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Joyce's “Revolution of the Word”: Language and Its Dis/contents Kiheon Nam (Seoul National University of Technology) In Finnegans Wake, which has been regarded as unreadable, Joyce succeeds in the “revolution of the word,” in that he not only rejects the linear convention of narration, but also problematizes the stability of signification by multiplying possibilities of malsings. Joyce's idea of language must have been influenced by hcatcontemporary linguistics theories, but he incessantly embraces as wbll as rejects any one theorem, thus producing the ever-moving displacement of meanings. Joyce deploys the biblical myths of Incarnation and the Tower of Babel throughout Finnegans Wake, in order that he disrupts the mimetic nature of language. By displacing and transforming national identities, he seems to valorize the universality of signification, but actually he tries to debunk the primacy of English in his own work. For example, he demystifies the sacredness of Incarnation by apposing the earwig's biological invasion into the human ear. Joyce's another tactics is to debunk as well as to restore Irishness by comparison of Englishness. His focus on racial and language differences is a detour to the recovery of his own Irish identity, which will be once again interrogated in his self-mockery. Joyce's employment of etymological analysis functions as a critical thrust into the origin of language. In other words, Joyce's Wake is already postmodern in that it deconstructs the essence and origin of identity. In conclusion, Joyce's “revolution of the word” is not just a stylistic or philological one, but rather is political in that he never alienates himself from Irish history and political conditions, even though he was self-exiled. So Finnegans Wake is a product of Joyce's delve into his own particular history and identify.

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• Kiheon Nam [ Seoul National University of Technology ]

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