22/10/2009 What is my Nation?

Professor Anne Fogarty offers a discussion on the topic of the representation of Irish identity in reference to the Cyclops episode in James Joyce's Ulysses. She revises previous critical discourses on the topic and argues that this articular chapter is key to understand Joyce's concern with strategies of unsettlement" and "de-stabilization" which are deployed to challenge notions of "normality" and "normativity". Ironically, the English language is used to "translate" the excess of certain cultural discourses of Irishness which are being parodied in the episode. Professor Fogarty concludes that , ultimately, Joyce was not rejecting Irish nationalism but inspecting it.