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The Last Words of James Joyce
Michael Bolerjack
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The Last Words of James Joyce 2012 Michael Bolerjack
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For Betty Lee Ligon,
who actually finished reading Finnegans Wake
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Table of Contents
The Yes
Finnegans Wake
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THE YES
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To be Tolled in fragments: To take back the
ringing yes from Derrida for Joyce, redeem it,
not as example but as the unexampled, theunprecedented, unique, unrepeatable Yes.
But, first the notes of the introduction leading
to the redemption of affirmation:
A BB C BB A
Absolute
Father
Son
Holy Spirit
Son
Father
Absolute
Deconstructing the deconstruction to fulfill the
deconstruction contrary to the truth of
contradiction without contradicting the truth
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Complete
Transcendent GODMediation church
God
Church
World
I
World
Church
God
Aaron parents and grandparents
Burl
Bo
Charlotte
Bo
BurlAaron
Law prophets writings prophets law
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Gospel/acts epistles revelation epistles
gospel/acts
Love faith hope insight hope faith love
The book contains the text not the text contains
the book
Zig zag
Mystical flower
Cross cross cross
Mystical flower
I am
He is
You are
I am
You are
He is
I am
Autobiography effracts
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Epic drama fiction drama epic
Eternal time spacing time eternal
Exterior circular open effraction circular
exterior
Myth drama critical fiction drama myth
Transcendent mediation immediate mediation
transcendent
Truth / truth of contradiction / contradiction /
contradiction of truth / truth
Nothing becoming being becoming nothing
Square circle effraction circle square
Necessity fantasyFreedom reality
Necessity fantasy, vicious circle, effraction by
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love and work
Making free real
Absolute act
Possibility which is not
Impossible which really is
+ -
-- ++
Act de
De of de act
How does de prevent de of de?
How does deconstruction keep from
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deconstructing itself?
It always already is deconstructedIt starts out deconstructed
Not with act
Divided origin
Immemorial origin
No actual origin
Post retro active projection changes the past
into de
De cannot be deconstructed from within
What of synthesis?
Making dialectic de
Making de dialectic
Nothing but
Must be effracted.
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Possibility of impossibility
Equals
Impossibility of possibility
How to contradict the contradiction?
All goes through the I
As if the truth never was
As if the Jews did not die
Both did and did not
Neither did nor did not
Remains.
The b/a/n/n [both and neither nor]
Eliminates the either/or
Dialectic both / and
Leads to deconstruction
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No choice.
Jump levels
Silence effracts
Accurate, he said
If you can say either this or that then there is
choice, free
And the b/a/n/n [both and neither nor] is
impossible
Choice destroys deconstruction
Deconstruction destroys choice
Total-talitarian
Either choice or non-choice
Must not choose non-choice
Choosing to choose, open
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Choosing not to choose, defer, is to allow de
Two cities meta/para
If we eliminate choice we eliminate our
freedom
Freedom is the thing itself, made impossible by
de
Possible made impossible, impossible made
possible [disaster]
Outside text is the context
If there is a context there is difference choice
freedom
If all context is already text then no either/or
If I am the context, in god-church-world, then I
effract it, I choose to beAgainst the text, I am the standard of measure,
I bind it, delimit the text
Explain it, not it me
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The reader is the way the text arrives.
Text to weave
If there are folds
There are implications
And explications
An either/or
Exemplify complication
Simplify complication
Supplicate
A fold is a fold of something
Examples
Case in point
Show
Embody
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Typical
Eximere- to take out-
Replication---
Reply, fold back, plaintiffs reply, echo, copy
Answer, reply, rejoinder.
Law suit, dialogue
Either plaintiff or defendant, choice
Redeem---
Re-emire, redeem, take back, not example, take
out
One steals by example or one is redeemed by
taking back to original
Either / or in replication---rejoinder reply or
copy, you choose, are free
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Law means contradiction e/o [either/or]
decision justice choice
Complication implication
Replication explication
Structure of plication
Either/or chooses one or other
b/a/n/n [both/and/neither/nor] chooses all
A-thesis before thesis, amoral before moral, no
good / evil t/f [true, false] impossible
Since complication only implications pli selon pli
Since has been illusion explication is only
illusion
Always plus one
Derrida seems to be bringing a unity into the
text by yes+yes affirmation in Joyce
Molly Blooms final statement:
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YES I SAID YES I WILL YES
Meanings of YES
1. Used as a function word to express assent or
agreement
2. Used as a function word to introduce
correction or contradiction of a negative
assertion or direction
3. Used as a function word to introduce a more
emphatic or ex-plicit phrase
4. Used as a function word to indicate
uncertainty or possible interest or attentiveness
5. Exclamation of jubilation
Yes
Said I
I WillYes
Perfect ringing of yes
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4 words
7 times12 letters
Perfect proof of Metasignification
Joyce knew the Ultrastructure well
Bloom asks Molly to choose
She chose
Decision, choice
An either him / or another
Free / the deconstruction cut off / by a decision
She does not defer but decides
Yes
She will
Desire inclination disposed a testament
To order to direct
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To choose
As well him as anotherI thought as well him as another
Indifference
And yet, yes.
