - and that it is not mentioned reveals, at the very least, that there are elements beyond the reach of these discourses. Dialetheia, the acceptance of inconsistencies within a discourse, captures the inherent inconsistency of the world; "Ithaca" similarly embodies this principle, doing away with assumptions that the world is consistent and knowable to a certainty by engaging with abstract discourses in and amongst daily trivia.
Thus, that Stephen presented an alternative narrative to orthodoxy is significant.
Priest notes that "an abstraction, once accepted, is rarely if ever, displaced by mere criticism: an alternative and superior account is required" (Priest In Contradiction 74). If we pause to investigate Stephen's alternative, it can be seen that such an 'error' does indeed have merit. According to Don Akenson, Christians had cohabited among the
Celts from around 170 CE, but while living on the same land, the Christians "set
7 Priest goes on to claim that "the naive notion of proof is a social one" (In Contradiction 41), meaning that "it is one that is taught and, correspondingly learnt" (41), and that "naYve proof may change over time" (41), and is itself recursive, and strictly speaking, inconsistent. For Priest, the claim that "at every state a novel truth predicate is added ... is indefensible" (In Contradiction. 43). For a detailed account of the problems of the cumulative hierarchy, and Priest's defense of naive proof, see In Contradiction, pp. 18-20, and 40-44, respectively. 19 themselves apart from the local Celtic population." (31) Stephen, referencing Mac Art explicitly, pulls the legends surrounding him into play. Of particular interest is the legend of the gold cup that broke into pieces "when three lies were told over it" (Akenson
65) and that was inconveniently lost upon his death. In the present context, the loss of the gold cup's ability to weed out lies, aligns historically with Pelagius, who was "the first Irish invader of Europe," (Akenson 66) and his conversion to Christianity after
Cormac's death. He is the first notable Irish Christian, and caused controversy within the
Church with his individualistic doctrine, drawing the particular ire of St. Augustine, who vehemently opposed Pelagian doctrine and fought hard to condemn it as heretical.
Stephen's alternative conversion date thus offers Pelagius as the first instance of a Celtic man seduced by a Christianity that would eventually betray him8. Stephen's error challenges a Christian mindset, wherein the Church is responsible for the whole of the populace. Despite this challenge, though, reconciliation is withheld; the alternatives remain in a provocative stalemate.
These alternatives reflect the pluralistic cast of the episode in the sense that
"different pure logics may be appropriate for [different] applicationjs]" (Priest, Doubt
Truth to Be a Liar 195), and the extent that individuals are complicit in the conduct of s The conflict between the Pelagians and St. Augustine, as noted by Augustine biographer Gerald Bonner, "is the last of the three great controversies of his life" (138) and differed from former disputes in that "the Pelagians...were a group within the Church, whose opinions could be, and were, reconcilable with perfect credal orthodoxy" (138). The controversy was between the Pelagian suggestion that "man was able to be good and to do good with his own natural forces" (139) and Augustine's insistence that "it is utterly impossible for a man to do anything good, without the Grace of Christ" (139). The conflict resulted in Pelagius being excommunicated by Pope Innocent I in 417 CE, acquitted by Innocent l's successor, Zosimus at a Roman synod later that same year, with the aid of bishop Praylius of Jerusalem, who "recommended Pelagius in the warmest terms" (342), only to once again be excommunicated in 418, with Zosimus reversing his earlier decision, his actions being "dictated... by the strength of hostility shown [the Pelagians]" (345). In a fateful twist, Augustine had the final pronouncement on Pelagius' attempts to anathematize his doctrines, saying in answer to Pelagius' final plea that "he had never found any satisfactory recognition of the nature of Grace in the writings of Pelagius" (346). This sealed Pelagius' fate, and, "abandoned by his former patron Praylius" (346), he is expelled from Jerusalem. He subsequently disappears from the pages of history. 20 abstract discourses. Stephen's alternative telling of history is a theory about history that must be evaluated. But it is Bloom's covert assent that more precisely reflects Joyce's pluralism as connected to an increasingly diverse populace. Joyce's texts do not simply dismantle the order of things, but set up a dialogue among truths that stand opposed.
Strange individuals with strange ideas were conglomerating in larger cities across
Europe, even in Dublin. Joyce canvasses an array of ideas that deviate from established norms. Bloom's covert assent is the sign of the times, where accumulated exposure to strange ideas results in less vituperation and in more benign tolerance. However,
"Ithaca" situates Stephen's reassignment of Irish conversion to Christianity both within the broad terrain of history and within the flow of conversation. Thus the error holds revelatory power on two levels: firstly, within the real world of the characters; and secondly, within the abstractions of historical discourse. Simply presented in this way, without resolution, it reveals a dialetheic situation where both viewpoints are valid because neither cancels the other out. Yet, it is Bloom's cosmopolitan tolerance that fosters this stalemate. Had he outrightly dismissed Stephen's theory or agreed with it there would be no ambiguity in the text. Bloom's 'covert assent' reveals his complicit engagement with discourses that he may not even care about and presents an agnostic third option peculiar to a modern city.
Similarly, the "chant [of]... a strange legend on an allied theme" (808) that arouses "mixed feelings" (810) in Bloom is pluralistic. The passage requires knowledge well outside what is explicitly presented in the text. The inclusion of musical scores into the text recalls the earlier statement that "both [Stephen and Bloom] were sensitive to artistic impressions musical in preference" (777) and seems to suggest that the two 21 characters may be symbolically united in aesthetic taste. However, since the errors of
"Ithaca" are not of one type, made by one character, or in one way, Joyce fosters doubt in his readers in which every detail must be scrutinized. "Ithaca," like the whole of the novel in which it appears, demands its readers take in everything. As such, its inevitably discordant material and attempts to objectively unify opposing elements fail to resolve the "mixed feelings" (810) that result in Bloom from that sharing. The song Stephen sings about a boy's breaking a Jew's window with a ball and his subsequent 'consenting immolation' by the Jew's daughter, while presumably pleasurable to Bloom on an aesthetic level, reinforces the racial divide between them. Thus, for every reconciliatory attempt there is another issue that arises and remains unresolved and articulates the irreconcilable cultural divides within a diverse populace. It is error that foregrounds such interpretive problems.
Readers who recognize something is amiss in the text are faced with the problem of pinning down the error. This requires both knowing that something is wrong and knowing how it is wrong. "Ithaca"'s anticlimactic tendency requires a persistent memory that retains every detail in hopes of a final reconciliation that frustratingly never comes.
John S. Rickard's inquiry into Joyce's mnemnotechnic in Ulysses explores this frustrating liminal divide. Despite its anticlimactic nature, Rickard feels "Ithaca" occupies something of a focal point in the novel. It promotes "a world refreshingly free of ideal endings and ideal humans" (Rickard 198) but still presents those very ideals it liberates itself from. For example, the poetic "heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit" (819) is no sooner presented than, a few pages later, we read "that it was not a heavenman. That it was a Utopia" (823). Bloom attempts to revise previous 22 inclinations he had, but even here error intrudes. Bloom's correction 'that it was a
Utopia' is based on a mistake. He remembers his own poetic thoughts inaccurately, as
"heavenman" (823) rather than "heaventree" (819). This revision suggests an inherently erroneous element, not only as a discursive societal constant, but within the veils of conscious memory itself. Not only is error as a revisionist activity promoted, but the initial fact to be revised - if there be one - might itself be questionable due to the imperfect workings of memory. This applies as much to readers of Joyce, as to the characters in the text, as it does to the revisionist tendencies in the discourses of the episode.
Not only are ideals absent in "Ithaca", but it becomes increasingly difficult to determine just what idealistic thinking might be based on. Thus, the errors of "Ithaca" occur as if they were themselves true. Part of the difficulty in reading the episode becomes learning to recognize that what is presented as fact is often an error. Unnatural as it may seem, these errors are the source of much of the life of the episode. The errors in "Ithaca" must be encountered, since "brushing away the palpable possibilities of error also removes the potential for irony and thus produces a staler, less challenging text"
(Conley 86). This in turn makes for a staler portrait of Dublin. Joyce took issue with much in his homeland, but he still depicted it - warts and all - as vibrant and alive.
Encountering error requires the reader to enter into the dialectics between the various discourses in the text that are polarized against each other. This recognition is less like a two-way mirror where one side is given privilege, than a glass onion where all perspectives have a level of distortion. Within this stalemate, the text's competing discourses force the reader to view the text with keen attention to the particularities of the 23 situation, and subsequently to engage the very dispassionate viewpoint the episode itself embodies - providing readers an opportunity "to test one's humanity, errors and all."
(Conley 147)
Dialetheia highlights inconsistencies but does not specifically resolve them. In fact, identifying dialetheias aids in the process of "conceptual fission and other conceptual developments" (Priest In Contradiction 201), where retaining inconsistency allows for divergent areas of thought to develop. As often as not, Priest advocates for something of an agnostic option when confronting the paradoxical. In "Ithaca", Joyce reveals dialetheia through error and points to places, such as Stephen's rewriting of history, where such alternative viewpoints might be valid9. Such errors identify the differences between ideological discourses as alternatives, rather than opposites. It is
Bloom's often non-commital responses to alternatives that reveal that "dialetheia is inherent in thought" (Priest In Contradiction 48) and that dialetheias arise within real world discourses. As fickle as the narration in the episode seems, the objective viewpoint of the episode highlights just how irresolvable contradictory competing discourses are and how daily encounters with these discourses subject them to a scrutiny that exposes their dialetheic elements. Encountering error allows discordant materials to be accepted as legitimate alternatives. These alternatives resonate throughout Bloom's Dublin;
Joyce's realist aesthetic thus portrays the pluralistic environs of a modernizing Dublin.
1.2 In Bloom - Dynamic Dialetheia
With anticlimax increasing alternatives and embracing pluralism, the pull of more elaborate totalizing explanations also increases. "Ithaca", though, resists such attempts at
'Stephen's historical deviance seems to foreshadow post-colonial revisionism, where the narrative of the oppressing class is opposed in favour of a more local historical record. a grand unifying theory. Hugh Kenner describes this phenomenon as part of Joyce's
'aesthetic of delay' wherein two points of view are given on a single object or event10.
This technique, in Joyce's hands, creates "an uncanny sense of reality ... fostered by the neatness with which versions of the same event... reliably render one another substantial" (Kenner 75). That these versions may, and often do, contradict each other points to a realism that is explicitly concerned with accommodating contradiction as a necessary aspect of reality and, importantly, with delaying judgment. Throughout
"Ithaca" tension stems from Joyce's parallactic delay, unfolding in a more nuanced dynamic than can be accounted for by an antagonistic opposition. This can be seen in the figure of Bloom, who continually expresses himself and is expressed in multiple ways.
The parallactic dynamic that results between Bloom and the totalizing discourses is mediated by error. Dialetheia dynamically mingles amongst diverse experiential data where alternative viewpoints remain. This expresses the dynamic ideological terrain of
Dublin. Parallax, when viewed with error as a mediator, gives depth to the dynamic that occurs within the particularized landscape of Dublin; implicit in this vibrant depiction of the city is an array of dialetheic stalemates that occur when totalizing discourses interact.
Hugh Kenner sees parallax as an important concept for understanding Ulvsses.
Kenner describes the effect of parallax as part of an 'aesthetic of delay' that essentially destabilizes factual evidence in the text by narrating events multiple times. This aids
Joyce in his realist endeavours by "thicken[ing] the book's human texture without overpopulating it" (76). That is, the multiplicity and contradictory narratives of a single event more fundamentally portray human existence as it is, rather than as something circumscribable by a single theory. This gives the text a round, stereoscopic portrayal of l0See Kenner, Ulvsses. p. 72 -82 for discussion of parallax as central to Joyce's aesthetic of delay. 25 reality, rather than a flat, monolithic one. Kenner writes that "parallax falsifies" (82) and renders a plurality of interpretations, "not only because the details [produced by parallax] are so numerous but also because their pertinent interconnections are more numerous still" (Kenner 81). The effect of parallax in destabilizing even minute facts is exacerbated, in "Ithaca", by Joyce's foregrounding of error. Parallax thus falls in line with dialetheism by adding a dynamic of delay and drawing attention to the variety of
"pertinent interconnections" (Kenner 81) in the text. When antithetical alternatives appear, dialetheism reveals the inconsistent conclusions. The oscillation between alternatives that results generates a realistic and dynamic portrait of reality. With an abundance of alternatives, dialetheism allows many elements to be seen at once, delaying premature judgments. The plurality of elements in the text is thus given equal footing that comes directly from the tension between them. Thus, singularity and absolutism give way to a plurality predicated on particularity that runs counter to a quest for universal certainty.
In "Ithaca" universal theories combine in the abstract figure of the catechist. This voice from nowhere is not a distinct consciousness, but rather the textual impression of abstract discourses. Rather than viewing the catechist as a textual figure, an 'Arranger', as proposed by David Hayman,11 I contend that this disembodied voice that "perform[s] with a certain indifference to our presence" (Kenner 65) is the textual manifestation of the interactions between the discourses circulating in Dublin and its inhabitants. More specifically, it is the particularites in "Ithaca" and Ulvsses. be they ideological, spatio-
11 See David Hayman, Ulvsses: The Mechanics of Meaning, p. 70. Though the 'Arranger* in Hayman's sense might also be seen as taking part in the answers, I argue that if this is the case, this figure is him/herself inconsistently flip-flopping in tone and in logic in "Ithaca" alone (answers to questions are at times very counter-intuitive), inept to such an extent as to make the 'Arranger1, as an analyzabie textual point, incoherent. 26
temporal, or psychological, that influence the Dublin landscape - the Dublin
consciousness, if you like - and that in turn influences its citizens. The discourses are
plucked from the air, from "an engulfing Dublin" (Kenner 66) that, more and more,
imposes itself on its residents. Apt to be distortive, or even a hindrance to understanding,
the Arranger, Kenner notes, "epitomises the Dublin knack for performance" (66), but
fails to see that this is because it is in a sense Dublin itself speaking. The Arranger does
not exist as a distinct entity, but is precisely the articulation of "the way that social norms
are variously lived as psychic reality" (Butler 154). The catechist mediates between the
subjective and the objective and involves a moving beyond subjective phenomenalism.
The narrative strategy involved is a kind of transcendentalist project in the Kantian sense,
where the synthesis of subjective viewpoints into an objective one is achieved through
engagement with already existing discourses.12 This transcendental element is, however,
qualified; externalizing consciousness, it gives it a defining material shape by exposing it
to the collective ideas in Dublin. The catechist is thus a synecdoche of Dublin, in both
senses of the term: characters and discourses refer to and influence the Dublin landscape,
and the Dublin landscape refers and influences the people and ideas circulating within it.
As such, this dynamic is best made sense of dialetheically, that is to say, as a composite
of both character and discourse. The catechist is the textual articulation of Bloom's
largely unconscious interactions with theology and science/mathematics, as well as the
manifestation of interactions between these discourses themselves.13
12 Thus, "Wandering Rocks" can be seen as the truly pivotal episode in the novel, wherein Bloom's consciousness is but one among many and gives way to an epiphany of the Kantian sublime. The attempt to transcend this pluralism is the source of the novel's resulting formal inventiveness. In a sense, "Wandering Rocks" marks the whirlwind birth of Dublin's consciousness; its voice being the shaping influence of a combination of the overarching societal mores exerted on the populace itself. 131 will have more to say about the catechist and its articulation of Bloom's interaction with discourses in Chapter Three 27
This voice, it will be noted, does not directly interact with the characters. And so, the quick quid pro quo of "Ithaca"'s narration parallels the totalizing reach of each discourse in the episode. As none of the ideologies (scientific positivism, theology, history, literature, music, etc.) presented in "Ithaca" gains a place of privilege, due in no small part to the prominence of errors in the episode, the text seems to be a liminal wasteland where nothing, or rather, anything, even erroneous propositions, can be asserted. This necessarily presents inconsistencies. For example, Bloom's list of the properties of water he finds admirable exhibits the plurality of water's potential merits, showcasing Joyce's pluralistic realism. Beginning with "its universality," (783) each member of the subsequent set would be reason enough to admire water. The list's expansiveness serves as a self-referential metaphor for "Ithaca" itself, moving from transcendent objectivity to a concrete particularity that keeps everything in between in play. The list, as it appears in the episode is not a simple record of the thoughts going through Bloom's head; rather, the plurality is a direct result of the abstract quality of
"Ithaca". The plurality of admirable qualities of water parallels the plurality of details and perspectives circulating in Dublin. Leading off with water's universal quality suggests that nothing more would need to be said, invoking an abstract finality; but that is not the case. Universality would be a poor substitute for the vastly nuanced list that follows. And items such as "its infallibility as paradigm and paragon" (784) suggest a particularity verging on the romantically transcendent. The prominence of this passage in the episode reverses the tide of abstract inquiry and immerses that inquiry in the daily existence of its characters, precisely articulating the cascade of abstractions present within any single detail. 28
As "Ithaca" progresses, it becomes apparent the novel is still charting Bloom's phenomenal existence, if in a drastically different form from either the initial style of the first six episodes or the stylistic variations of the later episodes. This phenomenalism presents events that while highly abstracted, are unfiltered, unsorted, and thus not immediately or easily categorized. For Joyce, the world is the testing ground for abstraction; its vastness, though, includes transcendent theories that attempt to explain it.
