Modern Lit Reading Group: READING THEORY READING JOYCE - FROM THE BEGINNING

The Modern Lit Group returns with David Vichnar leading a session on Joyce: 
READING THEORY READING JOYCE - FROM THE BEGINNING

David's summary:
I´d like to focus, for various reasons, on the first three Dubliners
stories ("The Sisters," "An Encounter" and "Araby") and introduce
their readings from within the critical and theoretical frameworks of
deconstruction, psychoanalysis, cultural studies and postcolonialism
(depending on the time and interest, these foci might be reduced and
narrowed down or expanded and broadened).
 
The topics covered will include the general discussion of Joyce´s
"signature" (as theorised by Derrida), his simultaneous soliciation
and thwarting of critical meta-language, a seemingly contrary effects
of Joyce´s writing which in Derrida´s words, "pushes us to the limit"
and "compels us to ask what a literary text is and what we should do
with it."
 
With focus on the three stories, analysis of the ease and difficulty
with which these theoretical frameworks can be said to "apply" to
Joyce´s texts will chiefly deal with some of the following strategies
by which this general "signature" comes about:
 
- linguistically, the use of semantic vagueness and lexical ambi- and
polyvalence,
- stylistically, the employment of discrepant registers and clashing discourses
- on the narrative level, the construction of a split narrative
subjectivity, poised in between a "child's" consciousness and "adult"
language - the Joycean tension between mimesis and diegesis.

Attendees can find all of Dubliners online here: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dubliners
It is recommended that you read 'The Encounter' at least.

David Vichnar is author of JOYCE AGAINST THEORY (2010), co-editor,
with Louis Armand, of HYMPERMEDIA JOYCE (2010), and, with Mike Groden
and David Spurr, of PRAHARFEAST: ESSAYS FROM THE PRAGUE SYMPOSIUM
(forthcoming in 2012). He is the editor of the online journal of Joyce
scholarship, "Hypermedia Joyce Studies." He also co-edits the
international magazine for contemporary fiction, poetry, theory and
visual arts, VLAK; and co-directs the annual Prague Poetry
Microfestival.
He is currently visiting Birkbeck College, University of London,
working on his PhD thesis devoted to James Joyce and post-war
experimental fiction in English and French.

READING THEORY READING JOYCE - FROM THE BEGINNING