Noirse-Made-Earsy:
2013; Penn State University Press; Volume: 50; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5325/complitstudies.50.4.0670
ISSN1528-4212
Autores Tópico(s)Media, Communication, and Education
ResumoI hear the noise of many watersFar below.All day, all night, I hear them flowingTo and fro.—James Joyce, "All Day I Hear the Noise of Waters"There must be no cessationOf motion, or the noise of motion,The renewal of noiseAnd manifold continuation.—Wallace Stevens, "The Place of the Solitaires" It has been said that "anybody who takes 'Finnegans Wake' as an ur-text will probably have a low signal to noise ratio."1 Doubtless any meaningful signal that the reader of the Wake receives must be separated from a much larger background of confusion and dissonance. Another way of looking at it, however, is that noise is inseparable from the process of sense making. In this study I use such theoreticians of noise as Jacques Attali, Michel Serres, and Avital Ronell to show how noise in the Wake does not merely destroy, distort, or obscure meaningful patterns and structures but collaborates in their creation. The article is divided into three sections. First, I take two test cases from Ulysses and the Wake respectively, to show how noise is coded into meaning by both the waking and dreaming mind. Second, I examine the political dimensions of the imposition of meaning on noise and the subversions of meaning by noise in terms of the battle between generations (father against sons) and within generations (brother against brother). Finally, I place these themes in the context of the postmodernist project of incorporating noise into the very fabric of meaningful form. As a self-generating, stochastic system, the Wake opposes both totalitarian reification and entropic dissolution by continually adjusting its signal to noise ratio.Noise is a protean concept that carries many meanings according to its context. In Vico's account, it is a shocking disturbance originating both language and civil society; in information theory, it is anything that interferes with a signal or message; on Attali's view, it becomes a measure of political power; and for Serres, it is both a destroyer and a creator of order. While this study pursues paths that have been opened up by such authors as Thomas Rice in his exploration of "stochastic determinism" and Margot Norris in her analysis of "Joyce's anarchic disruptions," I believe that it adds to the ongoing conversation by placing these themes in the context of a school of thought that considers noise a legitimate subject in its own right.2 Such notable articles on noise by Rosa Maria Bosinelli and Diarmuid Maguire and Josh Epstein also pursue different trajectories from my own insofar as they are not concerned with placing their studies in this particular critical context.3 As Avital Ronell—one of the most distinguished of this group—says in the user's manual that introduces her Telephone Book, it is necessary for the reader to learn to "tune your ears to noise frequencies."4 Along the same lines, the Wake presents its reader with the fictitious language primer "noirse-made-earsy."5 In both cases, a new relation to language and meaning is established by refusing to filter out interference in order to receive a message. Interference is the message.Jacques Attali's description of harmony as "a code that gives meaning to noise" is concretized in "Oxen of the Sun."6 On the one hand, Stephen filters the "black crack of noise in the street" through a Vician screen of Norse violence and Hebraic morality: "Thor thundered: in anger awful the hammerhurler."7 Bloom, on the other hand, interprets the same "hubbub noise" (14.426) according to the codes of nineteenth-century science as "the discharge of fluid from the thunderhead, look you, having taken place, and all of the order of a natural phenomenon" (14.426–28). While the transition from Stephen to Bloom appears to follow the same progression from religious superstition to scientific enlightenment that Robert Scholes points out in his analysis of the concept of code, Bloom's appeal to a discarded notion of "fluid" reveals the limitations of his knowledge as well.8 Apparently, Joyce is more concerned with rendering the difference between interpretive systems than in giving priority to any one of them. This anarchic polyphony of sense making is amplified in the Wake, where the Jesuit motto "For the Greater Glory of God" becomes "for the greeter glossary of code" (324.21). Just as code gives meaning to noise, its proliferation leads back to noise.9The most intimate and solipsistic example of coding meaningless noise into meaningful pattern occurs in the act of dreaming. In the introductory chapter of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud discusses P. Jessen's theory in which "every noise that is indistinctly perceived arouses corresponding dream-images."10 Joyce subscribed to this view. According to Richard Ellmann, he "speculated about noises in dreams" and is reported to have said that "any sound that comes to our ears during sleep is turned into a dream."11 A notable instance of this effect in the Wake occurs in chapter 1.3, where "Maurice Behan" (63.35) is awakened from sleep after dreaming of "the norse of guns" (64.2). As Bill Cadbury points out in his genetic study of chapters 1.2–4, the source of this event is the account of a trial appearing in the Freeman's Journal of 21 November 1923 in which the caretaker of a store (Maurice Behan) gives testimony against two men who are accused of having tried to break in.12 While one of the defendants claims that "they were only trying to open a bottle of stout by hammering it against the gate," Behan testifies that he didn't think that "'the noise was like trying to open a bottle of porter' which noise 'would not rouse [him] from [his] sleep.'"13 As