Advertising and Commodity Culture in Joyce

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The author of this text examines Joyce’s representation of advertising. Taking readers back to its beginnings, he aims to show that advertising was a central preoccupation of Joyce, one that helps to unravel his often difficult style. Building on the work of cultural theorists like Lacan, Foucault, Baudrillard, Irigiray and others, Leonard examines commodity culture in Joyce’s work and demonstrates the ways in which characters use (or are used by) modern advertising techniques to make their own identities more intelligible and to fill the Lacanian
permanent lack
of modern identity. The commonality of religion and advertising, the use of
kitsch
as a rhetorical device, the commodity market’s exploitation of the proletariat, the role of pornography, the impact of advertising’s
normative
modes of dress and behaviour, and the role of the modern city as a modernist trope are all explored as aspects of Joyce’s work or as pressures faced by his characters. The author argues that
culture
in Joyce is the product of a complex response to psychological, sociological, political, economic and aesthetic pressures. In Joyce, advertising, as a product of that culture, serves both to reinforce the hegemonic discourse of the day and to subvert it.