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"Finnegans Wake was
'about' Finn lying dying by the River Liffey with the history of Ireland and
the world circling through his mind. '' -- Joyce, via Dr. O'Brien, via Mrs.
Glasheen
Joycean (/ˈjoisēən/), (1)
Adj. : Eponymous adjective describing the works of James Joyce, admirers of the
same, or artists who are inspired by Joyce's method, work, and literary
philosophy; (2) Noun. : A School of Masochism
Joycean has often been
identified as an "Avant-Gard" literary form, that is, a progressive
style which breaks with established precedents in techniques, practices,
materials, or concepts which stand apart from social convention. The term
Avant-Gard was first applied to the arts by 18th Century French Philosopher,
Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, Count of Saint-Simon, who argued that, "Artists
serve as the avant-garde in the general movement of social progress, ahead of
scientists and other classes."
If it is the case that
Joycean characteristics guides (informs, controls or programs) the general
movement of social progress, then society is doomed to the same fate as Babel
(what is our social obligation to the society that we serve?
IT IS THE COMMUNICATOR'S
(Duty, Obligation, ROLE, IDENTITY, Rule, FORM, or REASON ... PRACTICE,
ACTIVITY, PLAN, Etc. ... Utility ...
LITERALLY ...THEIR REASON FOR EXISTENCE ... The Central PURPOSE of their
Activity) JOB TO ENSURE THAT THEIR MESSAGE IS COMMUNICATED. (The Babylonian
Code was posted in public, in many languages .... did this contribute to
LITERACY and EDUCATION, I wonder?)
dīnāt mīŷarim: The
"Verdicts of the Just Order" or the CODE OF HAMMURABI ... THE LAWS
which GOVERNED commercial, civil, and criminal interactions in Babylon, which
were communicated to the public, under the principle of "lex
talionis", (FAIRNESS, RETRIBUTION IN KIND, or PROPORTIONALITY ... It is a
MORALLY SIGNIFICANT Expression of
RESTRAINT and PENAL RELEVANCE) that is, that criminals should receive as
punishment precisely those injuries and damages they had inflicted upon their
victims. Many early societies applied this “eye-for-an-eye” principle
literally.
The Joycean literary form is
not an easily evidenced technique, though its most identifiable characteristic
is an impenetrability of meaning. The
Joycean reader is unapologetically confronted by an enigmatic riddle of
literary and linguistic complexity, such as (1) verbally inventive wordplay (2)
a "stream of consciousness" framework (3) grammatic morphemes (4)
multiple shifts in form, theme, subject development, etc. (5) multi-lingual
entendres and polysemy (7) ambiguous colloquialisms (8) obscure anecdotes (9)
off-hand allusions and conflations (10) an avoidance of denotation in favor of
connotation (11) subtle mis-application of diction and grammar to code meaning
(12) Neolisms, Synecdoche, Metonyms, malapropisms, paronomasia, etc. (13) Sound
associations (14) fragmented textual relationships (15) purposeful
mispronounciations (16) cadence and rhythm as phonetic allusion (17)
Abstractions in meaning (Et Alia, Infinitum) ...
The casual reader will find
themselves alienated, lost in a sea of obscurity aboard a vessel christened
Eris. Exploring Joyces work must be approached with an attitude that is
dangerously unafraid of failure, for even the most dedicated Joycean Scholars will
find that their most astute and insiteful discoveries will be made subject to
gross public intellectual shaming. The writings of Joyce must be irrationally
interpreted and illogically analyzed, spelunking the distended rabbit-hole of
citations, attributions, commentaries, annotations, publications, manicules,
footnotes, defibulations, and intuitions of any and every Joycean, including
(and especially) those estranged outsiders, doomed to lives of unacknowledged
academic obscurity (id est. Bloggers).
The occupation of
interpretting Joyce's writing has become a sort of intellectual exercise
amongst "arm chair philologists", that is, those with unestablished
credentials. Although the primary engagement with any such fandom is the
discourteous squabbling over the value of "other people's work",
Joyce has inspired a spirited public opinion though authentic interest,
commentary and discussion.
.................
The Influence of Joycean
Thought
The world following those
"AVANT-GARD" genius' builds upon THEIR ideals, inventions, concepts, thoughts,
hopes, and dreams. It is their genius which shapes our thinking, our politics,
our beliefs and the way in which we engage (act within their shadow ... that is
as LIMITATIONS OF and as WITNESS TO their IDEAS) with REALITY.
Our "intellectual
reality" is FED by OTHER PEOPLES thoughts and ideas, they influence our
own POSSIBLE EXPERIENCES, PERCEPTIONS, BELIEFS, and act as the LIMITS to our
UNDERSTANDING.
