The Tower of Babel: James Joyce's Ulysses and Derrida in the Context of Language and Metaphor
BEYTULHIKME-AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, vol.12, no.3, pp.745-760, 2022 (ESCI, TRDizin)
- Publication Type: Article / Article
- Volume: 12 Issue: 3
- Publication Date: 2022
- Doi Number: 10.18491/beytulhikme.1825
- Journal Name: BEYTULHIKME-AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
- Journal Indexes: Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), Central & Eastern European Academic Source (CEEAS), Index Islamicus, Philosopher's Index, TR DİZİN (ULAKBİM)
- Page Numbers: pp.745-760
- Keywords: The Tower of Babel, language, metaphor, deconstruction, Derrida, Joyce
- Ankara University Affiliated: Yes
Abstract
This paper discusses the points that touch upon the problem of abso-lute meaning (origin) and language in James Joyce's Ulysses, where literature and philosophy engaged, and on Derrida's views about deconstruction together. Alt-hough the story of the Tower of Babel, which deals with the origin problem, fixes the meaning into the absolute origin, when Ulysses is read in this context, it is seen that it contains allusions to that the origin is polysemous. Therefore, read-ing along with Derrida's texts, Ulysses has been evaluated as a deconstructive work on the critique of origin. Contrary to the discourse on the presence of origin in the Tower of Babel, in Ulysses, similar to the Derridarian language per-spective, it has been identified that there are contexts concerning different cul-ture and language experiences that exceed the metaphysics of presence in West-ern philosophy.