Joyce’s Masochistic Lalangue: Deleuze and Lacan at Finnegans Wake

Abstract This essay unfolds across several stages: Firstly, the prelinguistic homophony that Jacques Lacan called lalangue (using James Joyce’s writing practice as model) will be discussed alongside Lacan’s late elaboration of the sinthome. Secondly, Gilles Deleuze’s Coldness and Cruelty will be considered closely. In this early text, Deleuze addresses the writing of Sacher-Masoch and Sade in order to divide the ‘sadomasochistic entity’ into its constituent parts. This division by Deleuze had a lasting impact on the later teaching of Lacan, who seems to have stayed true to Deleuze’s critique through his last seminars. Thirdly, Deleuze and Lacan are mobilized for a close reading of one passage from Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939). In this section of Joyce’s infamous book, Joyce’s textual alter ego – the character Shem the Penman – is revealed via a series of racist remarks to be racially Black or African; this reading reveals the significant consequences of recognizing Shem’s Blackness for psychoanalysis.