Abstract
James Joyce provides us in Leopold Bloom, the hero of Ulysses, with a representation of an ideal-type subject of modern urbanism that collects and exemplifies the qualities of Simmel's blasé cosmopolitan and Benjamin's flâneur, and fashions them into a model for practical life. Bloom is the 'un-created conscience' of modern city life; a prototype modern hero who struggles to negotiate the twin dangers of the metropolis: the obliteration of individual and subjective culture by abstract processes and objective culture in mass society; and excessive egoism, the cult of the individual, identitarianism and social disintegration. Do the conditions of possibility for such utopian modern subjectivities continue to exist in contemporary Dublin?
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 29-49+153 |
| Journal | Theory, Culture and Society |
| Volume | 19 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jun 2002 |
Keywords
- City life
- Joyce's Dublin
- Subjectivity
- The flâneur