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Ousted possibilities: critical histories in James Joyce's Ulysses - James Joyce, novelist
Twentieth Century Literature, Fall, 1993 by Gregory Castle
Bloom's ambivalence, which at its most extreme is a form of irresolvable contrariety, is in some ways an attempt to rectify his feeling of alienation by writing himself into a narrative of world history in which he has played no real historical part. This act of interpolation, which allows him to parody (and parrot) the policies of exclusion that led to his alienation, also enables him to put under critical pressure the same master narratives that subjugate Stephen; he succeeds where Stephen fails precisely because his relationship to those narratives does not depend on a heretical or binary opposition which presupposes the necessity (if not the superiority) of a dominant historical perspective. By tolerating the coexistence of multiple and opposing historical perspectives, he calls into question the value and authority of any single, dominant point of view. Unlike Stephen, Bloom invites the multiplication of himself as a historical subject, the multiple interpolations of himself into multiple historical narratives. This process, which is possible only in the context of a strategic ambivalence, permits the telling of history (le petit recit) without recourse to a conventional historical model or narrative authority.
Bloom's meditations on British colonialism provide him with ample opportunities to deploy this strategic ambivalence in a critique of the history of imperialist exploitation. In the "Lotus Eaters" episode, a casual glance at a notice on the back door of All Hallows church - "Sermon by the very reverend John Conmee S. J. on saint Peter Claver and the African mission. Save China's millions. Wonder how they explain it to the heathen Chinee. Prefer an ounce of opium" (80) - provokes an extended consideration of the collusion of church and state in the "enlightenment" of the non-Western world. The sight of women inside the church, kneeling "in the benches with crimson halters round their necks, heads bowed," ready to take communion, reminds him of the connection between this symbolic ritual and the colonization of indigenous peoples. "Rum idea: eating bits of a corpse why the cannibals cotton to it" (80). Stephen, if confronted with this problem, would philosophize about the materiality of spirit or the transsubstantiation of the host; Bloom, on the other hand, recognizes the ritual for what it is: a function of ideology. Further - and this is an element of Bloom's problematic tolerance - he recognizes its efficacy as a source of consolation:
Now I bet it makes them feel happy. Lollipop. It does. Yes, bread of angels it's called. There's a big idea behind it, kind of kingdom of God is within you feel. First communicants. Hokypoky penny a lump. Then feel all like one family party, same in the theatre, all in the same swim. They do. I'm sure of that. Not so lonely. In our confraternity. Then come out a bit spreeish. Let off steam. Thing is if you really believe in it. (81)
The "rum idea" behind communion is no different in the end from the idea behind other forms of exploitation. And Bloom knows this, as his reaction to the flier advertising "vast sandy tracts" of Palestine indicates. He is not taken in by the offer to buy into Agendath Netaim, the Zionist planters' colony - "Nothing doing" he says - but he is nevertheless cognizant of the ideological justification for it: "Still an idea behind it," he admits (60).
