El discurso ideológico en "Ulises" de James Joycenarrativas de dominio y opresión

Abstract

The aesthetic project or the encyclopedic purpose has been the common response to the extensive network of allusions embedded in the texture of Ulysses, thus, solely prevailing its formal function over its latent content. These webs of allusiveness conform an ideological subtext which go beyond the aesthetic undermining of the cultural conventions and tenets of Western ideology, as it has been argued, to target at an specifically geopolitical milieu, that of the history of Ireland under its plight against colonialism. The term "Narratives of Dominion and Oppression tries to trace the narrative strands that recreate the cultural sphere fostered by Imperial power: the use of language and the dynamics of space as means and instruments of power control, cultural formations determined by specific socio-political and economic practices, just as those counter-narratives that symptomatically reflect the impact of the discourse of power in the urban sphere: the fractured narratives of a submerged population, a reality which merges through the subtext of key patterns and fragmented images subtly hinting at a history of poverty and abjection. Most of all, the present study suggests the relationship of the cultural analogies with the network of allusiveness to historical and cultural facts which, under the apparent formal disruption, build the ideological subtext: that of the original sin of woman transferred to the history of colonial Ireland. In so doing, the historic realm of Parnells collective betrayal is textually mirrored by that of Blooms domestic odyssey. The last chapter, Penelope, claimed as not conclusive in the story is, conversely, the last word granted to a subaltern subject, denied access to her own speech, in what has been a male-dominated version of history and, comically, of a marital betrayal.