Such theories when brought to earth exhibit the tensions that exist between competing theories and with the pragmatics of the concrete world. It is as if Wittgenstein's famous remark, "the world is all that is the case" (1), when contextualized within a realist world, echoes back with a slight but important difference: 'the world is all; that is the case'14.
The world, in "Ithaca," is not just the sum totality of facts, but the sum totality of everything - including errors. The antithetical fact of "Ithaca" becomes the antithetical fact of any attempt to sublimate the world into a singular rubric or discourse. And within the episode lies, as if a giant hint, a multifarious metaphor that resists reduction to a single quality.
And yet, despite the expansiveness of Bloom's list, Stephen provides another alternative: he is an oft-remarked (Joyce 18, 57,785) hydrophobe. This reflects a further dynamic since his position rejects the entire list. When Bloom refrains from "giving
Stephen counsels of hygiene and prophylactic" (786), he allows Stephen's contradictory viewpoint to stand alongside his own. The assumption seems to be that Stephen's justifications for being a hydrophobe are internally consistent, if eccentric, and that
14 P6ter Forgoes' 1992 film, Wittgenstein Tractatus reads the line aloud in exactly this way, preserving the line as well as forwarding a critique of it. I am grateful to B61a Szabados for this insight, pointing this out while leading discussion after a presentation of the film. 29
Bloom's counsel would not change Stephen's mind. This contradictory stalemate, however, is not simply flown past, but exhibits a dynamic tension that reverberates outside the dichotomous waterlover/hydrophobe relation. Bloom, in addition to repressing hygienic counsel, refrains from dietary recommendations as well. As such, it is the tension that results from this opposition, in addition to the tensions built into the metaphor that disallows ultimate reconciliation.
While not explicitly contradictory, the hydraulic opposition destabilizes the certainty either Bloom or Stephen may have with respect to the virtues of water and reveals the dialetheic dynamic at work in "Ithaca". Such a view is at odds with critics like Patrick McGee, who commits the anachronism of reading Ulysses as a transitional text between modernism and post-modernism. McGee sees "Ithaca" as "a writing that is not a masquerade: objective writing" (159). Objective certainty remains elusive in
"Ithaca," as the sheer number of errors in the episode exposes the artifice of its own
'objective' technique. While perhaps not an out and out masquerade, the episode is certainly engaged in a stylistic massaging of the material. Dynamic dialetheia embraces the fluctuating tension between opposites that are revealed in Joyce's stylistic play.
Tension and contradiction are thus fruitful elements furthering knowledge. When contradictions turn up, as they are wont to do within the most meticulous of discourses, the "theory is [often seen as] trivial and ... scrapped" (Priest, In Contradiction. 118) prematurely, irrespective of any intrinsic value it may have had. A dialetheistic encounter articulated by a parallactic delay allows validly occurring contradictions to remain in play. This reflects the fact that the tension that arises from the presence of contradictions is not isolated, but reverberates among similar concepts. 30
This may seem to be a move toward a gross relativism, or worse, a trivialization where everything is valid. If this were so, dialetheic thinking would be a truly dysfunctional rationalism or a general paralytic state. In not excluding anything reasonably well-founded and advancing a pluralistic point of view, it may be argued that dialetheia implies that everything is true. This is not the case. As Priest notes:
for a sentence to have content, it is not necessary for it to 'rule out' anything. We can think of the content of a sentence as the information it carries. It is then quite possible for sentences a and B to have different and determinate contents (and therefore contents simpliciter) if a carries information that B does not, or vice versa. And this is true even if neither a nor B logically rules anything else out. fin Contradiction. 95, his emphasis)
Further, if there is no fool-proof criterion that determines whether a discourse is free of contradiction, since one "can determine the acceptability of any given contradiction ... only on its individual merits" (Priest, "What's So Bad" 35). Thus, Stephen's opposition to Bloom's love of water need not be conceived of simply in terms of that opposition, but in terms of what it reveals about Stephen. For example, Stephen's hydrophobia is not disconnected from his "distrust [of] aquacities of thought and language" (Joyce
786), and can be accepted on those grounds. Knowing Stephen as we do, however, particularly in light of the "Proteus" episode, we may reasonably doubt that Stephen is telling the truth. That arduous episode conveys the terrain of Stephen's thought, shifts seamlessly between fantasy and reality and shows a high degree of aquacity to his thought. By the time the narrative reaches "Ithaca," there are contradictions piled upon contradictions, reflecting the evolving parallactic dynamism that are circumscribed by the routines of formal discourses. The opposition itself is not the main content. Neither element of the opposition requires the other for its meaning, as in a standard binary 31 opposition (tall/short, good/evil, etc.); both Stephen and Bloom could - and do - hold their opinions independent of each other. But when placed side by side, the oppositeness of their opinions becomes apparent and reveals their uniqueness, rather than the universality of their respective positions. While critics such as Antonia Fritz see the Bloom-Stephen relationship as "the erasure of individuality and the fusion of character in the performance of language" (91), on the individual level, the characters themselves exhibit plurality and a contrariety that resists such fusion.
"Ithaca" continually lists such pluralities, and from these lists emerges a wide divergence of material that does not clearly cohere into a conceptual whole. For example, the contents of Bloom's drawers reveal in this ordinary man an eccentric diversity, containing:
a press cutting from an English weekly periodical Modern Society, subject corporal chastisement in girls' school: a pink ribbon which had festooned an Easter egg in the year 1899: two partly uncoiled rubber preservatives with reserve pockets, purchased by post from Box 32, P. O., Charing Cross, London, W.C.: 1 pack of 1 dozen creamlaid envelopes and faintruled notepaper, watermarked, now reduced by 3: some assorted Austrian- Hungarian coins: 2 coupons of the Royal and Privileged Hungarian Lottery: a low-power magnifying glass: 2 erotic photocards showing: a) buccal coition between nude senorita (rere presentation, superior position) and nude torero (fore presentation, inferior position): b) anal violation by male religious (fully clothed, eyes abject) of female religious (partly clothed, eyes direct), purchased by post from Box 32, P. O., charing Cross, London, W. C., (850)
From father, to friend, to Christian, to letter-writer, prophet, gambler, and son; from seducer to code-writer to Jew, and more, Bloom is no easy man to characterize. To attempt to foster a synthesis between characteristics, never mind between characters, 32 denies the individual significance of these characteristics. And while it may be improper to equate a man's identity with the contents of his drawers, the fact that
Bloom keeps this drawer locked shows that there is something about these particular items that is significant to him. Further, this assortment of objects is almost incomprehensible without reference to Bloom himself.
More radically than the properties of water, the diversity of items in Bloom's drawers reveals a level of complexity and irreducibility that can only be made sense of dialetheically. Indeed, it is the incompatibility of Bloom's characteristics that makes him an interesting character. To make Bloom consistent denies the parallacitc reality of his presentation and rationalizes him into an oddity subservient to the ideologies he encounters and turns him into a caricature rather than a character. Bloom's divergent characteristics and the dynamic tension between them tether his odyssey to a reality that is equally diverse and reflects his own pluralistic qualities. John H. Maddox makes a similar point, noting that "Ithaca" "gives us the sense of two contrary possibilities at once - the one closed, the other open-ended" (192). However, he thinks that this conflict "stress[es] the insignificance of the individual" (198). In other words, the individual particularities that make up Bloom are really insignificant. Yet this could not be further from the case. It is precisely Bloom's individuality that is significant in the world at large. The listing of individual particularities is not just a textual ruse, an artificial promise, whose futility only proves the foolishness of such endeavours. The pluralistic qualities in Bloom parallel the diversity inherent in his surrounding reality, a reality, that is, like him always in bloom, always changing, always conflicted. The discourses of science/mathematics and theology are merely reference points for 33 understanding the pluralism inherent in both the Dublin landscape and the diverse peculiarities of Bloom's individuality, and must be taken dialetheically.
Thus, the discourses of science and theology in "Ithaca" are brought down to reality through Bloom's pluralism. Neither discourse alone aptly captures Bloom's diversity. Indeed, theologians would likely frown upon Bloom's taste for "erotic photocards showing ... buccal coition [and] anal violation" (850) particularly when the latter depicts that violation by a "male religious ... of female religious" (850). Similarly, scientists would likely object to Bloom's measurements of his body, with such substantial muscular gains as he records seeming implausible after a mere "2 months of consecutive use" (850) of "Sandow-Whitley's pulley exerciser" (850), not to mention the fact that they would make "his calf.. .larger than his thigh" (McCarthy 606). In the absence of another character providing a constant alternative for much of the episode, it is the ideological discourses that provide alternative realities. Recognizing error thus becomes a matter of recognizing Bloom's constant revision of his own thoughts in light of abstract discourses.
Later in the episode, theology and science are much more subdued. Upon entering his own bed, Bloom does so with "circumspection ... solicitude ... prudently ... lightly ... reverently" (862). This suggests, once again, a level of plurality to Bloom's character that is not reducible to a single unified quality or discourse. To reduce him thus would negate the importance of each and trivialize all. Imposing strictures in this way not only "hamper[s] the investigation of the categorical structure" (Priest, In
Contradiction. 202) but makes the further elaboration of these qualities of little importance. Moreover, Molly has indirectly entered the narrative and exerts an 34 unqualified influence on the action. The narration, concerned in a rather pedantic way with Bloom, seems influenced by the overarching lenses of science and theology.
Indeed, the text introduces a ramifying relationship among the characters, the world, and the cosmos, reporting the couple's state as:
at rest relatively to themselves and to each other. In motion being each and both carried westward, forward and rereward [sic] respectively, by the proper perpetual motion of the earth through everchanging tracks of neverchanging space (870).
This reveals the prominence - and perhaps even dominance - Molly has. Her mere presence gives her equal billing with Bloom. Thus, there cannot be any one overarching totalizing discourse at work, only a plurality of discourses. Joyce's use of parallax provides multiple points of view to paint a picture that is perpetually in motion, even while at rest "relative to themselves and to each other" (870).
While Bloom's reverence at entering "the bed of conception and of birth" (862) coincides with a theological reverence, that same reverence also applies to the bed of
"breach of marriage" (862). His reverence for the bed of "consummation of marriage" and "breach of marriage", of "birth" and "death" (862) is conceptually dialetheic. It would seem to be a mistake to have reverence for breach of marriage, but there it is; it would supposedly be a mistake to enter an adder's lair, regardless of how prudent one was, but that is present as well. Errors are still present, but at this point in the episode, the discourses seem to have been given a place, not precedence, in the world. The contradictions that exist between them remain unresolved, but they are no longer the substance of the episode either. This suggests a paradox inherent in a parallax view: the more viewpoints that are presented, the less certain a thing becomes. Joyce's 35 realism is concerned with this uncertainty, depicting it, rather than handcuffing it with a finite series of concepts.
The conflict between the competing discourses of science and theology remains until the end. Error occupies a middle ground between these two competing discourses, functioning as a window from which readers of "Ithaca" can objectively view both of them. But those discourses are surprisingly silent and of little value in addressing the
"imperfections in a perfect day" (860) that Bloom himself identifies. Joyce's realism is such that there is no last cohesive term. Error in "Ithaca" foregrounds contradictory elements and introduces a measure of uncertainty that undermines the grand unifying discourses of science and theology in the episode. This uncertainty is the dark heart of the episode, the place where Bloom's subjectivity interacts with abstract discourses. The dynamic tension between competing discourses calls for a parallax view to encounter
Bloom's perspective in its entirety.
Invoking a catechistic form should lend stability and certainty to the novel, but it does not. Instead, "Ithaca" furthers the presentation of an uncertain world with equally uncertain characters and hints at resolution before moving forward. Conley notes that "in
Ulysses, writing is a riddling gesture" (137); by encountering oppositions, the reader is given the opportunity to solve riddles that appear in the novel. The "whopping 2,235
[questions] in Ulysses." (Conley 134) beyond the seven hundred odd questions in
"Ithaca," signal that "at the very least...the text wants to know something about its reader" (134). I think Conley is right in saying writing is a riddling gesture in Ulysses. but the plethora of questions that destabilize traditional certainties and ways of understanding the text and its world seems to be riddling a bigger question: 'are you grown up enough to live with unanswered questions?' It is no small coincidence that the discourses of science/mathematics and theology are pitted against each other. Despite their objective and comprehensive slant they are only one of many perspectives required for a complete picture of the world. Theology takes everything theologically; so too does science/mathematics view the world through itself. But together they reveal more about the world and also illustrate that each illuminates only a little about the world. Just as both Stephen and Bloom's perspectives are themselves unique, so too are both science/mathematics and theology. Yet each is intimately concerned with the other's perspective and goes to great lengths to appropriate the other. Mingling them together leaves both one step behind, permanently entrenched as the penultimate statement on the world.
In an appropriate Joycean irony, both discourses are left in as uncertain and precarious a position as the characters of the novel. Furthering the irony, it is art that incorporates both science/mathematics and theology together in the episode itself. More specifically, it is the 'objectivity' that arises from a parallax view that takes into account the ideological discourses that populate Joyce's Dublin and their interaction with a fallible consciousness such as Bloom's. "Ithaca" is at once at odds with the discourses it encompasses, in that it incorporates a pluralistic aesthetic, and at home with these same discourses, in that pluralism is able to contend with the discord amongst discourses. It is because of this aesthetic element that pluralism is distinctly non-totalizing - Joyce's pluralism presents the world guiding its readers toward an aesthetic experience of it. By encountering the discord and conflict between the discourses of theology and 37 science/mathematics the reader is left open to the world left between them, a world liberally spattered with error. CHAPTER 2
CONFLICT AND COMPARISON: Locating Error in Early Twentieth Century Dublin
All those who make an investigation judge the uncertain proportionally, by means of a comparison with what is taken to be certain. Therefore, every inquiry is comparative and uses the means of comparative relation. ... Both the precise combinations in corporeal things and the congruent relating of known to unknown surpass human reason. -Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, Of Learned Ignorance
The truths of history, to the extent that they are contingent, and concern particular existents, are indeed naked matters of fact, which nothing renders necessary. Even here, however, there are grounds for and against, so that error becomes part of truth. -G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit
The uncertain status of theology and science/mathematics1 in "Ithaca" stems from
Joyce's adherence to the specific historical form these discourses took in Dublin. Error here manifests as contradictions within the discourses themselves. The totalizing claims of both theology and science/mathematics share a holistic worldview that sees concepts and abstract ideas as real things in the world. It is this similar perspective that Joyce exposes and deflates by entwining them with the particularities of Bloom's life. It is the very expansive edifices of thought that hinder their claims to practical application in everyday life. Instead of reconciling the incongruities between abstract discourses,
"Ithaca" perpetuates them and almost playfully revels in their abundance. This chapter will articulate the dichotomous historical situation of Joyce's Dublin, and argue that
Joyce, aware of this ideological divide, incorporated the discourses of theology and
1 I will in this chapter focus primarily on mathematics and the corollary logicism of the early twentieth century. I do so for two reasons: i) I feel the logicist agenda to be in the spirit of "Ithaca"'s tendency toward ultimate explanations; ii) as the physicist Leon Rosenfield notes, "every theory is based on physical concepts expressed through mathematical idealizations" (qtd in Prigogine 29). As such, mathematics in a sense makes science possible. The logicist thesis that mathematics could be reduced to logic brings things full circle, making logic the path to certainty. It is this appearance of logical certainty in "Ithaca" that I will pick up on in this chapter. 39 science/mathematics into "Ithaca". This, however, deflates their totalizing claims by exposing contradictions that arise precisely because of their rigidity and well-ordered thought. This critique is not a reductive dismissal of either discourse, but an articulation of the gap between the discourses and the characters' lived reality. Capturing this tension portrays the specific ideological tension of the Dublin climate with a realism that articulates the porous interaction between abstract ideas, and their fundamental divide with reality. Dynamic dialetheia allows the presence of error, as contradiction, to stand and accentuates a pluralism made possible by a parallax view.
2.1 Formal Dialogue
The early twentieth century was an idealistic and tumultuous time in Ireland.
Nationalist movements were competing against each other for political power; Irish
Revivalist literature, as Yeats exemplifies, incorporated a theosophical bent in "a time when scientific materialism seemed irresistible" (Kain 33). Additionally, neo-Thomism was endorsed by Pope Leo XIII as the official philosophy of the Church, both to respond to and to counter the burgeoning acceptance and influence of science/mathematics. Neo-
Thomism continued Aquinas' blend of Aristotelianism with Catholicism but furthered the project by claiming compatibility with new scientific/mathematic developments such as
Whitehead's process philosophy2. Not only was this gesture not accepted by the
2 In 1907, M. De Wulf s work Scholasticism Old and New: An Introduction to Scholastic Philosophy Medieval and Modern was translated into English at Maynooth College, Ireland, and published in Dublin by M.H. Gill & Son, Ltd. De Wulf here states that "the wedding of philosophy to the sciences is ... the principal aim of the promoters and pioneers of the movement." (204). Numerous books appeared, with titles alluding to the compatability of contemporaneous philosophic thought with Scholasticism. For example, M.F.X. Millar in his 1927 essay "Scholasticism and American Philosophy" concedes Whitehead's metaphysical point about 'reasonable harmony' being a pre-condition for intelligibility. Similarly, Rev. Rudolph G. Bandas, in Contemporary Philosophy and Thomistic Principles ("19311 acknowledges that Whitehead "concedes an ontological... import to our knowledge" (79). More explicitly, Bandas at one point states that "though Catholic philosophy cannot accept the emergent- evolution explanation of the origin of life, sentience, mind and intellect... Scholastic philosophy is keenly 40 scientific/mathematical communities of the day but it fundamentally clashed with the new ontological understanding of science/mathematics. Developments occurring in all scientific/mathematical disciplines initiated a departure from the Aristotelian influence so prevalent in the Scholastic tradition. However, both discourses view reality as understandable through rational means and hold that rational principles were themselves a fundamental fact of reality - a position I shall refer to as holism.3 It is their differences as to the direction and ultimate meaning of a rational reality that divided them irreparably. This ideological divide is embodied in the catechism of "Ithaca". I will here attempt to briefly sketch the historical divide between theology and science/mathematics as it existed in early twentieth century Ireland and argue that this conflict manifests in the catechistic form of the text.
