Joyce & Post-Colonialism

ELT 40:1 1997 critical of Cambridge's unacknowledged policy of neglecting secondary literature, which in this case has severely detrimental effects. In his opinion, letters, "the least autarchic of texts," are part of the intertextual game, and he pleads for the inclusion of ancillary letters and documents. Delany knows that it is not easy to resolve the "tension between the single authoritative text and an indeterminate textual field"; a possible solution lies in "computerized textuality." He advocates "hypermedia," i.e. "the computerized linking, in variable structures, of blocks of text, graphics, video, and sound," as the future scholar's way to the multi-layered intertextual construct. A scholar could then be his own editor, arranging the texts whichever way he wants and including as much supportive material as his computer screen is able to display legibly. Perhaps, yes. Delany forgets, however, that someone has to create and program the software on the basis of a limited corpus of texts. And defining these limits presupposes a workable theory of textual choice and presentation which is, in itself, at least temporarily determinate. Delany also forgets that it will be only the trained scholar who can work effectively with hypermedia. Others, such as the common reader, will want a book, something complete in itself and comparatively stable, imperfect as that may be from a textual scholar's point of view. A good example of such an imperfect product, full of unresolved tensions and unacknowledged ironies is, after all, Editing D. H. Lawrence, which I read with great interest and profit but would not have wanted to see on a window of my computer screen, in the company perhaps of a distracting film version of Lady Chatterley's Lover. K. P. S. Jochum _______________ University of Bamberg Joyce & Post-Colonialism Vincent J. Cheng. Joyce, race, and empire. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. xxii + 329 pp. Cloth $49.95 Paper $17.95 IN RECENT YEARS, critical understandings of James Joyce and his work have been undergoing a fairly radical change. Until that time, Joyce was seen as the quintessential high modernist, rising proudly above the politics of the rabblement. He was the Dedalean artist, behind the scenes, paring his fingernails. His Irishness was perceived to be interesting only insofar as he transcended it with his occasionally vicious but dead-on critiques of Irish nationalism. Judging Joyce's 102 BOOK REVIEWS genius (still considered a valid area of excavation among many Joyceans ) was primarily a project of isolating him from his more callowly political coevals, such as James Stephens. Joyce critics spilled gallons of ink discussing the minutiae of the texts: what quidditas is, who moved the Bloom's furniture, who paid the rent for the Tower, who the man in the M'Intosh was, what exactly happened to HCE in Phoenix Park. As late as 1986, Fredric Jameson could still isolate Joyce by name from the realm of the colonial novel and its implications. The "third world novel will not offer the satisfactions of a Proust or a Joyce," he declared parenthetically in his controversial article "Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism." What contributed to changing this state of affairs? Feminist criticism, Marxist criticism, and the New Historicism had us rethinking the politics of our texts. The Field Day project had us reassessing the specific contexts of Irish literature. Most significantly, perhaps, the voices of colonized peoples began to be acknowledged as legitimate critiques of imperialist hegemony over belles lettres. It was no longer necessary to claim that Joyce was one of us in order to claim him for the canon. One cannot attend a Joyce conference these days without attending numerous panels on the politicization and coloniality of Joyce. Several valuable interventions have found their way into print; the names Dominic Manganiello, Cheryl Herr, James Fairhall, Robert Spoo, Emer Nolan, and Enda Duffy all spring to mind. The most recent of entry into this polylogue is Vincent J. Cheng's Joyce, race, and empire. Cheng's specific project is to take the Joycean text and place it within the context of current debates on post-colonial studies, more than in a context of Joyce studies generally. He covers all the...