'Mētis' in Modern Life

• Benjamin Madden ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Adelaide

     University of Adelaide

     Australia

     
• Localización: James Joyce quarterly, ISSN 0021-4183, Vol. 59, Nº. 1, 2021, págs. 75-90
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Joyce’s readers and critics have long recognised the central position of something called the ordinary or the everyday among his aesthetic concerns. But what kinds of ordinary animate Ulysses? This essay proposes a taxonomic distinction between the ordinary and the everyday, with the latter figuring as a subset of the former. It makes this argument through a reading of Michel de Certeau’s critique of Henri Lefebvre, noting that one of Certeau’s central concepts, mētis, is also one of the defining traits of Odysseus in the Homeric epics. The essay thus pursues a reading of Ulysses that reveals the affordances and the limits inherent in Joyce’s recasting of mētis as a strategy for negotiating modern urban life. It concludes by noting the importance of holism—that perennial target of poststructuralist critique—to understanding the Joycean ordinary.