Both logicism and neo-Thomism are representative of a holistic position in that both view their concepts as real entities in the world. More specifically, both discourses minimize the importance of the individual human mind in the world and essentially reduce life to something of an algorithmic process that corresponds to their abstract theory. Amid the ideological turmoil in late nineteenth-century Ireland,4 the Catholic
Church sought to establish its influence as a vital national force. With the Clerical-
Nationalist alliance of 1884, the Bishops of Ireland were assured "initiative and control in
alive to the fundamental demands and legitimate aspirations of Holism and the 'concrescence' philosophy of Mr. Whitehead" (221), adding that the goal is to "parallel that interpretation with ... doctrine" (221). 3 To avoid confusion, I shall, taking my cue from Priest, refer to the notion that abstractions are indeed real entities as 'holism', which can be taken to be synonymous with realism in the ontological sense that mathematical abstractions are, themselves, real entities in the universe - not to be confiised with the realist/naturalist movement in literature. For more on 'holism', see Priest, In Contradiction, p. 176. 4 There was conflict between Catholics and Protestants, Irish and English, Loyalists and Separatists, Landowners and Unionists. Not one of these conflicts was in isolation, but all seemed to overlap, and with constantly shifting allegiances, made for a tumultuous political climate. For more detailed analyses of Irish history of this period, particularly the myriad discrepancies between groups, see Emmet Larkin's The Making of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. 1850-1860. 41 all educational matters" (Larkin xvii), and thus secured a stronghold in the public psyche.
Fifteen years previously at the First Vatican Council (1869 - 1870), Irish Bishops played an important role in defining papal infallibility and "showed very favourably by their organization" (Norman 410), particularly in comparison to the English, who were internally divided. Thus, when neo-Thomism was decreed the philosophy of the Catholic
Church by Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Aeterni Patris (1879), wherein he "exhort[ed] all... Venerable Brothers, with the greatest earnestness to restore the golden wisdom of
St. Thomas, and to spread it as far as you can, for the safety and glory of the Catholic
Faith, for the good of society, and for the increase of all the sciences" (xvi), the battle with science/mathematics was brought to Ireland. However, it would not be until the turn of the century when Catholic-run education became the primary educational provider that
Neo-Thomistic sensibility would be prevalent in Irish thought.
Neo-Thomism, the modernized form of Scholastic Aristotelian theology, continued to promote a teleological and harmonious view of the world but differed in its incorporation and adoption of modern scientific and philosophical knowledge. Providing a coherent and comprehensive system that could be used "not only in teaching the truth, but also in refuting error" (Leo XII xiii, Aeterni Patris). it testifies not only to the growing prominence of science/mathematics but also to the threat the Church saw in it. The teleological account of neo-Thomism was its main appeal, with select scientific/mathematical notions becoming subservient to Catholic theology. Those who disagreed were simply viewed as being in error.
Meanwhile, science/mathematics had, two hundred-odd years after the scientific revolution, established itself as a distinct and separate discipline from either philosophy 42 or religion, with its own methods and body of knowledge. The accompanying worldview of scientific materialism found its own type of idealism in methods that relied on and sought to express ever more basic fundamental processes. This reductionist methodology was combined with a materialist worldview and yielded many important discoveries.
Examples include the periodic table (1867), which spurred the development of chemistry,
Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection (1859) and Gregor Mendel's laws of genetic inheritance (1866), which influenced the development of biology and genetics.
As well, a revolution in physics was developing through James Clerk Maxwell's work on electromagnetism (1861), Max Planck's black-body derivation effect, with the use of
Planck's constant (1901), and of course Einstein's 'miracle year' (1905) in which he published four highly influential papers, including his special theory of relativity. It could little be denied that science was yielding important information about the world.
However, in each case, both the scientific methods and the mathematics underpinning these methods were founded on the materialist assumption that there are mechanisms at work in reality that are beyond human capacity to control, and that these mechanisms can be expressed in a simplified form as equations.
The logical atomism of Bertrand Russell articulates the fundamental philosophical difference with the Neo-Thomism of the Catholic Church. Whitehead and Russell's
Principia Mathematica (1910-1913) can be seen as a crowning achievement in the quest for a complete expression of mathematics.5 The Principia does not explain all of mathematics, but expresses the most basic elements of number theory from which the rest
5 This project was initiated by the earlier work in mathematical notation by George Boole (1859) and Giuseppe Peano (1897), through Gottlob Frege's Concept Script (1879), Basic Laws of Arithmetic (1893, 1903), and Russell's Principles of Mathematics (1903V Russell and Whitehead brought this tradition to its, one is tempted to say 'logical', conclusion. 43 of the mathematical world branches out. The work of this logicist school provided the axiomatic method with the "reliability and perfection that it can and must reach if it is to become the basic instrument of all theoretical research" (Hilbert, quoted in Tiles 89).
This continued the reductive materialist search for a complete expression of reality in simple notation. This would underpin a purely mechanistic understanding of the universe by first finding simple expressions for the complicated events of the universe, and then by manipulating these expressions, explain the workings of all events. Russell summed up the position nicely, saying "when you have enumerated all the atomic facts in the world, it is a further fact about the world that those are all the atomic facts there are about the world" (Russell, qtd in Priest, In Contradiction. 301). This differs from neo-Thomism in its insistence that its abstract expressions are sufficiently representative of reality and that no divine hand need be posited. Expressions and equations are seen as equivalent to the physical event they express. Reality is these equations; proceeding from atomic facts all of mathematics, and indeed all of reality, could be enumerated and explained simply by finding the appropriate expression. This left little room for metaphysics or the
Catholic notion of God.
It was this materialist trend that antagonised Catholic doctrine, and many in the
Catholic Church took notice. As early as 1864, Pope Pius IX's papal encyclical The
Syllabus of Errors, began an attack against modern "fallacious opinions and most wicked writings [that] subvert the foundations of Religion" (4). Notable in this context is the condemnation of 'absolute rationalism', defined by Pius IX as the view that "human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood" (16). The reductive materialist mindset in science/mathematics would surely 44 have been identified as such. This condemnation continued in Leo XIII's papacy, when
Leo XIII himself wrote disapprovingly, "there are many who, with minds alienated from the Faith, hate all Catholic teaching, and say that reason alone is their teacher and guide"
(xv). In an appeal to the very rational capacities hitherto condemned, neo-Thomism was decreed the official theology of the church as an attempt to provide a Catholic theology that could stand as an alternative to science.
Further, with "educational institutions [in Ireland]... under the direct control of the Catholic Church" (Robbins 68), non-religious instruction became an act of political defiance, and with the Home Rule movement increasingly identified with Catholicism, any opposition to Catholicism could be construed as a cultural betrayal. Still, despite official papal condemnation and the institutional dissemination of that decree, the materialist trend continued to grow. Pius X shows the Church's ongoing antagonism to this trend in the Oath Against Modernism (1910), which required all members of the
Catholic faith to jointly condemn thought that opposed the Church. Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century and into the early part of the twentieth, the Catholic Church kept apprised of the developments of science/mathematics and offered stern opposition, with neo-Thomism as its own comprehensive alternative.
In this frayed landscape of volatile temperaments and deep loyalties, both theology and science/mathematics provided the promise and comfort of certainty. Joyce was familiar with both discourses and went to great lengths to incorporate both into
Ulysses. His use of Aquinian aesthetics is well known and need not be dwelt upon here6; but that Joyce was familiar with Russell's philosophy is less established. Phillip F.
Herring has extensively examined Joyce's notebooks and the correspondence between his
6 For discussion of Joyce's use of Aquinian aesthetics, see William T. Noon's book Joyce and Aauinas. 45 and Russell's work, particularly Russell's primer Introduction to Mathematical
Philosophy. Herring concludes that Russell's was "a work from which Joyce copied extensive notes for the 'Ithaca' episode" (Herring, Joyce's Uncertainty Principle 91)7.
Both the logical atomism of the Principia Mathematica and the neo-Thomistic claims for a natural religion based on reason and ordinary experience aspire to be an ultimate authority whose certainties a populace could take comfort in. However, Joyce exposes such claims to certainty as largely ineffectual among the commoners of Ireland. "Ithaca" often illustrates that the everyday application of these discourses is riven with errors.
This in itself reveals a pragmatic scepticism toward the certitude offered by either discourse.
Despite the expansive repertoire of both discourses, there is a fundamentally negative relationship between them. The catechistic form of "Ithaca" reflects this dichotomy through its appearance as a dialogue. The question-and-answer format gives the illusion that a dialogue is taking place, when such instruction actually constitutes a
"repertoire which the respondent is required to learn" (Hampson 229). This illusion is revealed as a farce through the imperative passages, such as "condense Steven's commentary" (810) and "compile the budget for 16 June 1904" (836). These passages illustrate the didactic repertoire of the form. The unhesitating response to these imperatives exposes not only the pre-ordained script but the unflinching certainty of the response. This in turn introduces a subversive dialectic into the episode that splits the reader's perspective in two. By forcing the reader to recognize the didactic quality of the form, the episode exposes the similarly didactic assurance of both theology and
7 For a detailed exegesis of Joyce's knowledge of Russell's work, see Herring, Joyce's Notes, p. 49-52; 103- 111. science/mathematics. It is in this subversion of the didactic form that "Ithaca" reflects the historical tension between the discourses, and explodes their one-dimensional view from within.
The didactic quality of both discourses exposed, a parallax view elucidates what is absent from their single perspective. On this purely formal level, Joyce exposes the fundamental pluralism inherent in both discourses and exposes the silent unnamed realities that neither discourse captures. The question "did either openly allude to their racial difference?" (797) is striking in this regard, precisely because the answer is so emphatically negative: "neither" (797). This strange version of Bartleby's choice punctures the didacticism of the text and reveals the formal divide between the conceptual discourses and the action of the text. This explicitly points out that there are limits to the theoretic scope of both discourses. The passage can be read two ways: firstly, as an injunction imposed by these discourses to allude to race, which, in an open act of defiance and solidarity, is refused by the characters; secondly, as the opening of a space where both the question and the answer are negative acts irreducible to either discourse. In both cases, a parallax view occurs in this negative gap that "reduc[es]... all qualitative differences to a purely formal minimal difference" (2i2ek, The Parallax View
382). Thus, the bare bones, so to speak, of "Ithaca", on a purely formal level, is the gap between the discourses where neither discourse is relevant.
More significantly, this negative position explodes the false dichotomy that demonizes opposing discourses and denies them legitimate voice. The tension that exists between these discourses is inherently dialetheistic by virtue of this negative process.
Further, this 'neither' foreshadows the counterfactual status of Molly's list of lovers 47 discussed below. This question-and-answer sequence operates in a quasi-reality. Here it is the failure of the discourses to specifically orient the characters in relation to a higher- order concept. This articulation of a negative space within the didactic appearance of the episode shows the dialetheic depth of the episode. Nestled amongst the abundant details explainable with reference to theology and science/mathematics is a kernel that is not.
Despite their totalizing claims, both discourses are still revealed as at least minimally subservient to subjectivity based in lived experience, and are thus both social discourses vying for conceptual influence.
This ontological similarity between theology and science/mathematics reveals an important gap between these discourses and the world at large. Both discourses are present and both alternately monopolize the narrative voice. Every question potentially embarks on an exegesis of theological or scientific/mathematical elements. Such examples are not hard to find: Bloom's mulling on celestial bodies, Stephen's contemplation of whether Jesus' foreskin, "conserved in Calcata, were deserving of simple hyperduly or of the fourth degree of latria" (825), or Molly and Bloom "carried westward, forward and rereward respectively, by the proper perpetual motion of the earth through everchanging tracks of neverchanging space" (870). Within the charged political climate of Dublin, such inflated significance would hardly be surprising. However, the similar holistic assumptions of both discourses and their confidence in their presumptions give their totalizing gazes totalitarian overtones. Joyce counters such monism by depicting the two conflicting monolithic visions of the world in a single text that contains both. Such is Joyce's parallax view. Theology and science/mathematics had a subconscious influence on the Dublin populace; Joyce illuminates this influence and 48 articulates it by exposing the interplay of both discourses with the action of the text. This reversal reveals just how didactic each discourse is, and simultaneously invites comparison between them.
2.2 Fixin' A Hole
In "Ithaca," both discourses act as authoritative theories of reality in the episode and obscure other ideological alternatives. However, the several errors in the text expose inconsistencies in both discourses. Despite this, the episode is still engaged with both discourses as informative theories. Joyce's reported artistic aim, "to create a new fusion between the exterior world and our contemporary selves and also to enlarge our vocabulary of the subconscious" (Powers 86) here manifests as an exploration of the influence and interaction of theology and science/mathematics as attempts at objectivity.
That is to say, theology and science/mathematics are systems of thought that inform characters' thoughts and actions without them knowing it. However, the abstract discourses of theology and science/mathematics capture only what each discourse deems
"the essential features of the situation" (Priest In Contradiction 73). Neither discourse very accurately maps the world of "Ithaca", becoming restrictive and inconsistent rather than illuminating. Error, manifesting as contradictions throughout the episode, undermines the totalizing worldview of both discourses and exposes the limitations of their common holistic viewpoints.
Bloom's attempts to "remedy [a] state of comparative ignorance" (804) in his wife by "direct instruction" (804) illustrates the practical faults of these rigid methodologies. While attempting to impose a foundational order on Molly's reasoning,
Bloom is forced to compromise his initial tack of a step by step progression from a base 49 of "latent knowledge" (804) and find a more workable, if a less universal, solution. His initial 'direct instruction' bears a certain similarity to catechistic instruction with Bloom providing answers to questions raised by "leaving in a conspicuous place a certain book open at a certain page" (804). Here Bloom attempts patronizingly to guide Molly's education with an unseen hand. The catechistic method, which "was a very popular late eighteenth - and nineteenth-century teaching method" (Hampson 237)8 keeps with the general trends of the day. Further, Bloom seems to be having some measure of success with this format, as this type of exchange takes place earlier in "Calypso". Molly inquires as to the meaning of metempsychosis, to which Bloom responds: "That means the transmigration of souls" (77). Thus, catechistic instruction can be seen not only as a narrative device exploited by Joyce as an evocative allusion but as a method that shapes the way characters interact with and understand their world.
However, despite his moderate success, Bloom recognizes the ineffectiveness of this didactic method and alters his approach to one more suited to Molly's disposition.
This introduces a level of solicitude absent from a direct instructive method. Molly's response in "Calypso": "O, rocks!... Tell us in plain words" (77) echoes the call of "tell us a story sir" (30) by Stephen's pupils in "Nestor" for a less didactive method. Both sets of learners prefer a narrative they can relate to over catechistic teaching. In both cases, the didactic method forces the learners to "internalize the answer the questioner has already supplied" (Hampson 229). It is to this ready-made script that Molly and
Stephen's pupils object. A story, though didactic in a sense, would at least be entertaining and raise genuinely inquisitive questions. Further, the teller would be gThe catechistic teaching method was in use earlier as well. See, for example, Daniel Defoe's Family Instructor series where a collection of inquisitive family dialogues are meant to be taken as models for instructive discussion in the family home. I owe this insight to Noel Chevalier. 50 concerned with the act of communication itself. Bloom's alteration of his method of instruction to "indirect suggestion implicating self-interest" (804) is a move that promotes a method that is dialogic over one that is didactic and that carries with it an implicit critique of rigid adherence to equally rigid methodologies.
Further, Bloom's initial method is an inversion of the traditional catechistic method. Bloom is in the position of answerer. In the traditional catechistic approach, as in Stephen's instruction in "Nestor", it is the instructor who asks the questions. This inversion of the catechistic method makes it erroneous from the outset, and carries with it a further critique of the didactic catechistic instruction. Molly asks her questions out of genuine inquisitiveness; Stephen does not. He acts as a troll guarding the bridge to truth with his riddles and ceaseless questions. In the opening scene of "Nestor" Stephen drills his students, asking question after question until they cannot answer: "You, Cochrane, what city sent for him? ... Well? ... Where?" (28). He then curtly corrects them while
"glancing ... in the gorescarred book "(28) for the answer. This didactic quality seems more to humiliate and embarrass than inform; in the very next question-and-answer sequence, he presses another student, Armstrong, into a bad guess, "You, Armstrong ...
What was the end of Pyrrhus?" (28), when there is another student, Comyn, ready with the answer: "I know sir. Ask me, sir" (29).
