""The distance of proximity"": James Joyce's and Toni Morrison's re-envisioning of the readerly space
Description
James Joyce and Toni Morrison, though separated by differences of race and sex, of national and temporal context, nonetheless respond in similar ways to their different historical moments. In the wake of Irish nationalism and black nationalism, respectively, these two authors insist on the heterogeneity that is frequently repressed by nationalist efforts to produce a positive cultural image. Concerned with establishing respect for difference and otherness, Joyce and Morrison react to the political pressures of their times with an emphasis on diversity and ethical understanding Joyce and Morrison make us self-reflexive about the way in which we, as readers, engage with others by challenging our identification with their protagonists. Our interactions with the protagonists are transformed into ethical encounters with otherness as we are moved away from, but not wholly beyond, our conventional readerly identifications. In reading their novels we alternate between identification and apprehension of difference, and this oscillation prevents us both from viewing the other reductively as a mere copy of ourselves and from rejecting the other as wholly alien to ourselves. Instead, the other is maintained as other, yet within close proximity to us so that we are challenged by that difference These encounters correspond in several ways with the ethical relation as it is envisioned by the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas argues for a 'distance of proximity' in which we do not seek to eradicate the difference, and therefore distance, of the other, but we nonetheless remain in proximal relation to that other. Joyce and Morrison recreate the traditional readerly space of relation as exactly this kind of 'distance of proximity.' In this dissertation, I examine the more traditional A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Song of Solomon, as well as the later, more complex Ulysses and Beloved . I see these novels as forming a trajectory in the work of Joyce and Morrison from early critiques of popular reading habits to later revisions of those reading habits. Ultimately, Joyce and Morrison create novels that celebrate radical forms of difference and that encourage our own active engagement with that difference