Dublin: The City That Affects

Year 2018, Issue: 5, 55 - 70, 30.06.2019

Neshen Gyunanova Isaeva-gyunesh

Abstract

Surprisingly, there has been little interest in
the strong influence the city of Dublin wields over the characters in James
Joyce’s short story collection Dubliners.
Until recently, scholars have rarely approached the city as the major cause for
the indifference, misfortunes and paralysis haunting the characters. With the
recent studies of affect theory it has become easier to view an inanimate
source, such as a city, as the main reason behind particular actions, feelings
and emotions. The considerably new theoretical framework of affect brings attention to organic and
inorganic matter and explores the power of inanimate things to alter and shape
the world. This paper applies Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter: A political Ecology of Things and Kathleen
Stewart’s Ordinary Affects to James
Joyce’s Dubliners and discusses
Dublin as a force that plays a significant role in the development of
Dubliners’ perceptions, in the ways they feel and deal with mundane
matters.  I do not only approach Dublin
as an assemblage of different operators such as the urban landscape, the
houses, the trains, the trams, the shades and colours of despair and many
others, but as an assemblage with its own agency that leads to negative
influence. The reasons behind the negative impact are traced mainly in Irish
history: in the traumatic experiences of British colonialism, in the changes
brought by the Industrial Revolution and in the disaster of the Great Irish
Potato Famine. The paper contributes to the analytical works of Joycean
scholars by offering a new way to approach the short story collection: a way
that gives voice to, what Bennett calls, a ‘thing-power’

Keywords

, affect theory, ‘thing-power’, James Joyce, Ireland

References

• Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. Print
• Gregg, Melissa, and Gregory J. Seigworth. The Affect Theory Reader. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. Print.
• Joyce, James. Dubliners. Her: Wordsworth Classics, 1993. Print.
• Leys, Ruth. “The Turn to Affect: A Critique”. Critical Inquiry 37.3 (2011): 434–472. Web.
• Luckhurst, Roger. The Trauma Question. London: Routledge, 2008. Print.
• Simmel, Georg. “The Metropolis and Mental Life.” Classic Essays on the Culture of Cities. Ed. Richard Sennett. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969. 47-61. Print.
• Stewart, Kathleen. Ordinary Affects. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. Print.
• Whelan, Kevin. “The Memories of “The Dead.” The Yale Journal of Criticism 15.1 (2002): 59-97. Web.