Zerothruster: A Report on the 2019 Zurich James Joyce Foundation Workshop, 5–11 August 2019

	“Zerothruster,” 1as a title of a week-long workshop on Finnegans Wake, Book II, Chapter 2, holds much to unpack. Along with references to Friedrich Nietzsche, creation ex nihilo, and an almost obligatory nod to the Wakeinnuendo of sorts, the choice of the name seems to give a hint of acknowledgment to the binary code in the light of rapidly expanding scholarship on Joyce’s digital texts.
Hic sunt wakeonians.	Perhaps there is a more lyrical assumption lurking as well: no matter how much one tries to “crack the code” and unravel the Wakean threads, the book may surreptitiously leave one at ground zero. This feeling of “surrendering to the text” could have been at the heart of Fritz Senn’s confession when he pronounced Wakecriticism as a “collective failure of Joyceans.” Yet, optimistically, I hoped the “zero” part would be refuted during the first week of August 2019, when about twenty seasoned scholars and aspiring early career researchers came together to discuss a single chapter of Finnegans Wake: II.2 or “Night Studies.” *	JOLLY SUBJUNC-TIVE
	The discussion topics spanned from grand narratives such as philosophic influences (Laura Gibbs’s exploration of the metaphysics of Giambattista Vico and René Descartes in “Night Studies”) to the most minute conceptual expedients (Tiana Fischer’s probe into everything milky and buttery in Joyce’s “recur-sory milk” †).
Enter Jute and Mutt and Mute and Jutt who immediately merge into oach either (H&B).	Shinjini Chattopadhyay took up the chapter from the very “UNDE ET UBI” ( FW260.01), investigating its geospatial boundaries and the construction of city space in children’s learning. Spatial considerations also played a role outside the pages of the book. Robbert-Jan Henkes and Erik Bindervoet admitted to an interesting pastime during breaks from their usual Joyce scholarship: adapting “The Triangle” passage for a Dutch theater troupe of De Veenfabriek. Their discussion explored the question of agency in the marginalia of II.2 that required more immediate solutions suited for the stage than the usual polymorphism of Finnegans Wake. ‡
	William S. Brockman tackled this issue from an archival perspective with his demonstration of Joyce’s personal correspondence meant to explain the structure of II.2. Brockman’s rumi-nations gave fresh life to the old question: how much, as researchers, we can trust documentary evidence (or should we at all?). §Dipanjan Maitra’s answer to this was equivocal at best as he introduced an army of female collaborators as “incidental” authors of Finnegans Wake. They were the employees of newspaper clipping bureaus serendipitously aiding Joyce’s writing by scanning scores of newspapers for required information from the author.	THE TRECHEROUS LETTERS.
“No. 1132” leads to “No.1169, bis” (FW 389.13)	Anne Marie D’Arcy’s focus on Mac Murchada and the consequent Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169 contributed to the theme of turning points in the chapter. D’Arcy placed the year 1132 into historical perspective with three flag-ship events that had impacted the theologico-political ground of Gaelic Ireland for years and the one that Joyce exploited extensively not only in Dolph’s history lesson but throughout his writings. ¶
	Considering the thematic precedence of education in chapter II.2, it came as no surprize that knowledge in all its iterations grew into the focal point of discourse among the workshop participants. Vicky Mahaffey got the ball rolling in her conversation about the genesis of the children’s knowledge acquisition through cognizance of the archetypal bodies of their parents. ‖In a similar vein, Gabriel Renggli contemplated the libidinal aspect of intellectual activity and the extent to which fetishization blurs the divide between the decorative and the significant. According to him, Finnegans Wakemay be considered “the ultimate perverse work of art,” not so much because of the “full frontal nudity” of the context but rather because the Wake“doesn’t give you what you desire—it tells you how to desire.” 3The carnal pleasures of knowledge turned gastronomic when Talia Abu introduced rumination in the “Night Studies” as a long process of transforming the...