Pathologies of Desire: The Vicissitudes of the Self in James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man »

Discussions of the self in James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man traditionally have a generic or a generalized quality: the self is modernist or postmodernist, essential or processive, unified or fragmented, etc. Pathologies of Desire takes a different tack: it shifts the ground of discussion, locating the self in relation to particular dispositions or traits of the subject, Stephen Dedalus. More specifically, it foregrounds three pathological states (autoerotic, paranoia, and the shame/guilt syndrome) as primary modes of self-aggregation—the unique power of painful inner splits and divisions to precipitate self-awareness, and to make the self self-reflexive. As challenges to self-understanding, anxiety (autoeroticism), persecution (paranoia), and humiliation (shame/guilt) are prime catalysts of those multi-layered linguistic resources that fortify Stephen's self with the means of comprehending its own angst. The fact that each particular self dissolves to make way for another underscores its purely contingent and transitional quality—it functions as a defense against the singularity of the pain that it generates. Stephen's ultimate prospect of creating new future selves is thus contingent on his power to liberate himself from the old ones' oppressive conditioning.

Sect. 1 The Pathological Trio

Ch. 1 Autoerotic Plots and Perversions 3

Ch. 2 Writing the Autoerotic 19

Ch. 3 Secure Paranoia 31

Ch. 4 Insecure Paranoia 43

Ch. 5 What's In the Look? Shame 65

Ch. 6 What's In the Gaze? Guilt 83

Sect. 2 The Constitutional Duo

Ch. 7 Trusting Identifications 99

Ch. 8 Resisting Identifications 115

Ch. 9 Metaphor: The View from the Past 127

Ch. 10 Metaphor: The View from Above 143

Conclusion 159

Notes 167

Works Cited 185

Index 191