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King, Mary C. "Ulysses: The Dissolution of Identity and the Appropriation of the Human World." In James Joyce: The Augmented Ninth, edited by Bernard Benstock, 337–45. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1988.

Related topics:

Judaism
Money

Link to citation page: https://www.worldcat.org/title/james-joyce-the-augmented-ninth-proceedings-of-the-ninth-international-james-joyce-symposium-frankfurt-1984/oclc/18020182&referer=brief_results

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King reflects on the dissolution of personal identity in light of the rise of a capitalist, consumer society in Ulysses. On the surface, Leopold Bloom seems to be a "dedicated consumer" (337)—not only does he buy small items throughout the day, but as an advertising agent, his job is to convince others to buy commodities on the market. Yet, although he is "adman and consumer at large," he is also an alien with a scattered identity, leading King to question: "is he Bloom, Flower, or Boom; Jew, Catholic, or Protestant; male or female; manchild or childman?" (338).

According to King, Bloom has anxieties both about his own dissolution of identity and about the world's dissolution into a mechanical market. These anxieties are manifest in "Circe" (U 15), as possessions take over their possessors, interpersonal interactions are reduced to economic transactions, and commodities are fetishized. King refers to this process as "the dissolution of the person and the social appropriation of the human world" (342). Although in some ways Bloom represents the archetypal "advertising man" (343), he is not fully sold on capitalism and consumerism; he understands, and even fears, the risks associated with "a world with a machine at its heart" (344).

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