Ambivalent freedom: The politics of style in the writings of James Joyce and Ralph Ellison (Ireland)

Ambivalent Freedom positions British colonial rule and American slavery as the central historical concerns of the novels Ulysses by James Joyce and Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. For Joyce and Ellison, respectively, Irish independence and Emancipation in America promised freedom but delivered new forms of oppression. The modernist, tragicomic visions of the two authors' novels register an ambivalence corresponding to these analogous historical situations in their content as well as in their style. The writers' political attitudes to centrally defining historical experiences parallel literary attitudes that contribute to their modernist innovations. Both works express mourning for a history marked by catastrophe and loss as well as expectation for a future pregnant with possibility. This ambivalence is operative at key textual moments, in which attention to historical themes is coupled with intense technical innovation. By defining themselves against the grain of radical movements, Joyce, in an anarchist response to Irish nationalism, and Ellison, in an African American response to Communism, embed critiques of limited notions of freedom in Ulysses and Invisible Man. Their parallel experiences with practices of racial distinction also lead them to a critique of purity that they extend to the cultural nationalist politics of the Celtic Revival and the Harlem Renaissance, with their essentialist concepts of cultural authenticity. Although the two works consistently undermine utopian hopes through irony and parody, their styles embody their authors' radical ideals of freedom.