Heteroglossic desubjection and monoglossic subjection in Joyce, Yeats, and Sorel

pp. 143-158

in: Tudor Balinisteanu, Violence, narrative and myth in Joyce and Yeats, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013

Abstract

In this chapter I focus on aspects of narratives by James Joyce and W. B. Yeats to explore, in the context of George Sorel's theory of social myth, the ways in which monoglossia and heteroglossia are effects of competing forces which act simultaneously to stabilise or recreate subjective identity. I show how Sorel's theory can be used to extend the applicability of Mikhail Bakhtin's concepts of monoglossia and heteroglossia from narrative language to the language of action. This leads to the definition of art as praxis in which material reality is the object of praxis, aesthetics a means of production of material reality, and the material relations between social subjects and reality the end product.