Bloom's move toward more open dialogue releases him from the shackles of being an authoritative arbiter of enlightenment. This enlightenment, as epitomized in the character of Deasy from "Nestor", is "paralyzed intellectual narcissism, a harmful conceit" (Schrand 215). Deasy's inquiries read like Imperial propaganda despite his proud Irish effusions. Like Stephen's instruction, they fail to engage in any meaningful 51 communication and serve only to illustrate his own mastery of the routine. In each case-
"What does Shakespeare say? Put but money in thy purse''' (37, his italics) and "what is the proudest word you will ever hear from an Englishman's mouth? ... I paid my way"
(37 his italics)—it is not even Deasy who provides the answer, for the answers are inscribed on him like a branded Irish cow. Bloom's loosening of the rigid catechistic form, as well as the novel's progression toward "Penelope," suggests a shirking of rigid systems that hinder communication and perpetuate a docile script that obstructs communication.
Such obstruction is an outgrowth of the didactic method itself. The conceptual process that gives such methods of 'direct instruction' their effectiveness is precisely the process that hinders their reception. The deductive edifice and the step-by-step progression depict a closed system from which all irrelevancies are eliminated. Such closed systems and "the very acts of conceptualisation produce the closures which give paradox" (Priest, In Contradiction 47). This reveals such conceptualisation to be of marginal value. The act of creating an abstract ideological edifice that can examine and structure meaning creates objects of thought that are not circumscribable to those same ideological edifices. Ordering these objects of thought, such as the concepts of 'grace' or
'set', means applying the original conceptualizations to the 'new' objects of thought. It is this self-referentiality that produces contradictions, as both Kant and Hegel were aware9.
Avoiding these contradictions has typically involved the creation of yet another level of
9 Priest notes that "in his discussion of the categories in the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant argued that our categories have a natural range of application [and] if we try to apply these concepts without this range, then, according to Kant... contradictions arise ... [which] shows ... that the application of our concepts beyond the bounds of experience is illegitimate" and that "Hegel agreed with Kant that the antinomies, the arguments that end in contradiction, proceed by perfectly legitimate resoning. However, he found no basis for ruling the applications of concepts within them to be illegitimate, fin Contradiction 3). See also, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, bk II, ch. 2, and Hegel's Logic, sect. 48. 52 abstraction to avoid the contradiction. However, this merely defers the problem to a higher-order system of abstraction, which produces its own attendant contradictions, and so on. A further problem arises when these higher-order systems are applied to experiential reality. This results in the same sorts of inconsistencies. "Ithaca"'s mimicry of the didactic aspect of deductive systems implicitly critiques the closures of these systems that aspire to comprehensiveness by exposing the attendant contradictions that arise from the application of abstractions to reality.
An example of how this works within the theological framework of "Ithaca" is
Bloom's three baptisms. This odd occurrence resembles a form of the sorites paradox, a class of paradoxical argument, first developed by the ancient Greek Eubulides. The paradox is formulated thus:
A single grain of sand is certainly not a heap. Nor is the addition of a single grain of sand enough to transform a non-heap into a heap: when we have a collection of grains of sand that is not a heap, then adding but one single grain will not create a heap. And so by adding successive grains, moving from 1 to 2 to 3 and so on, we will never arrive at a heap. And yet we know full well that a collection of 1,000,000 grains of sand is a heap, even if not an enormous one. (Rescher 78-9, his emphasis)
Bloom's three baptisms similarly draw attention to the vagueness of sanctifying grace in baptism, wherein the recipient "is really made just, acceptable to God, a child of God, and heir of Heaven" (Deharbe 242). Given that Bloom was baptized three times we can infer that the first was not enough to bestow sanctifying grace, the "gratuitous gift, which the Holy Ghost communicates to our souls and by which from sinners we are made just"
(Deharbe 241). Thus the addition of one more would not suffice either, nor would the third, ad infinitum. Indeed, even Stephen's baptism might become questionable since his 53 baptism was performed by the same "Charles Malone, C.C., Rathgar" (798) that performed Bloom's third baptism. If his baptism of Bloom is invalid, then his baptism of
Stephen may also be invalid and produce the very conditions of the sorites paradox that arise in Bloom's situation. In their application to already existing situations, theological concepts are revealed to be susceptible to contradiction.
However, short of acknowledging the paradoxical ramifications of Bloom's three baptisms, one could attempt to dismiss the occurrence as a misapplication of the concept of grace. Of course, this raises other problems, particularly when identifying which baptism is the true bestowal of grace. If the first, by "Mr Gilmer Johnston M.A. alone in the protestant church of Saint Nicolas Without" (798), is taken as the true one then the
Catholic Church is wrong in baptizing Bloom again; if the second "by James O'Connor,
Philip Gilligan and James Fitzpatrick" (798) were preferred, then the Deharbe
Catechism's statement that "except in cases of necessity, only priests, who have care of souls, are allowed to baptize" (250) would be violated. If the third baptism were preferred as the 'true' baptism, this would contravene the catechism's statements that
"any person" (Deharbe 250) can baptize, including "non-Catholics...if they strictly observe ... all that is necessary for Baptism" (250). Appealing to the theological conceptualisations formulated in the catechism will not solve the quandary of Bloom's baptismal status. It is precisely the Catechism's expansiveness on this matter that is the problem and the source of the paradox.
Bloom's three baptisms illustrate the insurmountable problem of applying abstract concepts to the real world in an absolute way. Any concept as significant and central to a discourse as the concept of grace is to theology would not only be necessarily well 54 defined10 - which it is - but also sufficiently guarded against misapplication - which it is not - nor can it be, as it turns out. Such a concept combined with the paradoxical heap that is Bloom's three baptisms, illustrates that the concept itself is inconsistent: baptism is supposed to confer sanctifying grace, but with Bloom baptism is precisely the problem, making the baptism, the very act of bestowing grace, uncertain. The concept of grace is thus made inconsistent by the very act that is meant to confer grace upon a person. This illustrates that Joyce's reality is not successfully regulated by concepts even though concepts may illuminate aspects of reality.
Thus, it is the holistic leanings of theology that create the paradoxical situation.
Explanations for Bloom's three baptisms are possible, but such explanations extend beyond the realm of theology. For example, given the historical tensions between
Protestants and Catholics11 it would not be surprising to learn that Bloom was required to be baptised in the Catholic Church before marrying Molly. While this does not avoid the inconsistency, the introduction of other reasons reveals other avenues of thought to which appeal might be made. This reveals the limitations of theological inquiry alone.
Likewise, Bloom's second baptism at the hands of at least one friend may have occurred
10 Neo-Thomistic theology proclaims that "fundamental reasons are the ultimate solutions to the problems the human mind inevitably proposes every time it sets itself to reflect upon the world or upon itself' (Mercier 6), and further, that these fundamental reasons were established by God. Theology, in this sense, becomes truly didactic, in that the answers to all questions are decided, and have already been decided. 11 Irish Catholics were not only at odds with Protestants, but were sometimes at odds with Rome as well. When Pope Leo XIII issued the encyclical "Saepe Nos " that specifically condemned the increasing agrarian conflict in Ireland in 1888, "twenty-eight of the thirty Irish Bishops ... refus[ed] to enforce the Roman decree" (Larkin xx), and chose local allegiance over ecclesiastical duty. The encyclical had a significant effect on Irish Catholics, who felt "betrayed [and]... outraged at Rome" (Larkin xix) for not understanding the specifics of their concerns. The show of local support, however, was a gesture that furthered the influence of the Bishops and clergy of Ireland, allowing them to become "an integral part of the Irish political system" (Larkin 298). This gave Catholic opinion increased political sway, and this remained so even after the split with Pamell in 1890. With power over education already secured, and the predominant view that education "should always be under direct ecclesiastical control" (Titley 9), the Irish Catholic prelates, with a strong dose of neo-Thomisitc ideas, became increasingly synonymous with a unified Ireland that was supported by a unified and harmonious theology. 55 in the spirit of jest, like that which sustains Buck Mulligan's intonations at the beginning of "Telemachus". As Stephen is leaving Bloom's house, the ringing bells cause Bloom to reflect on departed friends, among them is Philip Gilligan, who succumbed to phthisis in
Jervis Street hospital (827). The fact that Bloom retained at least this much knowledge suggests that they were perhaps well enough acquainted to share in a sacrilegious joke.
The theological error of Bloom's three baptisms reveals a wealth of knowledge about the world through appeal to non-theological knowledge. When released from the formal constraints of the holistic viewpoint of theology, the contradictory situation that arises can be accepted within a broader conceptual network, rather than solved within a narrow, well-defined one. From this, the opportunity for a wider engagement with the people, places and ideas of Joyce's Dublin opens up. Dwelling on a contradictory statement misses an opportunity for expanding one's knowledge beyond the confines of a single discourse. Readers of "Ithaca" are thus invited to read beyond a strictly theological way of thinking; as such, theological errors pave the way toward other avenues of thought.
It is through error that other discourses and trains of thought become relevant.
While contradictions are often taken to show incoherence and nothing more, it is not at all clear what incoherence should be taken to mean. Generally, it is "at least taken to entail unusability" (Priest, In Contradiction. 5), where the presence of a contradiction makes the intellectual edifice surrounding it unusable. However, inconsistent concepts such as grace are used and can be used provided they are not universalized to the exclusion of all other conceptual illuminations. This is the source of Joyce's pluralism and where it meshes with his parallax view. That is to say, pluralism stems from the negative core, the conciliatory contradiction that lies within totalizing discourses and that 56 begs for an alternative. The errors and contradictions that arise from viewing one's surrounding reality through a single totalizing discourse are inevitable, because any well- founded discourse contains inconsistent concepts.
Just as theological concepts run into inconsistencies in "Ithaca", so too do scientific/mathematical concepts. Though the logicist project of Russell offers a much different window on the world, it is still trapped in a holistic viewpoint that precludes other discourses from having significance12. Logicism's concern with logical relations between sets is the source of Russell's holism. This concern with strictly logical relations of sets invokes a cumulative hierarchy that does not prove to be as exhaustively expressive as it presumes. "Ithaca'"s adherence to set-theoretic language is evident in the ongoing listing in the episode. Such itemized grouping privileges the group over the individual. Encountering these expansive lists, one tends to get lost among the details.
The presence of an ordering concept - the set of properties Bloom admired in water (783-
85), the set of Molly's lovers (863), the set of items contained in Bloom's drawers (848-
52), etc. - reduces the disorienting effects of the encyclopaedic accounts. However, as often as not, errors occur in the itemized sequence. This makes the set they belong to unclear, undermining the uniqueness of the set. Taking two of these - the set of dates on
12 Bertrand Russell wrote that the mathematicians or logicians "deal formally with what can be said about any thing or any property" (Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy 196, his emphasis), not with "particular things or particular properties" (Russell, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy 196). Thus, once the fundamental processes of mathematics were discovered, all that was left was to observe these mindless mathematical processes in the world produce their guaranteed results. Instead of a unifying theory that overarches reality in relation to a central arbiter (God), Russell's logicist project moves in the opposite direction, toward an itemization of the world into simple categories called sets. Though these sets may be composed of anything, once formed, they adhere to the most rigid of logical rules. Russell, in applying these principles of set theory to reality and "analysing to greater and greater abstractness and logical simplicity ... [so that] our starting point can be defined or deduced" (Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy 1) proposed that even particular physical objects were "terms of relations in atomic facts" (Russell "Philosophy of Logical Atomism" 199). Such itemization has the effect of creating a hierarchy of 'types' or 'sets' that "was no longer restricted to spatial or numerical structure but which represented a generalization and abstraction from these" (Tiles 65). 57
which Bloom weighed himself, and the set of Molly's lovers - as examples, we find
contradictions that cast suspicion on the comprehensiveness of Russell's logicist project.
Looking first at the set of calendar dates, the set is undermined by the erroneous
date "MXMIV" (780), and points to the problem of negative facts. The passage itself is
illustrative of the tendency to gloss over items in Joyce's overwhelming detail:
on the last feast of the Ascension, to wit, the twelfth day of May of the bissexile year one thousand nine hundred and four of the christian era (Jewish era five thousand sixhundred and sixtyfour, mohammedan era one thousand three hundred and twentytwo), golden number 5, epact 13, solar cycle 9, dominical letters C B, Roman indication 2, Julian period 6617, MXMIV (779-80).
At the end of this passage, with 'X' marking the spot, an error lies waiting. This
"impossible date" (McCarthy 606) - it should appear as MCMIV (M = 1000, CM = 900,
IV = 4) - can be glossed as a negative fact, that is, a non-existent state of affairs. Russell
thought that such negative facts did exist in the world, but this is due only to Russell's
holism where "whatever appears as a particular is really, on closer scrutiny, a class or
some kind of complex" (Russell. Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. 142). The
negative fact 'MXMIV' exists in the same vein as 'solar cycle 9,' in a theoretical
framework that already marginalizes physical reality in favour of strictly logical relations.
Negative facts thus become actual entities because they are still logical relations, albeit
false ones. 'MXMIV' may exist in Russell's holism, but it is debatable whether it exists
in reality. In fact, it might subsequently be questioned whether the set itself conveys
any sense at all. Though the set adheres to a set theoretic structure, with the set of non-
13 Wittgenstein disagreed with Russell on this point, at least during his Tractatus period, where he thought "objects make up the substance of the world" (7). Subsequently, negative facts would be false propositions, simply nonsense. 58
Christian dates functioning as a subset within the larger set of Christian designators of time, the erroneous date falls explicitly outside that set. The fact that the date is nonsense introduces doubt over the merits of a discourse that gives such nonsense the same existential clout as any other fact, even more so if the strictest attention is not paid, and it is mistaken for a true statement. The seamless inclusion of such an error in the text questions such a discourse and its theoretical truth.
Alternately, Molly's list of lovers, though adhering to set theoretic language, reveals the contradictory avenues down which that scientific/mathematical reasoning can lead. Whether the list of Molly's lovers is accurate has been debated by critics; its accuracy has become a kind of barometer for how to judge Molly's most recent indiscretion14. In general, critics now agree that the list is inaccurate. But Mines and
Dasenbrock's analysis of Joyce's mathematical fidelity insists that "critics would have come to this conclusion somewhat more quickly if they had attended to the mathematical language of the passage" (31). Their analysis focuses on the fact that Mulvey is
"assum[ed] to be the first term of his series" (863) as well as "always the last term of a preceding series" (863). Thus this set becomes an infinite one in accordance with set theory. The pair concludes that "the specific series enumerated here extends infinitely, and logic clearly tells us that... the number of Molly's lovers cannot be infinite" (Mines and Dasenbrock 31-2). Despite Mines and Dasenbrock's incredulity as to the status of
Molly's lovers this scenario demonstrates a problem with set theory itself: namely, that the truth of the theory "follows merely from the truth conditions of the connectives; no extra information supplied by 'the world' is necessary" (Priest, In Contradiction. 146). In
14 See Ellmann, Ulysses on the Liffev. where he reads Molly's lovers as metaphorical, where "the particular act of'matrimonial outrage' is put in cosmic perspective" (158), and maintains that "this first relationship is something new" (165). 59 other words, the set of Molly's lovers, as given, need not be verified in the 'real world'.
Thus, the only things that can verify whether the list is valid are the logical relations.
McCarthy points out that, while this series is offered up as the cause of a potential smile on Bloom's part, Bloom does not in fact smile. The list is not even taking place in
Bloom's mind but in some pseudo-reality where Bloom might have thought about this list had he smiled. The passage is based on the assumption that Bloom smiled and the further assumption that Mulvey is the first term of the series. It is these assumptions that lead to the list of lovers being infinite, which only makes sense if it is taken as a set theoretic entity.
Thus, the accuracy of the list is ultimately irrelevant, not because of attention to the set theoretic language, but because Bloom does not smile. The list is thus a counterfactual statement. A counterfactual is an if-then statement that hypothesizes what would be the case if some antecedent were true. Normal logical rules apply, but the material conditional, the connection to reality, is abandoned. Within such a scenario, only logical relations are relevant and Russell's logicism maintains authority over the logical relations. But adhering to this means that Molly's list of lovers can indeed be infinite. This is precisely the problem. To ignore the fact that Molly's list of lovers is a counterfactual statement, that is, not actually taking place, is to ignore the very thing that the intellectual edifice was erected to explain, and leads to Curry's paradox.
Curry's paradox "contemplates the set of all sets such that if they are members of themselves then an arbitrary proposition obtains" (Rescher 173, his emphasis). This means that in an if-then statement the truth of the whole statement comes from the truth of the presumed 'if. This becomes problematic when the presumed 'if is paradoxical. 60
For example, the statement 'if Mulvey is the first and last term of a series, then Molly's lovers is infinite' poses problems because the truth of the whole statement rests on the truth of a seemingly contradictory assumption. Molly's list of lovers can thus conform to the strictures of set theory without really denoting anything. It cannot be known whether
Mulvey is, in fact, Molly's first lover. He cannot be shown to be a member of this series, so no conclusion drawn from it can be valid, since any other arbitrary statement would be valid as well. Thus, Mines and Dasenbrock rightly conclude that "there is...no way that this is a list of Molly's lovers" (32) and are right to point out that "no series ending in
Mulvey can be a list of Molly's lovers if a series beginning with Mulvey is also a list of her possible lovers" (32). Yet their conclusion mistakenly asserts the list of Molly's lovers cannot be infinite. The number can indeed be infinite if taken strictly as a set theoretic abstraction, which it is; its counterfactual status absolves it from the cumbersome restraints of worldly interactions.
