Bernard Kennedy – Joyce, The Castration Complex, and the Nom Du Pere
 
THE LETTER 35 Autumn 2005, pages 50-58
 
In discussing the work of Joyce it is necessary to highlight the common themes of father, fathers, and the son in Joyce’s work and connect these themes with the role of the father and its implication for the son in Lacan’s works particularly in the important text of Family Complexes in the Formation of the Individual. The theme or ‘the-me~s of Joyce relies heavily upon the ‘old artificer’, the coat and arms of the coat of arms, carried by, and, through the father. This coat, or arms, can be seen as a form of indentation of generations upon the psyche of the next generation and for our purposes on James Joyce, writer, Poet and son of artificer.
 
John Stanislaus and James, and the many father referents, priests, colleagues and Ibsen were fatherly figures of influence. Joyce’s writings and narrative style pose questions of a psychoanalytic nature e.g. around the castration complex and inclusion into language, and the symbolic order, that lead us to enquire into the role of the formation of the erotics of narrative, and subject. Perhaps his work is a text outside castration.