Ashplant
Reading, Smashing, and Playing Ulysses
Leonard, Garry. "Joyce and Advertising: Advertising and Commodity Culture in Joyce’s Fiction." James Joyce Quarterly 30–31, no. 4–1 (1993): 573–92.
Related topics:
Gifts
Irish History Transformed
Money
Rich and Poor
Link to citation page: https://www.worldcat.org/title/advertising-and-commodity-culture-in-joyce/oclc/47008932&referer=brief_results
Leonard's analysis of commodity culture throughout Joyce's fiction explores the consumerism which belies the modern identity, motivated by the Lacanian "feeling of lacking something." Leonard argues that advertising and mass culture structure identity and interpersonal relations in Joyce's fiction. That the ubiquity of goods and the ads that sell them does not prevent, but rather facilitates, the profundity of meaning and value that Joyce's characters attach to them suggests the distinction between "low art" and "high art" is hollow; canonized art cannot be assumed to be anymore of a complete representation of the lived experience of the modern subject than can history or pro-imperial ideology. This is affirmed by the fascination with the object of art in Stephen's aesthetic theory as laid out in Portrait; the term Leonard uses to describe Stephen's ideal art object, "the object with a soul" (3), could be used to describe many of the objects of consumerism found in Ulysses. Joyce acknowledges this by demonstrating the ability of advertising to "contain both the conscious, hegemonic discourse of its time as well as subversive encodings that threaten to destabilize historically specific ideology" (xi). Advertising both encourages and demeans the subject, reminding them of their lack while promising the ability to transcend an unpleasant reality through mass market products, ultimately inculcating passivity. This characterization, Leonard suggests, reveals that consumer culture is the new religion in Joyce's fiction, and advertising is its sacred scripture (U 8.10-16). Like religion, advertising and the artifacts of mass culture inflect the construction of gender and subjectivity, the politics of desire and aesthetics, and demonstrate the capacity to mediate the relationships between individuals and nations. Leonard chooses to focus particularly on the commodity culture's influence on sexual relations and desire in creating a sexual marketplace—whereby femininity (U 15.639-42), masculinity (U 18.508-511), and normality are instantiated in properly performing the expected duties of a good consumer. Leonard argues that Joyce consistently depicts disappointment and dysfunction in sexual relationships as arising from the conceit of love and sexuality in terms of commodity exchange.
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