This disconnection, however, does not prevent Bloom from contemplating "the last member of this series and late occupant of the bed" (863), one Blazes Boylan. This illustrates the influence these abstractions have over Bloom. Boylan has been a shadowy figure in Bloom's thoughts throughout the day. But here, with the aid of an absurd, though completely rational abstract argument, Bloom's apprehensions are revealed. The fear that there will be "nolast term" (863) comes through and "because he had observed with augmenting frequency in the preceding members of the same series the same concupiscence" (864) that Boylan has shown, Bloom's feelings of "envy, jealousy, abnegation, equanimity" (864) are finally articulated. Bloom is no doubt distraught over
Molly's adultery and has spent much of the day in flight from this fact. The hyperbolic 61
"to nolast term" (863) reflects Bloom's unarticulated despair that his wife may have been cuckolding him for a long time and may continue to do so. Thus, as with Bloom's baptism, insights outside the totalizing discourse aid comprehension of the passage and cast doubt over the universal applicability of totalizing discourses.
"Ithaca"s engagement with error as contradiction reveals the critical aspect of the episode. By exposing the error of subsuming reality into a coherent abstract whole, Joyce exposes the permeating influence that the holism of both theology and science/mathematics exert in daily experience. But while both discourses maintain a firm presence in Joyce's prose on a formal and stylistic level, both remain relatively inadequate representations of the characters' experience. This inadequacy illuminates a distinctly material aspect of these discourses. Both abstract discourses have a materiality that exerts a subconscious influence on Dublin inhabitants. This materiality is dependent on usage. In this way, the holistic worldview of both theology and science/mathematics are exposed as having similar inconsistencies. These inconsistencies sprout from the discourses themselves, but do not occur unilaterally. It is their manifestation in the psychic life of Bloom that exposes their material contingency. Error allows one to see beyond the limits of a single discourse, since Bloom's thoughts are only marginally contingent on either discourse. This unarticulated gap between the discourses occurs as a result of their distinct lack of universality and creates a dynamic with both points of view illuminating different aspects of the surrounding reality. It is to the dynamic that I now turn. 62
2.3 Right in Two
My criticism of theology and science/mathematics has revolved around the central claim that both discourses presume a universal explanatory power in abstraction; and that it is precisely this abstract power that is hindered by contradictions. Joyce mimics the totalizing tendencies of both discourses in the catechistic narrative technique, where differentiations between higher-order abstractions and the concrete world are opaque.
This is complicated by a further level of interplay between theology and science/mathematics that exposes the limitations of each discourse and exploits these limitations as a driving narrative force. By subjecting these discourses to the vagaries and verities of the world they claim to explain, Joyce shows each to be lacking in light of the other and reveals the very real particular knowledge both discourses illuminate. This illustrates both the dynamic historical conflict between the two discourses and a parallax view that takes multiple viewpoints into account. Dynamic dialetheia offers a way to account for and accept the inconsistencies within each discourse and tentatively sutures the gap between the two discourses. Joyce's realism, by depicting both discourses in their materiality, forces a comparative dynamic that captures the simultaneity of both discourses in "Ithaca". It is, however, error that fosters this dynamic.
For example, Bloom's lighting of the stove is a banal everyday task, in whose depiction the discourses of science/mathematics and theology overlap to inform the reality of the text. The lighting of coal for the stove in other contexts would not be a significant focal point, but with both discourses foregrounded to the extent they are, every event can be seen in relation to them. Where the two discourses overlap, the differences between them, and between both of them and the silent, resistant world, 63 become overt. Bloom has "composed in the grate a pyre of crosslaid resintipped sticks,"
(781). 'Crosslaid' refers here to the cross of Christ; and 'pyre' references funeral rites.
Such sentiments are furthered by "one ignited lucifer [sic] match" (781), evoking the potential of hellfire after death. The otherwise ordinary event thus becomes suffused with theological significance. Scientific/mathematical notions exert a similar influence in this same passage. The lumps of coal are described as "irregular polygons" (781),
(geometrical knowledge), which are sold at "twentyone shillings a ton" (781) (knowledge of ratios and measurements). Further, the release of "the potential energy contained in the fuel by allowing its carbon and hydrogen elements to enter into free union with the oxygen of the air" (781) is a blatantly thermodynamic description. Both discourses colonize this simple event. However, both do so in different ways. It is the very difference between their viewpoints that reveals the limitation of the other.
The historical tensions between these two discourses are thus enacted in a single event; error plays an important mediating role. It is error that shapes the unarticulated gap between their extreme positions. The passage is strewn with errors of both theological and scientific/mathematical varieties. First, both discourses have the tendency to cast their nets too wide and to impose themselves on a particular situation to too great an extent. This is evident with the ominous "lucifer match" (781). Here the allure of theological implications cannot be denied, but in Dublin, 1904, a lucifer match was a simple match patented and sold by Samuel Jones as such. The lowercase T is consistent with how the matches were marketed15. The temptation to over-estimate the significance of the name of the match - a tactic no doubt intended by Mr. Jones - illustrates the over-zealous theological undertones among even the smallest of everyday
15 See Beaver, Patrick, The Match Makers: The story of Brvant & Mav p. 21. 64 items. Yet it is here that theology subsequently overlaps with scientific/mathematical discourse. The flame from the match is used by Bloom to light coal, "releasing the potential energy contained in the fuel" (781). The shift to scientific/mathematical language reveals the gap between the discourses. This shift in focus to the chemical process of coal-burning misses something captured in Stephen's subsequent reflections.
It is not the chemical processes that are remembered, nor the theological overtones, but gestures of warmth from people who care for him, "others elsewhere in other times who
... had kindled fires for him" (781). These gestures of hospitality go unarticulated by either discourse. Thus, it is not the ideologies that foster interactions with objects, but the objects themselves. However, the object - in this case the match - requires an abstract artifice to outline it; being situated between two different viewpoints presents it in a more nuanced relief than the more general whitewash of any single discourses.
A parallax view discourages the singular propagation of either theology or science/mathematics in the events of the episode and captures the ideological divide within Ireland without prejudice. Priest notes that the favouring of a discourse over the intrinsic property of an object is a form of mystification. He writes that this
"mystification occurs when properties that things have in virtue of their roles in social activities are reified, owing to a failure to understand how those practices function" (In
Contradiction 151). In the above example, the possibility of the theological implications of the iucifer match' and the description of coal burning to determine the passage are sorely tempting. However, for either to have dominance neglects Bloom's show of hospitality to his guest. Without regard to the social situation, the actual event taking place, it is quite possible to extend the scope of a discourse to distortive effect. This 65 distortive possibility reflects an ideologically divided Ireland where even simple acts of hospitality such as lighting a stove can be obscured by ideological allegiances. This in turn distorts the communicative effectiveness of either discourse, and isolates individuals on ideological islands, where disagreement might be equated with betrayal16. Yet, this passage also shows a complementary relationship between the two discourses. The tension between them illuminates for the reader, if perhaps not for the characters, different aspects of the same event.
By contrast, Steven Sicari's reading of "Ithaca" is an example of the reifying temptations of theology. Reading "Ithaca" as a "fixed point that governs the meaning of the rest of the novel" (Sicari 264), he overtly abstracts the text. In his reading, the literal and abstract levels coalesce in Bloom, who is so unaware of his behaviour that he is oblivious to the fact that he is the epitome of Christianity. This reading leads Sicari to view Stephen and Bloom's micturition as a ritual "immune from mockery" (283) and to argue that, as Stephen takes his leave of Bloom, his "great achievement... has been to recognize in this apparently ordinary man the Incarnation of Christian behavior" (282).
Stephen thus departs from Bloom's abode with the recognition of "the silent eruption of the divine into the human world" (283), embodied in Bloom. In contrast, though, Mines and Dasenbrock read the mathematical notions in the "disunion of their (respectively) centrifugal and centripetal hands" (Joyce 826) as evidence that "one of the two hand shakers [is] reluctant to part with the other's hand" (Mines & Dasenbrock 27). The obvious candidate for this reluctance is Bloom, suggesting that Stephen is not quite as
16 An example can be found in "Cyclops", where Bloom is outcast, at least in part, because he often disagrees with the die-hard nationalism promoted by the Citizen, and in attempting to engage in less impassioned discussion, receives only wrath in return. Similarly, Stephen's exile from his dwelling can be seen not only as a colonial allegory, but as illustrating Mulligan's betrayal in not complying with Stephen's request to evict Haines. 66 enthusiastic about Bloom as Sicari would have it. Obsessive adherence to a single discursive interpretation is obstructive to the point of being erroneous. There is likely a rapport between the two characters that exceeds common civility, but one that surely falls short of Sicari's revelation of a Christian paragon. The various interplays between theology and science/mathematics more fully represent the happenings of the episode than either discourse can on its own.
Error thus operates in two ways: firstly, as a direct deviation from totalizing discourses in the form of internal contradictions; secondly, as an unarticulated middle ground that facilitates the parallax view. The relevance of error thus lies in pointing the way toward the plurality of discourses. Such a perspective offers a broader understanding of reality. The comparisons that occur between perspectives in Joyce's use of parallax reveal that "the point here is not that one interpretation is right and one wrong but that all interpretation leaves something out" (Wilcox 647). Engaging with errors is an all-too-human aspect of everyday engagement with one's reality that is excluded from theoretical analyses, denied prominence despite its effervescence, and ultimately avoided at all cost. Avoiding error denies a central feature not only of humanity, but of ideological thought as well. While abstract discourses do indeed illuminate certain facets of reality, others are necessarily left out. The errors of "Ithaca" act as a reminder of the trade off abstraction represents.
Thus, Joyce's use of parallax advocates the implicit position that human thought itself is fallible. Multiple perspectives are beneficial for an understanding of one's reality. Within the charged climate of Dublin, this was itself a radical position to be taking, since it amounted to challenging the monoliths of politically powerful discourses. 67
However, Joyce was not alone in this thought. John Henry Newman, the first rector of the Catholic University of Ireland (now University College Dublin) where Joyce was educated, was "adamant that theology as an academic discipline must take its place as but one of many components of a liberal education" (Muller 90). Such pluralism moves away from the totalizing tendencies of holistic discourses toward a detotalized realism and fosters a parallax view. Freed from the obscuring effects of totalizing discourses, the narrative of Stephen and Bloom presents more nuanced and conflicting thoughts and dilemmas. Ultimately, it is the complexities of the human mind and its interaction within an increasingly diverse metropolis that Joyce articulates. It is this interaction that the inconsistencies of both science/mathematics and theology anticlimactically reconcile. To this interaction within Bloom's mind I now turn. CHAPTER 3
A TANGLE OF HIERARCHIES: "Ithaca" and the Detotalized Subject
The rest of us, not chosen for enlightenment, left on the outside of Earth, at the mercy of a Gravity we have only begun to learn how to detect and measure, must go on blundering inside our front-brain faith in Kute Korrespondences ... kicking endlessly amongst the plastic trivia, finding in each Deeper Significance and trying to string them all together like terms in a powers series hoping to zero in on the tremendous and secret Function whose name, like the permuted names of God, cannot be spoken. -Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself, (I am large. I contain multitudes.) -Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself'
"Ithaca" most radically illustrates Joyce's concern with the material life of abstract discourses by exploring the interaction between individual subjectivity and such discourses. However, far from emphasizing the material contingency of abstract discourses, Joyce demonstrates that theology and science/mathematics are intricately woven into Bloom's subjectivity. Thus, though "Ithaca"s narration gives the impression of a distancing from Bloom's mind it remains firmly tethered to it. The disarray and sudden shifts in this episode precisely mimic the wandering mind of Bloom encountered in previous episodes. Bloom's subjectivity becomes an interface with most abstract discourses. However, at the core of this nexus is an inconsistency that Bloom finally confronts: his irrational love for Molly and willingness to continue their marriage despite her infidelity. Here, Bloom's characteristic status as detached observer takes concrete textual form. His subjectivity is juxtaposed with totalizing discourses and the episode tangles these discourses with the particularities of Bloom's existence. Bloom's errors thus free him in the most mundane way from the gross intellectual inheritance: he is accidentally unique. Bloom's errors, his tangle of abstract discourses with coincidental 69 particularities, create an interaction with the world vitally his own. This tangled hierarchy detotalizes theology and science/mathematics precisely to the extent that they touch the cluttered and inconsistent mind of Bloom. This chapter will argue that "Ithaca" remains within Bloom's consciousness, with Bloom's subjectivity affecting the discourses of theology and science/mathematics to at least the same extent that they affect Bloom's perceptions. More, error, as a symptomatic aspect of Bloom's interaction with abstract discourses, is what allows him to rationalize his love for Molly.
3.1 This Is The End...
Beginning at the end, at the unanswered question "where?" (871), two things become clear. First, Joyce's stream of consciousness technique is shown to have been in place throughout the episode1. It is only the onset of sleep, the dissolution of Bloom's own consciousness that brings the question-and-answer inquiry, "whose method could go on infinitely" (Mackey 80), to a close. "Ithaca" thus falls in line with the previous episodes, featuring Bloom as "the preeminent 'human' consciousness of the novel,"
(Mackey 81). Secondly, there is a resistance to strict rationality woven into the text.
Given Bloom's tendency to contemplate complex problems on his own rather than consulting authoritative sources, he seems to fall in line with a Kierkegaardian irrationalism. Here, systematic thinking is of secondary importance to the intuitive indirect knowledge that propels an individual toward ethical and religious life. This strong individualism undercuts the totalizing tendencies of discourses such as theology and science/mathematics. However, Bloom's errors are not motivated by defiance. In
1 It may be objected that the full stop, as Joyce intended in the manuscript sent to the printer, serves as an answer to the final question. This is unproblematic for me. I see this inflated period as precisely the cessation of Bloom's consciousness I discuss. The textual black hole is the onrush of sleep, rather the inverse of a television being turned off. Instead of the light streaming to a final dot, it is darkness and sleep that are suddenly expanding and engulfing. 70 fact, his observations and thoughts about his world are explicitly structured by abstract discourses. He even fancies himself to be of a 'scientific' disposition. Yet, in facing
Molly's infidelity, Bloom realizes that thinking and observing alone will not efface
Molly's actions. For that, Bloom will have to position himself in the here and now and confront the infidelity as a singular event, not as an abstraction. Accepting Molly's adultery forces Bloom to think for himself, even if that means thinking wrongly.
That "Ithaca" remains attached to Bloom's consciousness can be seen throughout the text. For example, Bloom chooses not to speak to Stephen at one point because he erroneously feels that Stephen is "engaged in mental composition" (791), thus revealing
Bloom's high opinion of Stephen. Bloom (erroneously) has taken Stephen's tendency to abstraction as worthy of a degree of respect. Further, the 'objectivity' of the episode is the manifestation of abstract discourses extending Bloom's consciousness beyond the particularities of his existence. Just as he is able to contemplate the "everchanging tracks of neverchanging space" (870) by virtue of scientific/mathematical discourse, so too is
Stephen depicted through abstract discourses. The point is that Bloom's subjectivity is enhanced and expanded by abstract discourses in a purely formal way. That these discourses are imperfectly applied is only further evidence of the primacy of Bloom's consciousness in the episode. "Ithaca" presents a heavily veiled consciousness. That this apparent distance between the subjective and objective is a two-fold detachment is evident at the outset of the episode. Stephen's alternate view of Irish history is "assented
[to] covertly" (777) by Bloom. Bloom's scepticism affects Stephen's assertion but does not supplant it. 71
However, Stephen's theory is reported in abstract language, knowable only through relation to the existing historical record; and secondly, it is presented as a report given from some more detached and circumspect vantage point. Such circumspection is typical of Bloom's engagement with his everyday circumstances. Neither objectively indifferent nor didactically judgmental, Bloom's inquisitive mind is exposed in "Ithaca" at its fleeting best. Joyce here continues his exploration of Bloom's omnivorous psyche, one that ingests and alters ideas and events indiscriminately. For example, during a silent moment, Bloom's thoughts shift from the Keyes ad, to "Plumtree's Potted Meat" (800) to
"imitations. Peatmot. Trumplee. Montpat. Plamtroo" (800). None of the 'imitations' seems to be an actual product, merely an imaginative whorl concocted by Bloom. Such word salad is characteristic of Bloom's interaction with ideas. Bloom seemingly intentionally shuffles them - though to no obvious purpose. This is not the first or only time such a mixing occurs in the novel. In "Ithaca" alone, it occurs three other times.
Bloom blends Stephen and Bloom into "Blephen" and "Stoom" (798); he makes anagrams of his own name (792); and composes an acrostic of his pet name 'Poldy'
(792). Not only does this show Bloom's mind intentionally mixing things up; it also marks the centrality of Bloom's consciousness in the episode. Direct access is given to subjective processes that do not subscribe to the 'objective' discourses of the episode.
Thus, the unanswered question "Where?" (871) precisely pinpoints Bloom's consciousness as the governing consciousness of the episode. Significantly, it follows yet another nonsense stream: "Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad the Jailer
... and Linbad the Yailer and Xinbad the Phthailer" (871). Bloom's free floating mind often turns the tables on the rigours of totalizing discourses by applying his rational 72 abilities to no specific end, or just as often, toward nonsensical ones. This eccentricity changes the fabric of the discourses and localizes them without a higher-order purpose, yet that makes all the difference to Bloom. In keeping with this line of thought, I submit as answer to "Ithaca"s final imponderable, 'here'. The answers sought by Bloom and by readers of "Ithaca" lie in the immediacy of Joyce's prose and Bloom's character rather than in an outside abstract discourse. Bloom's subjectivity thus acts as the lynch pin that adheres both to the abstract qualities of universal applicability and to the limits of the subjective present.