They are both the proverbial
CARROT and DONKEY ... that which DRIVES and is DRIVEN ... but NOT THAT (THEY,
THEM) WHICH HOLDS THE STICK.
The person who MINDS (gives
reason, commands, demands, enforces, or leads) what you attend to, the rule
makers, those who shape our "TEXTS" (PRE- CON- SUB- and all of the
other things which LEND DEFINITION to our thoughts ... our personal WILL, which
can never be "FREE" of the BELIEFS UPON WHICH THEY ARE BUILT ... The
META-PROGRAM, an UBER-MIND which, through STIGMA and ASSOCIATION has made us
SUBJECT to the COMMAND of our MASTERS ... Our thoughts are not our own. Our
thoughts are not SELF CREATED -- we are NOT SOVEREIGN.
[As I write this, I am typing
upon a QWERTY keyboard, meant to slow down my typing speed, so that I don't
BUNG UP THE WORKS. Mechanisms of CONTROL. I am reminded of W.S.Burroughs,
"Control's Control is it's NEED to Control."]
We live in a WORLD where the
RULES are defined by GODS ... the SHAPERS and INFLUENCERS of THOSE UPON WHOSE
SHOULDERS WE ARE BUILT. We live in a world of THEIR making, not our own. NOT
UNTIL we ESCAPE the grasp of their INFLUENCE.
Everything that we KNOW,
WILL, DARE and KEEP SILENCE upon is their DOMAIN. UNTIL WE JOIN THEM, and
become GODS OURSELVES.
"Are ye Not GODS?"
begged that man who likely did not exist at all, but whose love and compassion
has guided CULTS so diverse as to fuck up all
HUMAN SELF-AWARENESS, replacing INDEPENDENT THOUGHT with an INFLUENCED
PROGRAM.
THAT is the irony in Joycean
Theology ... (Irony being that which REVEALS the True Thinking of Joyce's
Narrative ... the MESSAGE ... THINK FOR YOURSELF. His ILLUSTRATION of the
Intelligencia explains what he THINKS of those who attempt to Intellectualize
his work too deeply ...
WAS JOYCE A SOCIALIST? Did he
believe that the work of others must benefit SOCIETY? To what extreme did he
believe this? To what extent does he balance ONE against ALL?
...................................
The LAW is an attempt at
PERFECT balance between ALPHA and OMEGA ... The Individual and The Society.
The Role of Service and
Position ... Human ideas of RULE and ROLE.
Social Objectivism versus
SERVICE.
SUPERSTITION ... There is no
honor amongst thieves, but vagrants abuse pity as a proposition for exchange
(We feel good about charity ... it reminds us that we have EXTRA WEALTH to give
away, if we so choose). [Cynicism as Enlightened Altruism]
...........................................
The ONLY Authority is
VIOLENCE ... GODS ARE VIOLENT.
.............................................
HIDDEN LAW ... That is,
enforced IGNORANCE of the LAW, Unfairness in Practice of Genocide and
Victimization of Exploited Peoples. (Scottish Law written in FRENCH ... so that
they couldn’t understand it)
JOYCEAN NONSENSE
"The field of genius
raises itself above rules."
"Nonsense enables you to
raise yourself above rules, but also above sense."
"It is the genius whose
words sound like nonsense to the common person. That is because the meaning of
these words are beyond the comprehension of the common person. It is also the
genius whom listens to the common person's words and hears only nonsense. That
is because meaninglessness is
incomprehensible to the genius." -- RLA
.......................
What was Joyce attempting to
accomplish with his "Unreadable" approach to Finnegan's Wake? What
were his influences? What guided his reasoning and choices in diction and
literary device? What was the environment in which his was writing, and what
could have inspired his approach, and was it possibly a reaction to something
present in the dominant culture? What did he himself have to say about it, and
what did his contemporaries and critics say? Did he answer to them, and how?
With What? Why? Did he have an intent? What was his process, if any (Regarding
a similar situation with HOWL, by Alan Ginzburg, who was often cited as
rewriting is poem in terms more and more obscure than his latest editory
attempt ... and also the methods used by Bryon Gysin and William Burroughs,
called the "Cut Up" Method, and where they got THAT idea from, and
how it has since influenced other writers (The Travelling Wilburys, and David
Bowie). Relate to similar poetic / slang forms, such as British Rhyme Slang,
and how it is intended to exclude anyone who cannot quickly deduce an implied
riddle) ... also its influence on PUNK culture, including GRAFFITI and POP ART
(Movies such as Repo Man, and other pop culture references)
........................
Every attempt that I have
made to establishing a study group around Joyce and Finnegan's Wake have all
ended in similar results, that is, a cumfuckery of intellectual distention and
wanton garblitude, inclusive of dramatic social media excommunication.
