The modernity/postmodernity of James Joyce is proving to be an interesting question. AKMA notes that in a discussion of short form, Umberto Eco firmly lumps Joyce in the camp of modernist novelists - supporting the contention argued both here and by AKMA that Joyce represents the culmination of MO rather than being the posterboy of POMO, as Douglas Rushkoff indicated back on April 11.
I have long admired Eco as one who attempted to approach semiotics in a witty and responsible manner. He has vast historical knowledge - one of his early books addressed the Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, which doubtless helped him to be an acute reader of Joyce. He's a sensible voice suggestive of a mind both subtler (by orders of magnitude) and more richly informed than that which appears to be available to Mr. Rushkoff (judging solely from the latter's blog and its commentative fruits - I haven't read his books).
In view of our ongoing blogged thoughts about POMO with regard to AKMA's book in particular, it might just be that Joyce offers an excellent test of a cardinal distinction between POMO and MERELYMO: I.e., if one can decide, on the basis of studied and attentive reading, that Joyce is definitely MO, one is to some extent undermining the very thrust of POMO's efforts to undermine such distinctions.
Joyce has long been the consensus champion of MOness - to the extent we look to the audience of readers to buttress or correct our interpretations, there is no question that Eco and a long list of people who care about these matters do find that Ulysses epitomizes Modernism ''in'' the novel.
But unless I mistake the challenge of Postmodernism, this appeal to an audience has to be weighed against its own deconstruction of the very scheme that reduces the last 100 years or so to a neat binary distinction between two tidy formulations of periodicity (MO and PO).
If there's one thing that seems fairly predictable from my peregrinations in POMO-style approaches, it is that any simply binary opposition is not merely suspect - it's standing in a line-up, waiting to be fingered by some witness who caught it (on videotape no doubt) in the act of deforming the caricatures of memory that we like to call our world.
Afterthought ~ So, to return to the prompting thought in proper circular form: If the test of reading Joyce complicates his place in the scheme of ''things,'' if Joyce turns out to be MO' PO than MO, I won't complain. At least, not too loudly.
