this issue
previous article in this issuenext article in this issue

Document Details :

Title: Outlaw Others
Subtitle: Jacques Derrida, James Joyce, and Leopold Bloom
Author(s): TABOR, Nicole
Journal: Bijdragen
Volume: 72    Issue: 3   Date: 2011   
Pages: 322-339
DOI: 10.2143/BIJ.72.3.2141838

Abstract :
Nicole Tabor’s essay focuses on Derrida’s life-long engagement with James Joyce’s Ulysses. Tabor shows how, particularly in the ‘Circe’ chapter, Joyce is engaged in radical literary law breaking with the use of generic hybridity. This violation of gender and genre laws creates a duality in which play/novel and female/male are intertwined, language and time exist in a multiplicity of layers and combinations. Any law, particularly a law that sediments hegemonic power relations, will always have its enforcers and offenders. As Derrida writes, in literary works the law of genre – generic boundaries determined by institutions and conventions of art and literature – depends upon, because it reacts to, the threat of impurity. For this reason, spillovers between genres are dangerous – and encouraged by the dissident Derrida. Tabor concludes by arguing that the affinity between Derrida and Joyce – and the alienated Other, Joyce’s protagonist Irish Jew Leopold Bloom –, linguistically and philosophically, is a true meeting of outlaw minds.