Further, the textual irony of having the answer contained in the question precisely illustrates the synechdoche between abstract discourses and Bloom's subjectivity. The discursive didacticism discussed in Chapter II here maintains its prescriptive tenor, but without an explicit answer, it is not quite so overbearing. As a kind of subliminal suggestion, it is accepted by Bloom in his acquiescence to the demands of fatigue. The catechetical didacticism is shirked by a passive acceptance. Like the Freudian superego, the catechist acts as the social discourse that guides and organizes the form the character's thoughts take. The tension between the catechist and the answerer is completely internal. There is nothing outside the interaction between them save for the glimmer of reality not captured by theory. Thus, the lack of an answer to the final
'where' emphasizes not only the rootedness of the episode in Bloom's subjectivity, but also the prominence abstract discourses have within Bloom's subjectivity. In the end, it is the formal inquisition that has the last word. Bloom's lack of a response is an answer only in the sense that its utterance is inconceivable or, more precisely, meaningless, without Bloom. 73
However, given such an individualistic scenario, with nonsense anagrams juxtaposed with abstract totalizing discourses, "Ithaca" may seem to simply mock any comprehensive viewpoint. Such is the view of Zack Bowen, who sees Ulysses as
"primarily a comic novel" (xiii) that deflates and mocks intellectual rigour and promotes humour as a more quintessential, life-affirming human tradition than rationality. While there is something to this, as I have addressed in Chapter I, I feel that there is a much more nuanced social-psychological aesthetic at work in Ulysses. Bloom's resistance to well-ordered systematic thinking offers a striking parallel with Kierkegaardian irrationalism, for which systematic thinking is secondary to the intuitive indirect knowledge that is exemplary of subjectivity. Such is Arnold Goldman's reading, in which he claims that "humour ... is more the mode of approach to Bloom" (77). This makes Bloom a transitional figure in a Kierkegaardian radical subjectivism. For
Kierkegaard, human subjectivity progresses through three spheres: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. The aesthetic is conceived as "intellectual ideality as a possibility" (Kierkegaard 286), with pleasure and beauty in all forms being the individual's primary concern. In the ethical, "the individual must become an observer"
(Kierkegaard 119) of his own life and take its limitations seriously. Finally, the religious sphere is an embrace of an inward divinity which realizes the gravity of sin. The religious sphere is "distinguished from the aesthetic and metaphysical, accentuates existence, and paradoxically distinguished from the ethical, accentuates the existence of another person" (Kierkegaard 514). The religious is the most paradoxical sphere, at once stridently subjective, yet aware of the necessity for divine objectivity. 74
Further, Kierkegaard identifies transitional states between the aesthetic and the ethical and between the ethical and the religious, and "suggests irony is the [first] boundary" (Carlisle 81) and humour the second2. These transition zones are central to
Goldman's interpretation. Bloom is a transitional figure for whom "the withering away of 'adulteration' is perhaps the key" (Goldman 117). As such, with "the language of
'Ithaca', in terms of a subject/object relationship, at the furthest remove" (Goldman 107),
Bloom is able to see himself humorously, by virtue of an objectivity that brings him closer to the divine3. For Goldman, Bloom's contemplation of Boylan, particularly his
"equanimity" (Joyce 864) towards the adulterous act, "belongs to another realm"
(Goldman 75) than envy, jealousy and abnegation, that is the religious realm. Goldman sees this as "a responsible gesture in the face of reality ... [with Bloom] having given up all expectations ('by virtue of the absurd' in all existence)" (76). In other words,
Goldman sees Bloom's 'equanimity' as an acknowledgement of his own status as, "a jesting and yet profound exchange-center for all,... [a] synthesis of absolute religious passion with a maturity of spirit" (Kierkegaard 451 -2).
In Goldman's reading, then, Bloom's resignation to Molly's infidelity, though
"ethically suspect... is Bloom's essential preparation to qualify for the position of the
Kierkegaardian religious category" (Goldman 158). Bloom's inaction is thus a positive
2 These boundary zones are an important and active part of the process, as Clare Carlisle notes, "moving from the aesthetic to the ethical involves taking oneself more seriously, [while] moving from the ethical to the religious involves taking oneself less seriously" (83). For a lucid explanation of the distinctions between the aesthetic, ethical, and religious spheres, see Clare Carlisle's Kierkegaard: A Guide for the Perplexed, pp. 75-89. 3 However, Goldman is careful to avoid any explicit commitment to Bloom swinging one way or the other, and continuously proclaims Bloom's transitional status, happy, it would seem, with the paralysis of potentiality spread before Bloom. What Goldman seems to miss is that Bloom is painfully aware of the wealth of potentiality before him. It is this awareness that traps him. Readers get a glimpse of the apprehension of this awareness in Bloom when he reflects on the fact that 'only an infinitesimal part of any person's desires has been realised" (Joyce 848). 75 quality that manifests as tolerance of Molly's infidelity. In precisely the opposite vein as
Kierkegaard's Abraham who commits to the ethically wrong proposition of killing his son, Bloom's excusing an unethical act is necessary for his progression to the
Kierkegaardian religious realm. Thus, in his rationalization of Molly's adultery, Bloom reinforces Kierkegaardian irrationality. In the end, for Goldman, Bloom's "equanimity"
(Joyce 864) opens up the possibility of his becoming a properly 'religious' individual in the Kierkegaardian sense. Goldman thus advocates for Bloom's religious status on the basis of a faith Bloom does not seem to have.
This reading privileges a Christian tradition without acknowledging Bloom's immersion in other traditions. Bloom's observer's detachment from much of what goes on around him is not without its own intellectual rigour. For instance, Bloom's personal hobby of attempting to square the circle illustrates his involvement with the scientific/mathematical discourse. Further, though an event may be passively observed by him, it is not forgotten, and often it is even analyzed later in the novel. The
'throwaway' incident illustrates how Bloom takes things in, even though they might not perfectly cohere together. Bloom's initial 'tip' to Bantam Lyons and the misunderstandings that follow are remembered and analyzed in "Ithaca". Here Bloom puts together "previous intimations of the result, effected or projected" (789). Though
Bloom is often embarrassingly uninformed about the particularities of a situation or of intellectual traditions, he is nonetheless at some level aware and inquisitive about them.
Bloom is not, as Goldman's reading would have it, a faithful fool, nor nobly ignorant, unaware of the magnitude of God's plan yet nonetheless acting in accordance with it. 76
Rather, Bloom's detachment is more generally inquisitive than specifically complacent; more importantly, Bloom is actively if imperfectly attempting to understand his world.
Bloom's contemplations are typically exploratory, a kind of trial by error that makes his intellectual life an odyssey contingent upon the pressures of an external world.
Unlike Stephen, whose engagement with his immediate surroundings is immediately clouded in abstraction, as "Proteus" illustrates4, Bloom's inquisitive nature combines problems that he has encountered with proximate solutions. Bloom treats any issue that piques his interest with a 'win some, lose some' mentality, that is, with an acceptance of error as a real possibility. This is seen in his consulting of Shakespeare for "the solution of difficult problems in imaginary or real life" (791), where he receives "imperfect conviction from the text" (792). But this significantly shows that Bloom's searches for solutions are drawn from his surroundings. This milieu itself offers him so diverse a body of knowledge that "an objective authority is made to appear quite ludicrous"
(Kiberd 254) due to its strict limitations of inquiry. Even so, Bloom is not above contemplating the problem of squaring the circle, a problem declared unsolvable by the scientific/mathematical community but nonetheless attempted "some years previously in
1886" (820) by this untrained man. The presumption that Bloom might stumble upon the solution to a proverbially unsolvable mathematical problem is laughable but for the humorous fact that Bloom is also an individual for whom sculpture is an authoritative
4From the "ineluctable modality of the visible" (45), to the girl at Hodges Figgis' (60), to the patch of seaweed that looks like a dead body (62-3), to the dog running along the strand (56-9), every phenomenon that Stephen engages with is transcribed into a quasi-poetic, quasi-philosophical entity, which Stephen then proceeds to twist and prod as if it were real. The important point is that Stephen must first transcribe before he can relate to them, whereas Bloom simply takes things at face value, as they appear to him, in combination with whatever might be in his mind at the time. In a sense, the novel can be seen as a progression from the solipsistic abstractions of Stephen and the crew of the Telemachiad to a more public application of discourses of Bloom in the later episodes. 77 source to consult on the anatomy of gods5. Bloom is largely oblivious to the larger abstract qualities of his problems and probes for solutions in his local environment. A problem occurs to him and its solution is sought out in a nearby locale - whether or not this solution is accurate is only taken into account later, if at all. This makes error part and parcel of Bloom's engagement with discourses and world both. Error stems from
Bloom's particularized engagement with his worldly environment, which he has limited influence over and must passively accept.
Thus, turning to Bloom's contemplation of, and resulting equanimity towards,
Molly's infidelity, the result is easily seen as an outcome of his reflection on a more worldly discourse: law. Bloom reasons that Molly's infidelity is:
less reprehensible than theft, highway robbery, cruelty to children and animals, obtaining money under false pretences, forgery, embezzlement, misappropriation of public money, betrayal of public trust, malingering, mayhem, corruption of minors, criminal libel, blackmail, contempt of court, arson, treason, felony, mutiny on the high seas, trespass, burglary, jailbreaking, practice of unnatural vice, desertion from armed forces in the field, peijury, poaching, usury, intelligence with the kings's enemies, impersonation, criminal assault, manslaughter, wilful and premeditated murder. (865)
All of these are offenses punishable by law. Bloom's equanimity is thus not the result of an appeal to any metaphysical or mysteriously paradoxical religious notions, but the result of a more proximate appeal to the rule of law that has direct application in Bloom's life6. He further reasons that Molly's actions are "not more abnormal than all other
^ote also that the squaring of the circle only conies up tangentially in relation to the problem of mathematical accuracy. "TTiis is not to say that laws are not drafted without appeals to certain higher-order moral, ethical, or other meta-properties. Rather, it is to say that Bloom's interaction with them is not on the level of jurisprudence, but one of applied understanding. Such is the case with Priest's 'inconsistent obligations', "where someone is obliged both to do x and not to do x" (In Contradiction 182). Priest gives the following example: "I 78 altered processes of adaptation to altered conditions of existence" (865) and excuses her on circumstantial grounds. This tacitly acknowledges that Molly's situation is similarly not wholly within her control. Though Bloom's reasoning at this point is decidedly internal, it is informed by the 'objective' discourse of the law. In actively attempting to broaden his perspective to better understand - or rationalize - Molly's adultery, Bloom acknowledges the complexity of Molly's situation. Bloom is thus able to reconcile the contradictory actions of Molly's infidelity with her previous "hospitality extended and received in kind" (864), as well as their "extraracial attraction, intraracial inhibition, supraracial prerogative" (865), and their "common current expenses" (865) without a unifying synthesis. The difficulty lies in attempting to reconcile the inconsistent obligations that arise between Bloom and Molly. Yet the diversity of the particular obligations drives Bloom toward equanimity. Bloom's knowledge "comes from encountering the world's stimuli and reflecting on them, rather than from innate tendencies or instincts" (Mackey 93). This particularist sensibility is wholly his own and imbibes liberally from the diverse discourses and values of his culture, often to contradictory results.
Bloom's musings on Boylan are similarly diverse, and further reflect his furtive engagement with his surrounding cultural discourses as a means of understanding his own situation. However, in the case of Boylan, Bloom's reflection does not appeal to a systematized authority, but to characterization. Bloom characterizes Boylan, first of all,
contract with party X to be present at a certain spot at a certain time. Separately, I contract with party Y not to be present at that spot at that time. Both contracts are validated in the usual way, by witnessing, etc. I may do this with or without ill intention.... In such circumstances I am legally obliged both to be and not to be at this spot at this time." (In Contradiction 182). In such a case it is important to know the content of the contracts. Bloom is engaged here in a similar activity of trying to put into perspective Molly's adulterous act in that he attempts to flush out the specifics of Molly's situation. 79 as "impressionable]" (863), and has previously "observed with augmenting frequency in the ... members of the same series the same concupiscence" (864) that drive Boylan's lust. Bloom thinks Boylan's lust is driven by the lust of others. Think of how Boylan almost forgets his tryst with Molly in "Sirens;" he is only reminded of it by Miss
Kennedy's teasing reveal of her "elastic garter smackwarm against her smackable woman's warmhosed thigh" (343). However, in seeing Boylan, also as "a bounder ... a billsticker... [and] a bester," (863) Bloom sees Boylan's actions as consistent with his character of being influenced by others. Thus, Bloom acknowledges his envy of Boylan and ironically decides to "emulat[e]" (866) Boylan. He feels that if he were to emulate
Boylan it would make him "a successful rival agent of intimacy" (866). Of course,
Bloom's emulation will inevitably not be a precise mimicry, being shaped by a particularly Bloomian set of presumptions. With this in mind, Bloom's asking for breakfast may be his imperfect emulation of Boylan's 'bester' ways. Boylan, if nothing else, possesses an assertiveness that Bloom lacks; Bloom's decision to become Boylan's sexual rival depends on an adoption of Boylan's traits. Just as Bloom imperfectly incorporates ideological discourses, Bloom also imperfectly mimics his rival's characteristics. Bloom's broad intake of influence, from theology to science/mathematics, to law, to his sexual rival's idiosyncrasies reveals an array of inconsistent allegiances. It is no surprise that "Ithaca", being an extension of Bloom's introspective quest for understanding should be riddled with inconsistencies and errors.
The sheer volume of errors in the episode certainly defies the strictures of the systematized discourses in the episode. It is this defiance that illustrates Bloom's particularity. This uniqueness is shaped by the overwhelming minutiae of his life - both 80 imaginary and real - that, like individual blows of a sculptor's chisel, are often imperfect.
Yet no strike of this phenomenal mallet that shapes Bloom is trivial. While Priest notes that "the only sentence whose content is trivial is the sentence 'Everything is true,'" (95) every phenomenon, every erroneous exploration that Bloom embarks on, is indeed significant. But it is only in their relation to Bloom's own particular circumstances that these particularities are significant, not as a universal statement. This is not to say that everything that Bloom thinks or says or does is true. Rather, everything he does, says or thinks reveals something about Bloom. Bloom's existence is no simple accumulation of facts. Digressions, erroneous theories, futile tasks, and pointless wordplay all factor in to
Bloom's experience of the world. There is no abstracting a universal truth from Bloom's narrative, because its substance is not general, but an effervescent stream of particularities. Bloom's inconsistent allegiances to totalizing discourses reflect his status as a detached observer in his own life and can no more be separated from the discourses he erroneously employs than can a sculpture be separated from the chisel that shapes it.
Everything is submitted as a legitimate experience, or a legitimate revelation about Bloom. Declan Kiberd rightly notes that, in "Ithaca", such detailing "has a levelling effect" (250), which equalizes everything and points toward Joyce's, and
Bloom's, being "a natural democrat" (250), champions of a liberating equality. Yet we might just as easily say such detail neutralizes everything; that, with all things being equal there is no need for such specificity. Kiberd misses the tension between the details, the exclusive nature of each detail that will render Bloom a complete human. Yet,
Bloom, like "Ithaca" itself, is stuck at the penultimate, always trying to see a greater significance in the endless trivia of his life, and trying most of all, to connect with his 81 wife. Respite from this Sisyphean task is found only in sleep. "Ithaca" depicts the overlap between the subjective and the objective and illustrates that the two are not separate, but involved in a push-pull relationship. Bloom's subjectivity, like the circle he tries to square, is a work in progress. Neither, in the end, can be absolutely solved.
3.2 The World At Large
The title for this chapter is a term taken from Douglas Hofstadter's book Godel.
Escher. Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. He uses the terms 'tangled hierarchies' or
'strange loops' to describe the phenomenon "in which thoughts on one level can affect thoughts on any other level" (458). Hofstadter thinks levels of thought parallel categorical structures of set theory. Such tangled hierarchies lie at the centre of consciousness where "the total picture of'who I am' is integrated in some enormously complex way inside the entire mental structure, and contains in each one of us a large number of unresolved, possibly unresolvable, inconsistencies" (Hofstadter 696).
Bloom's internal inconsistencies are often best made sense of as juxtapositions of distinct discourses; the attendant confusions originate as much from his own psyche as from the external complexities of his world. As a reflection of Bloom's firm connection to the
'objective', "Ithaca" depicts the tangle of basic sensory phenomena with abstract discourses. The mechanical or rudimentary errors that Bloom routinely makes are understandable and largely governed by their relation to higher conceptual levels that organize the endless trivia of his day. Where abstract concepts entwine and conflict is precisely where Bloom's unique subjectivity is most apparent. In this tangled hierarchy, contradictions and errors detotalize discourses and poignantly reveal Bloom's inconsistent character not as a simple synthesis of conflicting ideas, but as a participant in 82 a dynamic ideological network that necessitates something of a split-brained approach.
Dynamic dialetheia, then, captures the parallax view necessary to keep pace both with
Bloom's consciousness and with the ideological world at large.
