The world of James Joyce studies, as is now well known, has been convulsed by the debarring of 96-year-old Fritz Senn, one of its founder members, from the International Symposium in Glasgow last June over alleged sexual harassment.
This issue, which is ongoing, has not come out of the blue: there is a history and a background. Since at least 2018 problems and complaints have been voiced over the issue of sexual harassment, taken in its most general sense, in this field: the Senn incident has merely brought it to a head.
It is worth stepping back a little from the current furore and asking a pretty obvious question: why has the Joyce studies world been particularly affected by this issue – far more, apparently, than other comparable areas? Beckett and Yeats studies may well have their issues, but nothing remotely comparable has arisen in those fields.
There are two answers, both actually rather positive from the point of view of this beleaguered field. First, there is a very large proportion of younger scholars involved in it, many of them women. It is a very active area, with a great many different approaches being used.
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There is, to put it mildly, a distinct clash of cultures involved in the conjunction of elderly, secure academics, long set in their ways, with younger scholars, with career paths that are far more precarious, even having jumped through all the hoops, and whose very future in this academic world is far from assured. (Writing a PhD and even getting it published is no guarantee of a secure career path.) So there is a wide difference in the very assumptions that are made even as to what being a “Joyce scholar” means.
The strong involvement of these younger scholars in Joyce studies contrasts to some extent with the scene in other areas. Not all writers, even famous ones, receive this degree of attention from such a diverse community. Nor is a specialisation in Joyce necessarily a “good career move” – the field is very crowded.
What has caused this degree of interest? The least plausible explanation is probably the correct one: those concerned actually like this writing! They find it stimulating, varied, entertaining (they are not without a sense of humour), endlessly challenging, fascinating in its depiction of a society and a culture that is very foreign to most of them. And I do believe that this enthusiasm has persisted for most of them despite the issues that have been so prominent in recent times.
The presence, and the interest, of so many younger and very “woke” scholars, however, does mean that certain aspects of the work itself which might be seen by some as problematic do come into play – and this is the second reason why the issue of sexual harassment and related matters is so fraught at present in Joyce studies.
Quite apart from the behaviour of certain people at Joyce-related events, the work itself is in some respects challenging to current norms, and can be seen as problematic. The text is edgy, risky, a fact rather concealed by both the Modernist and mythopoeic overlays with which it has been treated. Moreover, the writer himself may not be seen as particularly admirable either. So some of what is at present so controversial can rub off on the writer himself, thereby unintentionally boosting those who have it in for Joyce anyway, for various unrelated reasons.
For example, in the background piece accompanying the original report of the Senn incident, in this paper on June 28th last, one Joycean is quoted as saying of the writer “he was a pervert”. The last time I heard the word “pervert” used in relation to Joyce, it was by a very right-wing professor indeed. Extremes meet.
Similarly, some terms that Joyce used, both in the work itself and in other places, are now not repeated in discussion of his work even at symposium sessions – occasions which, one might have thought, had a certain degree of licence attached to them in the interests of academic inquiry.
Ways of negotiating these issues have to be found, and can be. In many ways Joyce is a less problematic author than, say, Yeats, whose politics can indeed be seen as repulsive. This should be a helpful consideration.
Another development that would be beneficial would be the retirement of certain practices that definitely belong to an older era. What passes for humour in some Joyce circles is often dismal and deplorable, as well as highly insensitive. The one thing it is not is funny.
It is also the case that some more senior scholars seem to like to “talk dirty” at some of these events. Adolescent behaviour, obviously, but no less annoying for all that.
There are some real benefits to what can be called the new approach to Joyce studies. One of the most impressive papers at the recent Glasgow symposium was a powerful deconstruction, by Katherine Ebury, of the monstrous misreadings to which Molly Bloom in Ulysses has been subjected by mostly male critics for many years.
Indeed, the treatment of Molly – the sheer failure to read her in her own words, with accounts of her from other episodes given greater authority – is symptomatic of much that has been awry in Joyce studies. A radical reappraisal such as this points the way forward to a more constructive future.
Terence Killeen has been Research Scholar at the James Joyce Centre, Dublin, and the author of Ulysses Unbound: a reader’s companion to ‘Ulysses’ (Wordwell). He is a former Irish Times journalist.