........................
I became engaged with the
idea of multi-dimensionality at a very early age. Not in the kinds of terms
that physicists and scientists would describe as such, but in a metaphysical,
spiritual sense of the term.
I am not going to delve into
the various ideas that are present in mysticism here, though I do find them
terribly interesting and very inspiring, insofar as intellectual games are
concerned. And don't read into what you might believe that I mean by the concept
of "intellectual games", since I also see much of the field of
theoretical and actual physics as being a result of the same. Geniuses such as
Einstein and many of his predecessors have involved their own study in
"intellectual games", sometimes describing them in terms of
mathematics, and outlining their "proofs" in mathematical models
describing these "proofs" as valid (or not) by their own
demonstrations that such ideas are aligned with those of their genius
predecessors, the followers of whom they would not wish to offend, for sake of
any loss in funding, tenure, integrity as peers, and thereby simple job
security -- including any prospective career opportunities.
Theoretical physicists must
be capable of expressing new ideas in terms of "assumptions" which
are not based in terms of accepted ideologies, but with the necessary caveats
which allows for wiggle room and variations of the dismissive statement,
"I don't know."
One need not court
outsidership by tempting notoriety by expressing and encouraging eloquent
strains of incredulity.
Fortunately, I am neither a
scientist, nor a physicist, sentimental of accepted doctrine or held in check
by fearsome retribution by collaborators whose culture relies on the same
sentimentality. I have no academic nor professional standing to speak of, and
thus can find no danger in admitting fault by way of ignorance and
impartiality.
Just so, I also do not
entertain such opinions which my betters have not otherwise run afoul of, since
I only wish to seek answers to my wishful thinking. As such, must credit myself
with amusing anecdotes and a prejudice which favors towards the side of clever
tomfoolery.
Thus, I offer no
contributions to the facts, only contemplations of ideas better expressed by
true geniuses, among whose company I must declare that I am not. I have nothing
to offer, except the desire to understand, and challenge in hopes to be
explained where my thinking is wrong.
......................
I have experienced moments
and intuitions which have led me to contemplate the same frames of thought
expressed by genius minds more capable of explaining these concepts better than
myself. As I have sought information, my own ideas have been framed in forms
which made sense to others, explained in mathematical terms, but also limited
in format which didn't answer to my mental adventures. Geometries and Maths
described various entities, none of which are experiential, but which resolve
in figures which make sense, but do not yet evidence themselves, nor directly
describe some of the imaginations which I have played with.
......................
"Joyce fingers the ass
of Hermeneuticists." -- RLA
Joycean style is a slap in
the face to traditional Hermeneutics and Literary Criticism (as well as a
loving embrace to the same. Maybe a little inappropriate, or really really
inappropriate. Maybe it's an unexpected finger in the ass to traditional Hermeneutics
and Literary Criticism. And it really OUGHT to be, insofar as the Joycean style
is concerned, which is more of a Wet Willy than it is a two knuckle deep
accidental anal penetration).
Hermeneutics is the study of
INTERPRETATION.
Traditionally, Hermeneutics
meant the discussion of the METHODS of achieving correct interpretations of
BIBLICAL texts. Basically, it attempts to answer the question of "What do
we MEAN when we say that someone UNDERSTANDS a text?
What is it to interpret
(Understand the meaning of) a message (To the Essayist, it does not matter if
the form of any communication is literary or not. All forms of communication
are subject to interpretation, by its method, accuracy, and an appreciation of
nuance, symbolism, culture, and the significance of extra-textual and
abstractions which sometimes inspire creative forms of adaptation of unrelated
influences), can the interpreter defend or demonstrate their reasoning (
recently this has become a process used by engineers and scientists, called
"Documentation", that is, recording every step, reference cited (in
some reasearch, it doesn't matter whether the source material is cited or not,
utilized or not, or even relevant to the subject or not. It is, in some cases,
a matter of following the process itself, including the dead ends and discarded
data) and detail used in the development of a product, process, or plan, so
that others may analyse it's validity, as well as any strengths, weaknesses,
opportunites, threats (SWOT analysis), risks, outcomes, influences, obsructions
(etc) which have not been considered, or have been overlooked by the reader.
In effect, Hermeneutics is a
philosophy which attempts to rationally answer the Socratic question, that is,
the method of continual probing which is meant to identify weaknesses in
reasoning, and explore the underlying beliefs that shape someone's views and
opinions (interpretation).Hermeneutics itself tends to demand that objectivity
itself be scrutinized, that there are no absolute truths, and that many
different (sometimes opposing) conclusions may be drawn from any given message.
......................