Throughout "Ithaca," abstract notions and terminology are imposed upon the action of the text and often reveal more about Bloom than they do about the abstract notion itself. For instance, when Bloom is "reduce[d] by cross multiplication" (855) no specific mathematical process is employed or alluded to. The mathematical allusion is an imposition tagged on the end of a passage that expresses a descent into destitution. The passage is simply a list of'poverty', 'mendicancy' and 'destitution', with their possible
Dublin manifestations. What they all have in common is that Bloom would be placed in a position of servitude. This theme arises specifically in relation to Boylan and Molly and is heightened by the fact that it was Bloom who arranged for the two to meet. In fact, the passage makes complete sense without the recourse to mathematical/scientific notions.
To wit, "reduce Bloom ... by reverses of fortune, from which these supports protected him, and by elimination of all... values to a negligible ... quantity" (855) makes just as much sense in the sequence of questions as it does with the mathematical notions "cross multiplication ... positive ... negative irrational unreal" (855) included. The theoretical imposition muddies the waters and adds another level of abstraction that makes the statement more opaque. This appeal to mathematical/scientific principles to tame what is depicted as a chance event reveals no abstract truth. Instead, it serves only to highlight the dubiousness of the imposition of certainty on fundamentally capricious phenomena and expresses Bloom's unease at his own lot in life. 83
In fact, clouding Bloom's everyday fortunes with the haze of mathematical/scientific analysis precisely reveals the tangled hierarchy characteristic of
Bloom's thought. Strictly speaking, Bloom cannot be cross multiplied, since for a class of sentence, a, "whose members have been proposed as truth valueless, -a is true" (Priest
In Contradiction 66). The statement 'cross multiply Bloom' is a valueless sentence because Bloom is not a fraction. Given the erroneous misapplication, the above quoted passage can only be taken metaphorically. A category mistake has been made; a higher order level of thought has been misapplied to a lower level. It is precisely this category mistake that reveals the extent to which abstract discourses fuse with Bloom's actual thoughts. The invocation of mathematical/scientific notions identifies a reversal in
Bloom's fortunes that leaves Bloom in a state of "destitution" (855) as equal to a
"negligible negative irrational unreal quantity" (855). That is to say that Bloom equates such destitution with the most abstract identities that make him effectively invisible and omitted from the pragmatic life he leads.
With Bloom's narrative bringing him ever closer to confronting Molly and her adulterous act, Bloom increasingly "becomes an object of his own reflections" (Mackey
114). But this objectivity itself necessitates Bloom viewing himself from the outside.
The abstract discourses in "Ithaca" aid him in this regard. "Ithaca"s 'objective' pretensions push this activity to its extreme end. In contrast to the barrage of "three thousand stimuli" (Mackey 116) encountered in Bloom's first three episodes, "Ithaca"'s content is more inward and private by comparison. The above passage reveals Bloom's apprehensions over the tenuousness of his modest existence and his struggle to come to grips with this fact. Three small objects, an "endowment policy, the bank passbook, the 84 certificate of the possession of scrip" (855) are what shield him from the indignities of poverty. That the possession of these three items is not secure is what drives Bloom's ruminations to mathematical/scientific perspectives which then supplant them as Bloom's primary concern. That the possibility of his misfortune can be certainly articulated and even mathematically/scientifically proven or verified is the horrible truth of the matter.
Bloom's individuality is thus not in the least estranged from totalizing discourses; in fact, Bloom's consciousness is intimately intertwined with ordering discourses.
Though Bloom deviates from orthodox norms, his deviance still draws on, and is saturated with, elements of these traditions. It is these discourses that give shape to a collapse into a more fragmented consciousness that is free from the restraints of any one particular worldview. Bloom's detachment from formal discourses and his tangling of discourses distinguishes him from other characters and paves the way toward Bloom's reconciliation with Molly.
Indeed, this passive/active sensibility distinguishes Stephen and Bloom. During
Stephen and Bloom's urination, Stephen contemplates the holy prepuce while Bloom contemplates lecherous behaviour. Both Stephen's and Bloom's thoughts flirt with the heretical and the profane; both similarly deviate from orthodoxy, but each does so differently. Stephen's thoughts react against Pope Leo XIII's decree in 1900 that "anyone who talked about, wrote about, or commented on the Holy Foreskin would face excommunication" (Farley 2). In Stephen's officially heretical musings on "whether the divine prepuce ... were deserving of simple hyperduly or of the fourth degree of latria7"
(Joyce 825), he is at once mocking the doctrine of the incarnation and illustrating its
7 Hyperdulia is the honour paid to the Virgin Mary, distinguished from normal dulia, which honour is paid to saints. Latria is the honour paid to God alone, and is of an altogether different kind. See the Catholic Encyclopedia: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05188b.htm. 85 paradoxical nature. This intermingling of thought with reality, of word and flesh, is itself manifest in the object of the holy prepuce. Far from a simple irreverent curiosity,
Stephen's idle musings reveal his deep ideological involvement with Catholic theology.
In "Proteus" everything is transformed into something else; for example, the couples walking their dog are transformed into an "Elizabethan criminal and ... female accomplice" (Killeen 30), that Stephen immediately cloaks in theological terms, judging the two a "morose delectation [as] Aquinas tunbelly calls" (Joyce 59) it. Stephen's intimate knowledge of theology makes his heretical musings explicitly rebellious, a willed departure from official decree.
Not so with Bloom. A lech in his own right, his thoughts about "the problems of irritability, tumescence, rigidity, dimension, sanitariness, pelosity" (825) reveal his preoccupation with bodily, and primarily male, sexual concerns. This makes him an indulger of 'lechery' "from the modern point of view" (Morse 31), which is essentially the objectification of women. However, Bloom is more circumscribed in this indulgence than, for example, the patrons of the Ormond in "Sirens," precisely because of his pensive proclivities. Whereas the men in the Ormond Hotel entice Miss Kennedy into provocative postures, Bloom chances upon these scenes. Even his encounter with Gerty
McDowell in "Nausicaa" occurs without a word of exchange. He still indulges in these proclivities - note, for example, his eagerness to ogle a girl on the street in "Lotus-
Eaters" (90). Still, it is his explicit distance that differentiates Bloom's thought and conveys his own individuality. Bloom's actions are not the result of careful study and then conscious rejection like Stephen's, but the result of a detached engagement with his surroundings and an osmosis-like knowledge base. It is Bloom's attention to the endless trivia around him that leads him to misapply higher order abstractions to the
particularities of his life.
And so an important difference becomes apparent between Bloom and Stephen.
Bloom's subjectivity is detotalized precisely to the extent that his intellectual musings are
the result of his own personal situation, which is an impressive conglomerate of abstract
discourses and particular circumstance. Stephen, by contrast, intentionally deviates from
orthodoxy and authority. Simply put: Stephen's errors are volitional, Bloom's are not.
This, however, in no way depreciates Stephen's claim that "errors ... are the portals of
discovery" (243). In fact Bloom's errors may be more significant because they are not
constrained by the minute rules of the discourse at hand. Bloom's errors and
contradictions originate in his particular understandings of his environment. Though his
errors are understood within the province of these discourses, they are not an intentional
departure from them. Bloom believes what he thinks. Bloom's thought, though
influenced by the same totalizing discourses as Stephen's, is not as dependent on them.
He is Pynchon's plebeian, left outside the inner circle of knowledge but still trying to find
significance in his life with his unique intellectual tools.
Thus, it is precisely Bloom's status as an ideological outsider, ignorant of the details of totalizing discourses, that graces his errors with originality. Bloom's errors are solely his own, almost accidentally arrived at due to the uniqueness of his circumstances and his inexpert, and thus highly subjective, knowledge. This specific combination leads him in interesting directions. What sets him apart is his detachment from his environment, his willingness to abstract from his particular circumstances, but also to apply abstractions to the particularities of his life. Thus, Bloom's detachment is 87 inquisitive and dependent upon a perpetual interaction with abstract discourses. It is this
"technique [that] becomes the voice of the character's inner life itself' (Mackey 94); if errors occur - and they do - so be it. In the inadvertent deviance from entrenched opinions, error reveals interesting aspects of Bloom's character. Whether his omission of
Bella Cohen's expense from his budget, for example, reveals a level of shame or simple forgetfulness, Bloom's solicitous humanity is abundantly revealed through such simple errors.
The point is not that the particularities of a single human life eclipse broader ideological issues, nor that ideologies bestow truth upon everyday life, nor even that
Bloom's essential subjectivity is incorruptible. Instead, the point is that every act is influenced by these totalizing discourses and every act somehow contaminates these discourses. Joyce's grim view of Dublin as "the centre of the [country's] paralysis"
(Joyce, qtd in Brown xxxi) is reflected in its imposing ideological geography as much as in the individual temperaments of its citizens. While Bloom's detachment from his city releases him from the shackles of any particular ideological group, this detachment is also the source of Bloom's own particular paralysis. Bloom is himself a perpetually marginal figure, a citizen who does not really fit in anywhere but still participates as a full member of society. It is his wanderlust that excludes him from the full fellowship and trust of his fellow citizens. The scene in Barney Kiernan's pub in "Cyclops", where the 'Citizen' facilitates Bloom's exodus, stems from a distrust of Bloom's motivations. Bloom's particular wanderlust thus belies the central "Ithacan" message: it is possible to distinguish the way reality appears to an everyday subjective consciousness from an
'objective' theoretical discourse, but both are fruitless without the other. It is this tangle 88 that "Ithaca" captures. In turn, this gives an ironic insight into Bloom's social status: it may be better to be a marginalized figure in Dublin than to be shackled by the prejudices of others. Bloom does not escape the influence of totalizing discourses, but his errors give him the important freedom to disassociate himself from any one discourse or group of people.
This detotalizing of ideological discourses facilitates the symbolic unification of
Bloom and Stephen. A. Walton Litz notes that in "Ithaca", Bloom's is "a humanity that is enhanced if anything by the impersonality of the prose" (393). This humanity is sharpened by errors that speak more in their singular negativity than does the full wealth of verifiable facts in the episode. Detotalized as such, Bloom initiates a more humble engagement both with his fellow citizens and with their ideological peculiarities. For instance, Bloom's "relinquishing his symposiarchal right to the moustache cup of imitation Crown Derby" (790) when pouring his and Stephen's cocoa is the perfect symbol for Bloom's circumspect engagement with others. He identifies with the moustache cup, and given the opportunity, would choose this cup, as he seems often to do since it is listed as "uninverted" (788) amongst the other "inverted breakfast cups" (788).
However, Bloom does not take the cup. Instead, as a show of hospitality, he
"substitute[s] a cup identical with that of his guest" (790). It is significant precisely because Stephen does not observe this "special hospitality" (790); Bloom's gesture of serving the cup "extraordinarily" to his guest seems empty. Yet it is not without meaning
- particularly for Bloom. This simple act reveals two things: first, his solicitous gestures are so intertwined with his personality that they are not dependent on outside observation; 89 secondly, though his decisions are not completely contingent upon abstract externalities, they are influenced by them.
It is this actively solicitous attitude that brings Stephen and Bloom together at the end of "Circe". This is the turning point of the novel, where Bloom differentiates himself from the mob. While Stephen's friends leave him in the street, Bloom alone takes up watch. Slavoj 2izek, discussing Hegel's Spirit, claims that "the very process of alienation creates/generates the 'self from which Spirit is alienated and to which it then returns" (231). Similarly, Bloom's solicitude alienates him from his fellow citizenry.
This is so simply because the rest of the community, much like Private Carr, cares more for "a word against my bleeding fucking king" (694) than for the plight of the man who said it. That is, they are shackled by the ideological prejudices that feed their paralyses.
Bloom's solicitude frees him from this Dublin affliction.8
However, Bloom's solicitude is not absolute; it is reflective of an internal preoccupation with Molly's adultery. After Stephen leaves, Bloom confronts his situation and contemplates alternatives to his earlier question "what to do with our wives?" (802)
He entertains a variety of options, such as his departure to a new life in another place,
Flowerville, the assassination of Blazes Boylan - or perhaps even Molly herself - divorce, a lawsuit "for damages by legal influence" (866), among others. All are rejected; instead, Bloom decides to keep Boylan and Molly apart: "separation protecting the one separated from the other" (866) that "protects] separator from both" (866).
Before Bloom could decide on his (in)action he had first to be left alone to think about
8 Throughout Dubliners a consistent theme is the inability of the characters to escape a mindset that is imposed upon them by the city, as if the city itself were oppressing its citizens. From Eveline's inability to follow a sailor she loves out of the city, to Little Chandler's realisation of his failed literary dreams after a dinner with a successful out of town friend, those who remain in Dublin seem doomed to repeat the same lives endlessly. It is only the rare few that leave this city that Find success and happiness. 90 these options and second, to truly confront this possibility. This process illustrates the alienating dimension of abstract discourses that 2i2ek articulates. Only by contemplating leaving Molly can he legitimately return to her.
Similarly, by reconsidering his options, Bloom happens upon a dialetheic solution to his dilemma. Bloom, being mindful of Stephen's situation, sympathizes with it and offers accomodation. However, Bloom's extending of an invitation of lodging to Stephen differs from the private generosity of the moustache cup. Like Bloom's imagined departure to Flowerville, Bloom's invitation to Stephen is a gesture that is meant to be refused. Unlike the reunification of Odysseus and Telemachus which leads to the restabilization of the home - and a few corpses - Stephen's presence in the Bloom household would not accomplish the same unification. Instead, as Bloom foresees, it would provide Molly with a male interest to distract her from Boylan. But this other male interest would still not be Bloom himself and so would only exacerbate the problem. Bloom's offer is a kind of empty signifier that holds a place in the formal dialogue between the two and is inscribed with whatever information they each choose to assign to it.
By refusing the offer, Stephen establishes a deeper symbolic link between the two than could have been established had he stayed, precisely because it reveals the coincidental overlap of their individualistic tendencies. His literal displacement from society, entered into of his own free will, parallels Bloom's own marginal wanderings.
Put another way, Stephen's pride balances out his displacement. But making exile a personal choice rather than a fallback position gives Stephen an agency denied him in his departure from Martello tower, where he was effectively forced out. Both are exiles. 91
This mutual isolation binds them: they are united by remaining apart, remaining true to their own forged subjectivities. Stephen could not have accepted Bloom's offer and still been of sufficient character to continue to "forge ... the uncreated conscience of [his] race" (Joyce, Portrait 224), since he would have been forever tied to a Bloomian mindset at the least, and bound by commitment at worst. No, he had to strike out on his own.
Were he to accept Bloom's offer, he would forever be indebted to Bloom.
After Stephen's departure, Bloom faces the moment he has dreaded all day, and eventually makes his way up to Molly. Once there, he asks for breakfast in bed the next morning. This seemingly benign request reverses the narrative that began in "Calypso" and ensures at least a different start to the next day. Whether Molly will indulge his request is somewhat beside the point. He is now home; back amongst the tangle of household struggles:
satisfied] at the ubiquity in the eastern and western terrestrial hemispheres, in all habitable lands and islands explored or unexplored (the land of the midnight sun, the islands of the blessed, the isles of Greece, the land of promise) of adipose posterior female hemispheres, redolent of milk and honey and of excretory sanguine and seminal warmth, reminiscent of secular families of curves of amplitude, insusceptible of moods of impression r of otrarieties of expression, expressive of mute immutable mature animality. (867)
The lack of discipline in applying scientific/mathematical principles when speaking of
'curves of amplitude' now seems trivial next to Bloom's physical presence in the home.
Bloom's turn toward Molly's own 'curves of amplitude' is here equated with the mysteries of the cosmos. In Joyce's Dublin, there are no easy wholesome reconciliations, no ultimate unities, no slaying of would be suitors. With Bloom, we are shown the ability to act without larger approval. Uncertainty here meets individuality. The only 92 conclusion for Bloom that would be satisfactory is to continue the narrative, extend the
Odyssean journey toward the mysterious universe of the figure that lies next to him, unhindered by the pressures of higher-order systems of thought.
Thus, Bloom is the metaphoric excluded middle of the novel. Though he is the central organizing consciousness, he is neither entirely aware of the organizing discourses that influence his thoughts, nor an active participant in the affairs of the novel - from the learned discussions in "Aeolus", to the singing in "Sirens", or the cadgy moralizing in
"Oxen of the Sun". Bloom observes, and when pressed, tries to save face and appease everyone regardless of their opinions. Other options are valid for Bloom and all opinions are considered9. This tendency necessitates a parallax view, since he naturally wavers between the opinions and perspectives of others. Bloom's opinions are typically agnostic and this makes them dialetheic, articulating a space where a different ideological approach might be forged. Burgess notes that "Bloom has little other than that endless inner flow" (43); conflicting points of view are bound to arise because Bloom does not always resolve them. In spite of this, or rather because of this, he is the hero of the tale.
Bloom detotalizes theology and science/mathematics precisely because they become contingent upon his subjectivity.
However, it might be objected that Bloom's offer of accommodations to Stephen was not meant to be refused; that it is taken seriously by Bloom and that he is disappointed that Stephen declines. Indeed, later while discussing the events of the day
9 Think of how Bloom goes about trying to secure the Keyes ad. We see him negotiating with his boss, the client, and even the typesetter, whose feelings he considers. Throughout it all Bloom is, himself, immaterial, except in the sense of a transporter, a vessel. It is this constant symbolic/ideological movement that propels the Odyssean allegory. In a sense, Bloom's physical body navigating through Dublin is the vessel for his story and consciousness. "Ithaca" thus illustrates the divide between the ephemeral subjective realm and the material objective realm. 93 with Molly, Stephen emerges as "the salient point of his narration" (868). Though
Stephen declines his offer, Bloom pitches the idea to Molly. Can it be that he still entertains the notion of Stephen taking up residence in the Bloom household, despite
Stephen's explicit refusal? No, rather, it is more likely, with the pattern of practiced deceit evidenced by both Molly and Bloom,10 to be a case of Bloom's indirect instruction.
