Joycean Minimalism, Derridean Maximalism

Maria-Daniella Dick is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Glasgow. Her research interests are in Derrida, Joyce, modern and contemporary literature, and continental philosophy. She has published widely in these areas, on the intersection of international modernism and modernity with continental philosophy and critical theory, and on the comparative and European dimensions of Irish and Scottish culture. She is the co-author of Late Capitalist Freud, with Robbie McLaughlan (2020), and The Derrida Wordbook, with Julian Wolfreys (2013).

Describing Joyce as a ‘Minimalist’ and Derrida as a ‘Maximalist’, Dick’s wonderfully astute analysis inverts an alternative that splits modernism (Joyce’s maximalism aiming at omnipotence vs. Beckett's minimalism haunted by impotence.) By inserting Derrida’s deconstructive machine, she raises the theoretical stakes and proves that modernism can both remobilize philosophy and keep literature flourishing.

• AcknowledgementsAbbreviationsIntroduction: ‘Le goût sévère’1. James Joyce, Minimalist2. Jacques Derrida, Maximalist3. ‘everything + n’: Literature and the Closure4. 'I was, I was': Dantean Detritus and Late Style5. A ‘provisionally bygone era’? Deconstruction, Postcritique and Weak TheoryBibliographyIndex