Parse
Yes/I said yes I will/Yes.
Yes---three times
I said
I will 4 words
Again / the Ultrastructure
Yes three letters / will four / said four / I one,
numbers, numbers, mystical forms.
The final YES is the explication of all the rest
Penultimate yes is choiceAnte-penultimate is used to introduce a more
emphatic or explicit phrase
Penultimate emphatic agreement
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Ultimate the explicit, the explication still
ringing.
Yes: Janus at door looking back on the first
three fictions and forward to the Wake:
Dubliners said / Portrait will / Ulysses yeses I
effraction / Wake is effracted text after I:
Dubliners god / Portrait church / Ulysses world-
--Moral, rebellion, epic/simony, paralysis,
gnomon/yes is the bit making the rest a
gnomon---Text of god-church-world effracted
by I saying yes.---In order to complete the three
at step/decision, in order to arrive at four, in
order to reach the all in all at Wake. Everything
hinges on the Yes. It is dialectic that affirms and
cancels. What takes place after the YES is a
different order of things, meta / not para. Each
step by Joyce goes further, and is never parallel,
but at last fully meta. Beyond, the meta-novel,not anti-Anything but completely free, pure, the
joy felt after the act of faith: YES. Derridas
YES/YES does not quite catch it, as if there were
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always one more yes to be said. What ULYSSES
showed is that in making a final explicit YES,
one affirms as in an act of faith and makesoneself free, Molly made her decision, Joyce
his, and freed herself/ himself. It is the finality
of the Yes that is important, not the possible
indefinite addition. The final YES is more than
any of the four meanings given, it is a meta-
static-yes. It is final, but it structurally cannot
stop being said, at once final and infinite, but
never indefinite. It is not like a total count in the
making, plus one, but at once all numbers
combined, a symbol for God in a book both
profane and, yes, sacred.
I have shown the ringing of the YES, circular in
structure and as Ultrastructure,
But what of the b/a/n/n the
both/and/neither/nor?What of the banns? Of marriage. Wedding ring,
a banding, binding.
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The banns of Derrida impossibly bans the
wedding, anti-banns, It makes the
I DO
Impossible.
It makes the YES of decision impossible,
allowing only the meaning of a kind of
inattentiveness. Derridas YES is the opposite of
Joyces. It does not explicate, does not choose,
is not emphatic, neither does it assert the
contrary, but rather like a manager will murmur
to an employee yes, yes while never intending
action.
The last seven words of Molly recall her
decision to marry, wedding banns, that ban the
Derridean appropriation before-hand. Shechooses one, not all. Just Bloom. And re-affirms
her choice. Renewal. Of the Banns.
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To say this YES is always to choose the
faithfulness, though we have been unfaithful. It
is a kind of repentance, a YES that turns, thatbrings back, that redeems.
Derrida takes it out of context, examples it,
rejects the redemption, the supplicatory aspect
of the final Yes in Ulysses. That YES does not
replicate, does not implicate, and though it is in
a position to explicate does not, and is
supremely simple, not complicated.
The YES is a supplication. It does not
supplement itself, it prays. It is neither folded
nor unfolded, for it has never been enfolded. It
is a plea, not a pli. The YES simplifies the matter.
It is not pliable, but resolution itself, resolving
the work, and as much as you can bear, or hear,
in the context of your readership. But perhapsthat is the reply of yes implied by Derrida,
that when we hear Mollys YES we reply yes
again and again. Qui, qui. If that is the case he
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may be exonerated, but I believe his YES is too
complex and is like his messiah unable to affirm
because it cannot stop repeating itself. It wouldhave been better then to say a simple NO than
to endlessly entangle Joyces ACT in an endless
deferral.
In the end Derrida turns the YES into a YET.
Eventually, yes, yes, but not yet. Not never, just
not yet, not now, decision is impossible, too
much difference: hesitating at the altar:
Yet, I could not say, yet I will not, yet neither
nor will, not Yet. Yet I said Yet I will Yet. No one
can say YES to that. Say Yes to Yes itself, as
Derrida quotes Blanchot in Living On, but not
that. Joyce said in the Wake that PATIENCE is
the great thing. That means to wait. As you wait
repeat to yourself yes I must yes I will yes, I will
wait, right now I am waiting, not deferring, nothesitating, not passively waiting but affirming
the awaited. In that one may be able to arrive
at the hour the bridegroom comes. It is then we
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may make an exclamation of jubilation, that in
the modern world Molly Bloom was the first to
make, which now every sports fan makes whentheir team wins, YES! What was the giving of
assent or the making of an affirmation became
near the end of the world an act of the
expression of joy at the outcome.
