On the Political in the Wake: Carl Schmitt and James Joyce’s Political Theologies

Carl Schmitt and James Joyce, contemporaries, responding to the crisis of European civilization of the interwar years, are brought into conversation with one another through the mediation of Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, Schmitt as representative and advocate of Apollonian logocentrism and Joyce of Dionysian muthos. Parallels as well as differences in these authors’ works are examined to illuminate the figure of the dictator and the theme of political theology, and to reveal the deep affinity between Schmitt and totalitarianism on the one hand and Joyce and radical and plural democracy on the other.