頁籤選單縮合
題 名 | The Gift that Always Reaches Its Destination?: The Economy of Gift in Ulysses |
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作 者 | 黃宗慧; | 書刊名 | NTU Studies in Language and Literature |
卷 期 | 12 民92.06 |
頁 次 | 頁23-49 |
分類號 | 873.57 |
關鍵詞 | |
語 文 | 英文(English) |
英文摘要 | The motif of generosity appears at various points in James Joyce’s “The Dead” but is not dealt with in a laudatory way. The main character Gabriel Conroy not only seeks to seduce his wife by a deceptive tale of generosity but tips the maid a gift of gold to patronize her after she frustrates his efforts to charm. Instead of celebrating generosity, Joyce thus seems to poke fun at such a concept by laying bare the circular structure of the gift. The path of giving-in-order-to-get-back indicated in “The Dead,” to a certain extent, substantiates Jacques Derrida’s comments on gifts: the simple intention to give suffices to annul the very concept of the gift, for the donor’s intention “to pay himself with symbolic recognition, to praise himself, to approve of himself, to gratify himself” has already defied the spirit of the gift, which is displayed in giving with no strings attached. Though Joyce appears skeptical about Gabriel’s generosity, in Ulysses, however, he characterizes Leopold Bloom as one who generously offers gifts to the needy. While the gift is “the impossible” for Derrida as it always returns something to the donor rather than reaches the donee in a unilateral way, does Joyce’s gift economy come down to the same thing? To put it another way, if the circular structure of economy necessitates the return of the gift to its donor, in Joyce’s text, does the gift always reach this destination and thus nullify itself? Taking as a point of departure Gabriel’s gold coin that is given to return to himself, this paper will seek to explore the gift economy in Ulysses and reconsider the concepts of calculation and generosity. Instead of using Joyce’s text to demonstrate the cogency of Derrida’s deconstruction, this paper draws on various theories of the gift postulated by Lewis Hyde, Pierre Bourdieu, Jacques Lacan, etc., to probe into the gift economy in Ulysses. As I find in Bloom’s acts of giving the calculative dimension as well as the spirit of generosity, I argue that Joyce has not dismissed reciprocity altogether by comparing gift-giving to spiritual usury. Though gift-giving inevitably appears calculated, it is not tantamount to usurious calculation of advantage. It is because the act of giving is always invested with the donor’s desire that gifts can hardly be exempt from calculation. Reducing the differences between calculation and generosity, I want to question the polarization between economic exchange and pure charity without thereby conflating them as completely homogeneous. Further, interpreting Bloom’s acts of giving from a Lacanian perspective, I contend that Bloom is not unaware of the pitfall of imaginary captivation inherent in giving. Through the depiction of Bloom’s gift-giving, Joyce’s Ulysses provides more profound insights into the structure of gift economy without simply negating the concept of generosity. |
本系統中英文摘要資訊取自各篇刊載內容。