Joyce and the Law by Goldman Jonathan;

Author:Goldman, Jonathan;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Published: 2019-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

The pub is, of course, one such space of accumulation, where a network of meanings forms and reforms in elastic ways that are nevertheless guided by a set of codes that are more or less agreed upon by the regular denizens of the pub. That Bloom fails to master these codes is obvious, but that they can be mastered is equally so, since both Martin Cunningham and others seem to navigate the demands put to Irish masculinity in this habitus with fluency and ease. Cunningham is aware, for example, that merely entering the pub requires him to have a “half one” (12.1668–1670) and it is also Cunningham, later, who senses that the Citizen is on the verge of violence against Bloom (12.1764). In both cases we see Cunningham adroitly read and decode the cues in this highly dense semiotic space.

Lefebvre’s explication of space, especially urban space, emphasizes the role of the established and spontaneous networks that form within the city. He alludes to this aspect of space relatively early in the same chapter where he remarks that “social space contains a great diversity of objects, both natural and social, including the networks and pathways which facilitate the exchange of material things and information. Such ‘objects’ are thus not only things but also relations” (77). Indeed, as the analysis continues, Lefebvre becomes increasingly attentive to the consequences that ensue from the assumption that space is defined by the production and flow of information in casually forming networks. It is helpful to quote Lefebvre at length:

So-called social reality is dual, multiple, plural. To what extent, then, does it furnish a reality at all? If reality is taken in the sense of materiality, social reality no longer has reality, nor is it reality. On the other hand, it contains and implies some terribly concrete abstractions (including, as cannot be too often emphasized, money, commodities, and the exchange of material goods), as well as “pure” forms: exchange, language, signs, equivalences, reciprocities, contracts, and so on.

According to Marx (and no one who has considered the matter at all has managed to demolish this basic analytical premise), merely to note the existence of things, whether specific objects or “the object” in general, is to ignore what things at once embody and dissimulate, namely social relations and the forms of those relations. (81)

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