Premium
The Self and the Other: On James Joyce's ‘A Painful Case’ and ‘The Dead’
Author(s) -
Boysen Benjamin
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
orbis litterarum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.109
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1600-0730
pISSN - 0105-7510
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0730.2007.00904.x
Subject(s) - subjectivity , subject (documents) , narcissism , psychoanalysis , temptation , philosophy , emptiness , id, ego and super ego , identity (music) , alienation , ideology , phenomenon , aesthetics , epistemology , sociology , psychology , law , theology , politics , library science , computer science , political science
Throughout the majority of the short stories Dubliners (1916), the phenomenon of love is severely distorted and bitterly debased due to the socio‐ideological circumstances in this modern metropolis; but even though love should be able to steer round the lethal traps set up by the Catholic and capitalistic order of society, it is nevertheless far from certain that things will turn out well. In addition to the external difficulties, love must overcome the narcissistic temptation consisting in the rejection or the reduction of the otherness of the other. This is the case when the subject, spellbound by the sorcery of narcissism, is incapable of perceiving the other as anything but a means instead of a goal in itself, as is clearly illustrated in ‘A Painful Case’ and ‘The Dead’. In opposition to ‘A Painful Case’, which reveals the deadly and tragic consequences of the narcissistic lure, ‘The Dead’ is the only one of the short stories in Dubliners to offer the outlines for an ethics of love formulated by the fundamental alienation towards the other, who manages to defy the subject's egalitarian attempts for mastery. In the latter, the other designates the very heterogeneity and unconsciousness of the subject that forms the premise for any possible subjectivity and identity of the ego; the other is, in other words, the otherness or unconsciousness of the subject, but also the very presupposition for identity and subjectivity, which is generously bestowed upon it.