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Laird, Stephen B.

English

2012

M.A.

Joyce has been read largely in relation to modernism and modernist writers, often ignoring the ways in which his literary project was also a political project. This thesis reads Joyce in relation to post-colonial theory and analyzes the way his literary forms were a statement about and resistance to what would later be called the "colonization of consciousness." Joyce's literary project resists both British colonial and Irish nationalist notions of identity -creating a form that critiques both national purity and imperial projects. The first section uses Benedict Anderson's theories of nationalism to examine the ways in which the Irish nationalist movement embraced the use of the Irish language and used it as a symbol ofcultural purity to further political aims. The second section addresses the development of multiple conflicting identities in post-colonial consciousness through the critiques of Homi Bhabha and Frantz Fanon, then applying these critiques to Joyce's writing. The final section examines the ways in which Joyce's literary works can be read as cultural critiques of both the English colonizers and the Irish nationalists. His innovations point to ways in which political and cultural processes can be subverted and colonial master narratives can be broken up and re-invented, with Leopold Bloom serving as a model of this new hybrid subjectivity.