Violence, Narrative and Myth in Joyce and Yeats : Subjective Identity and Anarcho-Syndicalist Traditions

How can we use art to reconstruct ourselves and the material world? Is every individual an art object? Is the material world an art text? This book answers these questions by examining modernist literature, especially James Joyce and W.B. Yeats, in the context of anarchist intellectual thought and Georges Sorel's theory of social myth. Arguing that art is a form of social praxis, this book examines the capitalist ethos of serial reproduction of objects as one that also produces individuals as serial types. Art as praxis makes possible the reconstruction of one's identity and material environment as irreproducible, unique, and original art texts. Art becomes the tool of a creative process that has both material and spiritual dimensions. In recreating the self and the world as aesthetically unique, original and irreproducible, art challenges the capitalist ethos of reproduction that leads to routine, dissatisfaction and alienation. This theory is rooted in the anarchist intellectual tradition, especially Georges Sorel's conceptualisation of the relations between art, violence and social myth, in which workers are regarded as artisans, artists and activists. Balinisteanu illustrates this through analyses of the ways in which James Joyce and W.B. Yeats, along with key modernist writers and philosophers, facilitated the reconstruction of the social self and social-material reality in a process where political action also became an action of aesthetic creation Front Matter....Pages i-ix Introduction....Pages 1-13 Yeats’s Revolving Gyres....Pages 15-31 Social Myth, Material Reality, and the Aesthetico-Ideological Functions of Art....Pages 33-47 The Political Aesthetic of Yeats’s Myth in Anarchist and Syndicalist Contexts....Pages 49-63 Social Myth, Literary Narrative, and Political Aesthetics....Pages 65-78 Social Myth and James Joyce’s Political Aesthetic....Pages 79-93 Social and Anti-social Aesthetic Drives in Joyce, Yeats, and Sorel....Pages 95-109 W. B. Yeats, Social Myth, and Monoglossia....Pages 111-125 James Joyce, Social Myth, and Heteroglossia....Pages 127-142 Heteroglossic Desubjection and Monoglossic Subjection in Joyce, Yeats, and Sorel....Pages 143-158 Modernism, Myth, Violence, and Social Change....Pages 159-177 Modernist Art, Politics, and Social Change....Pages 179-198 Modernism, Narrative, and Violence....Pages 199-218 Conclusion....Pages 219-226 Back Matter....Pages 227-242