Joyce, Marx, Lefebvre: Considerations for the 21st Century

Two days after Bloomsday 2022, Andy Merrifield joined us to consider how Karl Marx and Henri Lefebvre help shed new light on James Joyce – and vice versa. Capital circulated through Marx the same way the Liffey circulated through Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake: “a commodius vicus of recirculation.” Each book is a “hypertext,” a big, intricately entangled, introverted yet expansive text, historical yet somehow universal, exuberant and imaginative and at times colossally difficult to understand. Joyce said his principal character H. C. Earwicker was a “fargazer,” whose “patternmind” dreamed the vastest dream, whose sigla HCE meant “Here Comes Everybody.” Capital was Marx’s dreaming fargazing, his Here Comes Everybody, a condition, he thought, where all countries were headed, his image of everybody’s future.

The babbelers with their thangas vain have been (:onjusium hold them!) they were and went; thigging thugs were and houhnhymn songroms were and comely norgels were andpollyfoolfiansees Menn have thawed, clerks have surssurhummed, the blond has sought of the brune: Elsekiss thou may, mean Kerry piggy?: and the duncledames have countered with the hellish fellows: Who ails tongue coddeau, aspace ofdumbillsilly? And they fell upong one another: and themselves they have fallen. And still nowanights and by nights of yore do all boldfloras of thefield to they shy faun lovers say only: Cull me ere I wilt to thee!: and, but a little later: Pluck me whilst I blush, be troth! For that say ing is as old as the howitts. Lave a whale a while in a whillbarrow (isn’t it the truath I’m tallinye?) to havefins andflippers that shimmy and shake. Tim Timmycan timpedhir, tampting Tam. Fleppety! Flippety! Fleapow! –James Joyce, Finnegan’s Wake

ANDY MERRIFIELD is an independent scholar and the author of numerous books including Marx Dead and Alive (2020), which he presented at The Marxist Education Project in November 2020. Andy’s most recent presentation this past January addressed Humanism and Anti-Humanism in a discussion of Henri Levebvre and Louis Althusser. Andy’s other books include Dialectical Urbanism (Monthly Review, 2002), Magical Marxism (Pluto Press, 2011), The Amateur (Verso Books, 2018), and What We Talk About When We Talk About Cities (and Love) (OR Books, 2018).