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Finnegans
Wake
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The end of this book, which really does not end,
implies something that is there and not there at
the same, a kind of prayer. I have shown the
supplicatory aspect of the Yes at the end of
Ulysses and now would like to de-monstrate the
conclusion of the Wake as the perfection of this
prayer. The last lines of the book can be read so
many ways. Usually one says the final the is
referring to the opening riverrun, to circle
things back. I think it does this and something
else as well. Joyce proclaims that the keys to
are given. He has said Finn, again. He has said
Till thous-endsthee. Now I think that this ends
thee. The the of the end is to be said not asslack the, definite but open, but precisely
THEE. The Keys to. Given! Given to whom, but
to THEE. Not a way a lone a last a loved a long
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abut the, because you are it, I AM IT, we are
it, as the auditors of Prospero in the epilogue of
Shakespeares final act, his prayer forforgiveness. Given? Key? It is the forgiveness of
THEE.
to.
then.
endsthee. Lps {please}
long the []
long thee, he longs but for THEE, to then ends,
THEE.
Thou, ends, thee. It ends with us, we are the
one for whom and in whom the work arrives
and Joyce affirms not one definitely but all
infinitely. It is a way of saying YOU and YES at
once: the THEE. THEE I said THEE I Will THEE,
then you and I are in truth the arrival of the
text, that the secret is that it is we who hold thekeys, keys of Peter, keys of the see, to forgive, to
forgive all good thieves, whom writers to write
must be, saying, But softly, thee, remember me,
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till thou ends thee, that we never ending be, as
love does not end, for thee given, never ending,
thou art the key, the text is thee (se). The text isthese, thees, the signature effect is here comes
everybody, and all along HCE was THEE, was all
of us, it was written to you and you and you
and yes to thee.
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The Complete Apocalypse
End of the Church, The Thirty Years War, Volume 27
An Icon from an Evening in Glas and Apocalyptic WritingsAbysses 1: Two Witnesses
Covers
The Catholic Apocalypse
The Post Pontiff Church
Israel Ate Manna
Christchurch Destroyed
If He Crowned YouPraise
Timeline of the Antichrist
When I Look into Your Eyes
The Other Witness
The Four Last Things
Apostle is One Sent
The Treatise on LogicParadise Throne
Therese in Theory
An Icon for the Critics on Glas
An Icon from an Evening in Glas
Say that Jerusalem is
The Words of Joyce
Heidegger and LevinasPreface to the Apocalypse
Keys of the Abyss
Faith Creates Being
Search for the Absolute
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An Icon for the Church on the Mercy of God
A Limit on Infinity
Salted with Fire
All Saints DayPP
The Long Commentary
The Middle Commentary
The Epitome
God Church World
The 72
The SovereigntiesVocabulary of God
The Recrucifixion of Christ in the Modern World
Symbols
Yes Yet You Yen
Two Column Work Continued March 23, 2012
The Advent
Meaning and Experience, Part 1Stanzas for Marinela and The One Hundred Stanzas
The Virgin She Was the Whitest Winter
The Letter A
Michael Bolerjack: Bibliography of the Works of Michael
Bolerjack
Meaning and Experience, Part 2
Marginality: Fiction without Fiction, Part 1Marginality: Fiction without Fiction, Part 2
Meaning and Experience, Part 3
To Gather
Conclusion to the Arrival
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Speeches
Love and Death
Emmanuels Fiction
A Jacques Derrida EschatologyMeaning and Experience, Part 4
The Gift
The Philosophers
Grammatology
The Nietzschean Marriage
Dialectic and Deconstruction
Athens and JerusalemAlchemy
The Two Ways
Light
Qui Etre
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A TIME FOR EVERYTHING
The Complete Apocalypse
Of the Magisteries BeyondOf the Magisteries Beyond The Complete Apocalypse
The Just Shall Live By Faith
The Divine Congeries
Looking Ahead After The Complete Apocalypse
Variorum
Variorum 2
Rachel Weeping Her Children Part 1Rachel Weeping Her Children Part 1 Alternative Cover
Latter to the Romans November 27, 2012
The Complete Apocalypse As Revealed To Me Volume 1
The Complete Apocalypse As Revealed To Me Volume 2
The Complete Apocalypse in Outline
An Introduction to The Complete Apocalypse
In the Margins of The Complete ApocalypsePOEMS of The Complete Apocalypse
To Scatter the Power of the Holy People
Preparation for the Apocalypse
The Letter A
The Third Fiat Opening
PP by Michael Bolerjack
A Time For Everything Preface and First Four EpisodesParadise Throne and Preface to Paradise Throne
In the Days of Camus and Derrida
ANTI-READING
The Ideality of the Literary Object
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Meaning and Experience
Sub Tuum Praesidium
A Time For Everything Part 1 The Book of Signs
A Time For Everything Part 2 the Book of GloryFragments of the Second Witness
Therese in Theory
A Jacques Derrida Eschatology in Ruins
He Said I Thought Youd Fold
Speeches
An Icon from an Evening in Glas and Apocalyptic Writings
SeventeenShakespeare and Joyce
Catholic Economy and Ultrastructure
The Arrival
Dialectic and Deconstruction
Science and Religion
Preaching Deconstruction
Derridas DissertationTHE VIRGIN She Was The Whitest Winter
Michael Bolerjack In The Thirty Years War
Love and Death
Two Essays For Arrival
The Last Words of James Joyce