Like his earlier attempts at educating Molly by laying a book open at a certain page and hoping Molly will read it and ask questions, he dangles a juicy narrative for her to entertain and possibly partake in. He is attempting to strategically separate Boylan and
Molly. This narrative seems to do the trick. Molly enters the fantasy that has been constructed for her:
111 make him feel all over him till he half faints under me then hell write about me lover and mistress publicly too with our 2 photographs in all the papers when he becomes famous (923).
It is only thereafter that she explicitly rejects Boylan. In fact, it is almost her very next thought:
no that's no way for him has he no manners nor no refinement nor no nothing in his nature slapping us behind like that on my bottom because I didn't call him Hugh the ignoramus that doesn't know poetry from a cabbage (923-4 my emphasis).
10 If pressed, I would venture that Bloom was more practiced, though not very successful, in the arts of deception. Molly's carelessness in covering up her tracks, speaks to her amateurness, particularly given the civility, and even warmth, the two seem to share at the end of the episode. Furtfier, the ease with which she sees through Bloom's subterfuges, and her accuracy in pinpointing his true location - "yes he came somewhere im sure by his appetite ... either it was one of those night women if it was down there he was really and the hotel story he made up a pack of lies to hide it... if its not that its some little bitch or other he go in with somewhere or picked up on the sly" (872) - suggests that she has caught Bloom in a lie or two over the course of their marriage, but feels less inclined to bring it up on this occasion. But note how she is correct in her jealous assessments, if wrong in the details. 94
It is the narrative of Molly engaging in an affair with the poet Stephen that eventually brings Molly round to Bloom. With Stephen's imagined refinement contrasting with brutish Boylan, Molly is able to see the faults of Boylan and reject him. Subsequently, with Boylan out of the way, Bloom returns to her thoughts. However, this change in
Molly will, ironically, never be known to Bloom.
Thus, Bloom's lone success in the novel will occur on the same unconscious abstract level as the discourses that affect his thoughts. It is only at this level of abstraction that Bloom can achieve victory. This may be as far from either Romanticism or Idealism as possible. Here we face the brute reality of the situation: it is only because both Molly and Bloom overlook each other's shortcomings that it is possible for their marriage to continue. It is as if, in a variation of the prisoner's dilemma, Molly and
Bloom's shared preference for the continuance of their marriage leads them both to the strategic option of glossing over the other's faults. Should either opt out, the edifice crumbles. Here the tangled hierarchy is the fictional narrative actively changing reality.
The fictional narrative wins Molly over and the abstraction breaches the Cartesian barrier. Thus Bloom's relationships to both abstract ideas and other people are revealed to be highly circumstantial. This is precisely the point of Joyce's realism: ideas are important, abstractions are important, for they have very real transformative possibility, but they are as contingent on proximity as interpersonal relationships.
It is here that we see the dialetheic point in Joyce's parallax views. Caught between the prospects of a future arrangement with Stephen and a past affair with
Boylan, Molly's thoughts become dialetheic. The moment Bloom enters her thoughts
Molly is both interested in Boylan, and she is no longer interested in Boylan. The 95 physical body of Bloom lying beside her triggers this change in her thoughts with the realization that, as Bloom has it, they are joined, with "both [being] carried westward, forward and rereward respectively" (870). Significantly, though, Molly finds her solution in the immediate present. She does not appeal to abstractions or inwardly brood over the problem, but shifts her focus to the world that surrounds her. In this gesture she finds
Bloom as her sole companion. Molly's engagement with the fiction of Stephen taking up accomodation can thus be taken as a lesson. Though she engages in this narrative - and note also that it is a false narrative that was never to take place - she does not cling to it.
This applies to more strident abstractions, where despite usefulness and transformative possibility, they are not substitutable for lived experience, even if they exert transformative influence.
Bloom's erroneous ways are reflective of both the imperfect tools of language, and the continual struggle against the limits of knowledge in the quintessentially, and perhaps vain, human quest for personal connection. Unlike other characters in Ulysses.
Bloom resists the temptation to project aspects of himself onto others. While his understanding of his surroundings may be clouded by his lively mind's willingness to explore eclectic, even superficial pieces of knowledge, he cannot be accused of simply colouring the world with projections of himself. Bloom's errors are relevant in that they reveal the precise extent of his character, as Mackey notes:
as the primary source of Ulysses' text [Bloom's] stream of consciousness'produce[s]' much of the book. So much of Dublin comes to us via Bloom's encounter with it that to imagine Ulysses' Dublin without him is to imagine it not at all. Similarly, so much of Bloom comes to us through his encounter with Dublin that to imagine him without those experiences is to imagine him not at all (94). 96
His inconsistencies are inevitable and contingent upon the specific circumstances of his
Dublin surroundings. Bloom's "scheme ... for the exploitation of white coal (hydraulic power)" (846) is as contingent upon "approval [by] the harbour commission" (846), i.e. the wider Dublin community, as it is his own imagined plan for a "hydroelectric plant at peak of tide at Dublin bar" (846). Understanding Bloom's inconsistencies is essential to understanding his character; further, such a paradoxical situation resembles the body politic. Thus Bloom's inconsistencies articulate wider social inconsistencies. This makes
Bloom a dialetheic figure. Since Bloom's conscious musings are tied with the wider ideological continuity of his community, Bloom's muddled psyche parallels the inconsistent macrocosm of Dublin life. To appreciate either means to apprehend the real possibility of inconsistency as part and parcel of the world at large.
Joyce rather dramatically remarked to Arthur Powers that Ulysses "is the descent into hell" (102). Indeed, Bloom must deal with great adversity: a father dead by suicide, a wife who has recently cuckolded him, and with whom relations seem strained, a dead son, a dead friend, a daughter with whom he is in contact only through letters to his wife, and an insecure stream of income with little job security. Further, his future prospects are likely more of the same. He has no overt talents or exceptional abilities. He is not a striking physical specimen, ruling out manual labour; if "Eumaeus" is an indication of his cliched literary talents~"silence all round marked the termination of his finale. The impervious navigator heard these lurid tidings undismayed" (742)~a writing career is untenable. He seems to possess no outwardly marketable talents, yet his mind is more lively and entwined with his environment than any other character in Ulysses. Though
Bloom seems to be trapped within Dublin, he has one redeeming quality: he has a 97 propensity for engaged and detailed observation. This provides a faint glimmer of hope that he might bumble upon an interesting folly. In this horrid city, the fool's errand would be to think one's self wise.
Jean-Paul Sartre famously wrote "hell is - other people" (45). In this Dublin saturated as it is with ideological discourses, a hell where people are privileged over principles may be the perfect antidote. Bloom's errors prevent ideological impositions from taking hold and articulate a space where a new way of thinking might be forged. In this tangled hierarchy, a radical shrinking of the world has the odd effect of allowing it to bloom into an elaborate labyrinth where appeals to higher authority are, by themselves, fruitless. This is what makes Bloom a dialetheic figure. Priest notes that "it is unlikely that any theory ... cannot be improved" (In Contradiction 207). Theories and discourses are organic things that change over time. It is the articulation of a gap between the theory and the objects of the theory that sprouts new ways of thinking. Further, "once this gap is opened, it suffices for the fallibility of any theory" (Priest In Contradiction 207); in precisely this way, Bloom's own inconsistencies, connected as they are with larger intellectual traditions, articulates a gap that undermines theology and science/mathematics and provides a ground from which new conceptualizations might grow. Bloom's irrational love for Molly and willingness to continue their marriage despite her infidelity re-posits the fundamental question: what does it mean to love? It is here, in the answer to this question that Molly's final 'yes' provides an answer. Simply accepting the other without imposing ideological consistency upon them is what prevails.
Yet, this is not an embrace of imperfection or the simple acknowledgement of the imperfection of the other, but the potential to see the eternal in the everyday details of the other. It is precisely this rootedness in the material world that gives "Ithaca" its depth.
However, it is no coincidence that the inherited totalizing discourses of theology and science/mathematics occur in the episode before we encounter Molly. It is only in comparison with the fallibility of totalizing discourses that Molly's importance for Bloom is articulated. For Bloom it is Molly that is absolute and the totalizing discourses that must adapt. Bloom's errors reveal the extent of his love for Molly; though he may not have willed, it his errors create a unique interaction with the world that is vitally his own. CONCLUSION
RATIONALIZING ERROR: Dynamic Dialetheia and Joyce's Perverse Realism
A husband is laughed at, called a cuckold and a cuckoo and who knows what else when he kisses away the tears of his unfaithful wife, but how much happier it is for him to be thus deceived than to wear himself out with unremitting jealousy, strike a tragic attitude, and ruin everything! In short, no association or alliance can be happy or stable without [folly]. - Erasmus, Praise of Folly
We have arranged for ourselves a world in which we can live - by positing bodies, lines, planes, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content; without these articles of faith nobody now could endure life. But that does not prove them. Life is no argument. The conditions of life might include error. - Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gav Science
Error precisely illustrates Bloom's subjectivity in that it articulates the gap between discourses competing for the total articulation of Bloom's social and subjective existence. It is in their simultaneous failure that Bloom's subjectivity becomes most vital and unique. Further, Bloom's errors illuminate the emerging pluralism that accompanies a growing metropolitan Dublin. In Bloom, or rather through Bloom, readers gain access to the widest perspective of any literary city. Bloom's odyssey presents the range of ideas and scenarios of his Dublin. In capturing the particularized lived experience of a Dublin citizen, Joyce illustrates the relevance of error, both as a type of personal rationalization that is deeply connected to Molly's adultery and as a forthright articulation of the limits of a single avenue of thought. The latter point is explored in Chapter II, where I advocate a parallax view as best elucidating the tension between science/mathematics and theology.
The former, I argue in Chapter III, reveals Bloom's rationalizations to be tethered to his continued love for Molly. It is from his love that error arises. Bloom does not idealize
Molly, nor does he recognize her as a fallen being, yet he sees in her something of such importance that totalizing discourses are distorted in order to preserve his connection to 100 her. The final point I will briefly take up here is that of Joyce's realist aesthetic. First discussed in Chapter I as a willingness to encounter error Joyce's realism, I maintain, confronts the possibility that reality itself is incomplete in the sense that there is a blind spot that perverts any attempt to conceptualize it in a comprehensive way. Such an aesthetic approach does not demand Truth, but rationalizing in the colloquial sense of thinking away one's fears. Joyce's use of error enables divergent viewpoints to be simultaneously engaged without a reconciling synthesis. This blend of outright errors with fact portrays a perverse reality wherein error may be the very articulation of the human condition.
Critical treatment of Joyce's aesthetic has tended to shy away from the realist/naturalist strain in Joyce's work. Weldon Thornton prefers to interpret Joyce's narrative as an elaborate critique, while Hugh Kenner, reads it as a playful, but essentially meaningless repose. Joyce's realism is indeed a departure from the realist/naturalist movement of a Strindberg, Chekov, or Joyce's admired Ibsen, but it certainly does adhere to both a historical and theoretical verisimilitude. While critics such as John Gordon have addressed this as owing to Joyce's own eccentric and rather capricious tastes, others, such as Patrick McCarthy and Tim Conley, have taken notice of the seemingly strategic use of error. Far from an erratic compilation of subjective allusions, Joyce deliberately engages with the conflicting discourses of his time as live entities that interact with his characters. This results in error being a primary aesthetic tool in Joyce's realistic aesthetic. Thus, Joyce's characters depict how the day to day lives of people actually are, with neither being wholly circumscribable to a specific discourse. Through error, Joyce introduces doubt concerning the totalizing tendencies of theology and 101 science/mathematics. Doubt here is shown to be a positive force that empowers a pluralism not bound by the confines of an ideological discourse, but a unique and imperfect blend of them.
Joyce's realist aesthetic is thus both an outgrowth and an embrace of doubt.
Driven by a subversion of totalizing discourses, Joyce presents a reality that is mired in error and in which error is the norm, not the exception. Bloom's consistent erroneous applications of totalizing discourses illustrate the prominence of error in his reasoning processes. It is through Bloom's errors that we get to know him; and it is Bloom's errors that expose the inability of totalizing worldviews to totally explain the world. Error is thus Joyce's most poignant aesthetic tool. Through error, Joyce depicts discourses as real things in the world, subject not only to the manipulations of the average citizen, but also susceptible to internal inconsistencies. It is only in such a reality devoid of absolute truth that a figure as un-doctrinaire as Bloom can be heroic.
Bloom's perversions of firmly established discourses potentially offer a positive vision of society that acknowledges the relevance of error. With error fostering doubt toward the supremacy of any one discourse, Joyce's aesthetic puts forth a truly modest proposal: reality and its accompanying explanatory discourses may be incomplete. In this perverse reality, rationality can take many forms. Of course, this cuts both ways and
Joyce does not shy away from this fact. The throwaway incident, which culminates in
Bloom's expulsion from Barney Kiernan's, in "Cyclops", illustrates the limitations of such off the cuff rationalization and the negative aspects of error. Thus, Bloom's reasonableness and doubt may be taken as societal relativism. It is perhaps part and parcel with Joyce's view of Dublin that a thoughtful man such as Bloom is an exile in the 102 city in which he lives. Bloom's abnegation toward Molly's fidelity exemplifies this.
However, Bloom's rationalizations of Molly's cuckoldry seem eminently reasonable.
While he is not Erasmus' happy fool who blissfully turns a blind eye to Molly's actions, his attempt to make sense of her infidelity reveals a positive outcome of an erroneous and pluralistic thought process. One might reasonably conclude with Erasmus that Bloom is happier having accepted Molly's infidelity.
Molly's infidelity is the singular event that forces Bloom's re-examination and restructure of his approach to the world. In the process, he manages to err his way into a unique frame of mind that is irreducible either to his particular situation or a particular theoretical viewpoint. This makes him a uniquely modern figure. The early twentieth century was a period of increased urbanization. The emergence of the modern metropolis brought scores of immigrants and exiles. From this mix Modernism emerged. As
Raymond Williams notes, "the central product [of Modernism]... was a new set of
'universals'... which can be sharply contrasted with the older 'universals' of specific cultures, periods and faiths" (38). These 'universals' grew out of the cities themselves with their diverse and tumultuous realities. It is precisely this commodified scenario that
Joyce's realism captures. Ulysses tackles the wide variety of technological, cultural and ideological ideas circulating an industrializing Dublin. On a formal level, Joyce's aesthetic embraces this diversity and incorporates an astonishingly diverse number of ideological influences and gives them a specific narrative voice. However, these influences are never fully universalized, but are seen through the prism of Molly's infidelity, that is itself, a seismic event for Bloom. Molly's infidelity restructures Bloom's encounter with the world, causing the rationalization of a vast array of ideological 103 discourses. This gesture shows the importance of Molly for Bloom. Simply put: Bloom sees the universal elements of society in Molly. The relevance of error is the revelation that Bloom's thought is in that in-between stage where he has grasped the enormity of his problem, but has not yet worked out a solution. It is precisely at this stage where
Bloom's thought is dialetheic.
What emerges is an articulation of the effects of city life on an individual. That is to say that "modernity pluralizes" (Berger & Zijderveld 7). The increased exposure to unfamiliar ideas and cultures destabilizes singular perspectives and forces encounters with the unfamiliar and foreign. This pluralism is Joyce's perverse realism. Conflicting viewpoints contaminate each other through "micro-social interactions between individuals" (Berger & Zijderveld 31) and conflicting ideas contemplated by individuals.
Joyce articulates the socialized and enculturated norms of Dublin society by treating the underlying ideological frameworks as things that can be observed and manipulated in the world. By literally subjectifying abstract discourses Joyce fosters an aesthetic that can more realistically, if more tentatively, be called 'objective'. It is by virtue of Bloom's errors that readers of Ulysses are challenged to question the underlying assumptions of his worldview and to find conflict where one would expect harmony. Thus, it is narrative that is a most useful analytical tool, because it provides a reference point, a way to slot our own existence into a narrative. Narrative, as Molly's entertaining of Stephen's boarding illustrates, is an opportunity to live the story not the life. By breaking free of the traditional confines of realist aesthetics, Joyce conforms to a verisimilitude that presents interactions with more than just the brute objects of existence. In this, Joyce's work stands free to explore the errors and contradictions that exist in life. 104
Thus, Bloom is a hero by virtue of the errors that reshape the world in his own terms. Bloom's errors in relation to the totalizing discourses of "Ithaca" shape his individuality and capture the wider social diversity of a modernizing Dublin. Also, while still a quintessential Dublin figure trapped in a self-perpetuating fiction of his own creation, Bloom's errors capture the destabilizing effects on established discourses. It is in this sense that error is relevant: in understanding Bloom's life, it is necessary to reference the discourses that shape, but do not define, his reality. The irony is that the more departure points there are, the more errors there are and consequently, the more
Bloom himself comes into focus as the architect of this restructuring. Through Bloom,
Dublin, with its variety of ideologies and points of view, comes into focus. The two cannot be separated. The conflicting worldview this presents corresponds to the wider
Dublin mindset precisely to the extent that error manifests in Bloom's thoughts. Error provides the ultimate alternatve to established discourses. It is only by embracing the relevance of error that the ever-changing climate of modernity can begin to be articulated. 105
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