Talk:James Joyce/Archive 4

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Was Joyce an anarchist?

This article is in two anarchist categories, & tagged for the Anarchy wikiproject. The four mentions in this very comprehensive article don't seem to justify this - he read some books by anarchists early in his life, but in those days most intellectuals did. I'm fine with the equivalent treatment for socialism, which seems justified. Johnbod (talk) 18:34, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

To add to this; two sections above this malaise are titled "British?" and "Danish". Ceoil (talk) 20:34, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

If it isn't a "defining" trait, yes, it should be removed as a category. This said, there seems to be enough to warrant mention that he was influenced by egoist individualist anarchism (Benjamin Tucker) and associated in anarchist social circles, even if he rejected labels.

quotations

Joyce's individualism derived partly from anarchism. He acquired books about anarchy in Trieste and began calling himself an anarchist as early as 1907, though he was a "philosophical" anarchist rather than a political one ... — Birmingham, The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses, p. 50 James Joyce, who called himself an anarchist early in his career — Weir, Anarchy & Culture: The Aesthetic Politics of Modernism, p. 168 [Joyce] did maintain a lifelong interest in anarchism ... — Ellman, The Consciousness of Joyce, p. 84 ... avant-garde artists began to be attracted to the individualist strain of anarchist ideology sometimes called 'egoism' ... Ibsen himself identified with anarchism, and for a while so did James Joyce, who saw himself as Ibsen's successor. Ezra Pound, likewise, called himself an 'individualist' early in his career, at a time when 'individualist' was a code word for 'anarchist.' Another connection between modernism and anarchism lies in the little magazines of the period ... Joyce's Ulysses was serialised in The Little Review, published by Jane Heap and Margaret Anderson, both Sternite anarchists. — Edinburgh Dictionary of Modernism, p. 19 Relatedly, Sonn's Sex, Violence, and the Avant-garde: Anarchism in Interwar France (p. 96) remarks on how Ulysses was also published in the individualist anarchist journal The Egoist. ... [Joyce] would prefer to say that like Ibsen, he was an anarchist, though not a practical anarchist after what he called the modern style. — Ellman, James Joyce, p. 239 ... in March 1907, ... [Joyce] wrote to Stanislaus that "... I have no wish to codify myself as an anarchist or socialist or reactionary" ... The fact remains, however, that for almost three years Joyce called himself an anarchist, even if, as Stanislaus and many other critics have attested, he attached "himself to no school of socialism". ... By the time he came to write Ulysses, he had long abandoned the absolutism of his pronouncements on socialism of this early period. Socialist discourse by then had become for him just another limited set of beliefs to draw on. — The Years of Bloom, p. 72 "I have no wish to codify myself ..." This was written at the time Joyce discovered that Nora was pregnant again – and signals the decision to achieve an inner retreat and to adopt an attitude that can be equated with a purely literary egoism ... the almost fanatic avoidance of any mention of politics by Joyce in the late twenties. (p. 20) It is worth remembering that anarchism was relatively well known to Joyce, who, always very careful in presenting an image of himself, insisted in a note for his biographer, Herbert Gorman, that he as well read in the anarchist tradition (p. 27) — Rabaté, James Joyce and the Politics of Egoism See also Shantz, Specters of Anarchy: Literature and the Anarchist Imagination, Chapter 3: "Suspicious of the State: The Anarchist Politics of James Joyce" (summary: Joyce rejected labels, held "ironic distance" from his autobiographical characters, spoke of influence anarchist thinkers had on him). Manganiello also has a full chapter on the topic but I don't have a copy. Later writers increasingly looked to form and style rather than theme or topics for expressing anarchism as literary praxis, such as Joyce's stream of consciousness ... (pp. 572–573) — The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism, "Literature and Anarchism" Joyce apparently found Tucker's thought compelling, and Manganiello detects numerous affinities between Tucker's political thinking and Joyce's early university essay 'Force', Stephen Hero and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. ... Joyce's aesthetic articulartions are best understood in terms of anarchist ideals of individualism, freedom and resistance to various forms of authoritarian force. — McCourt, James Joyce in Context, p. 288

Also I let the WikiProject know about this discussion. czar 06:25, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

OK, thanks - one of those armchair anarchists. Johnbod (talk) 04:32, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, Czar; at one point, it appeared that too much had been collapsed along with the premature RFC collapse. Thx for fixing, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:59, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Agree the sourcing is too poor to call this a "defining trait" but strong enough to include a mention/discussion of the specifics in the body. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 05:12, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Joyce's reading of Tucker is mentioned in the "Joyce and Politics" section. Wtfiv (talk) 17:36, 6 December 2022 (UTC)