the Wake translates the story, "This battering babel allower the door … was not in the very remotest like the belzey babble of a bottle of boose which would not rouse him out o' slumber deep" (64.9–12). The reference to the tower of Babel suggests the transformation of a single master code ("the whole earth had one language") into a cacophony of competing codes, as God confuses "the language of all the earth" (Gen 11.1.9).14 The biblical conflation of "babel" (meaning "gate of god") with the Hebrew word "balal," meaning "confuse," further emphasizes the degeneration of divine code into incomprehensible noise.15 The collective enterprise of building a tower to the heavens ends in the scattering of monadic individuals over the earth.In the Wake, Behan's dream interpretations of the noise that eventually wakes him range from "the norse of guns" (64.2)—a sound of Viking aggression—to "the raglar rock to Dulyn" (64.3)—the noisy destruction of the Norse gods in the apocalyptic Ragnarokr (as Snorri Sturluson puts it, "In this din the sky will be rent asunder").16 When he insists that the disturbance reminds him even more of "the third last days of Pompery" (64.14–15), the reference to Bulwer Lytton's The Last Days of Pompeii recapitulates the sequence from knock at the door to apocalypse. At one point in the novel, two of the characters hear "a slight noise at the door."17 The looming Vesuvian threat that intermittently emerges as "a loud and grating noise" is interpreted by the rising sect of Christians as a sign that "the end of all things is at hand."18 Finally, the destruction of the decadent city at the end is accompanied by "mighty and various noises from the Fatal Mountain."19 The passing of the Roman Empire as epitomized by the destruction of the decadent city is analogous to the passing of the Babylonian empire as epitomized by the destruction of the tower.Serres's remark that noise has both "a value of destruction and a value of construction" is illustrated by the Wake's "Blabus was razing his wall" (552.19–20), the simultaneous "razing" and "raising" of the wall being accomplished by noise ("Blab" allied to "Gael. plab, a soft noise").20 The values of destructive noise in the Wake include the undermining of old codes, the loosening of old constraints, and the overthrowing of old structures of power; the values of constructive noise include the evolution of complexity, the emergence of order out of chaos, and the cooperation of order and disorder in stochastic systems. Many of the conflicts in the Wake can be seen in terms of a power struggle to overcome, possess, and monopolize noise. It is a war both between and within generations that can be resolved in no final victory or defeat. This clamorous spectacle of provisional triumphs and failures is primarily the story of HCE and his sons.Serres presents noise as a primal chaos rather than as an intrusion in need of interpretation. His claim that "sea noise is the originating rumor and murmuring" is relevant to the genesis of the Wake insofar as it was while he was walking along the beach that Joyce conceived "the idea for a new poem whose fundamental theme would be the murmur of the sea."21 Rather than simply surrendering to this meaningless murmur, however, the Wake stages the establishment of civil society as a victory over oceanic clamor. When HCE establishes his urban order based on the reciprocal interaction of the nuclear family (23.12–15), he declares "saw fore shalt thou sea" (23.11–12), assuming the role of God in Job when he declares to the seas that "thus far shall you come, and no farther,/and here shall your proud waves be stayed" (Job 38.11). This declaration appears again in his boast that "I bade those polyfizzyboisterous seas to retire" (547.23–24). Ezra Pound called attention to the sound of the Greek adjective "poluphloisbious" in his appreciation of a line from Homer in which one can hear "the magnificent onomatopoeia, as the rush of the waves on the sea-beach and their recession."22 Joyce's insertion of the word "boisterous," which, according to Skeat, means "rough, coarse, noisy," suggests that HCE's civil fiat is a displacement of noise by a cultural code.23 The word "poly," or "many," further emphasizes that HCE establishes mastery over what Serres calls "the multiple, Water, the sea"—a victory of the one over the many.24In order to consolidate his triumph, HCE must not only impose his own master code but deny the destructive power of noise to his subjects. Attali's observation that "it is possible to judge the strength of political power by its legislation on noise and the effectiveness of its control over it" can help us understand some of the political implications of the Wake's command to "bide in your hush! Bide in your hush, do! The law does not aloud you to shout" (305.25–26).25 The Irish phrase bi i dho husht—meaning "be quiet"—is used by the citizen to silence his dog in Ulysses (12.265). The fact that the expression is accompanied by "a kick in the ribs" (12.264) suggests that in order to be effective, the commands of noise control must be supplemented by physical violence. Furthermore, when the Wake translates the Irish command of silence into the English phrase "be of the housed" (355.15), the monopoly over noise and enforcement of silence is connected to the ordeal of domestication. In the confines of their home, the Earwickers exercise this monopolizing control over their own children when they command them to "now be hushy, little pukers" (250.11).26 We can see HCE at the height of his political power when he is described in all of his "fortitudinous ajaxious rowdinoisy tenuacity" (53.16–17)—as Roland McHugh points out, a distortion of the motto of the House of Savoy: "His Strength Has Held Rhodes."27 His "rowdinoisy" tenacity (a redundant portmanteau insofar as the word "rowdy" means "marked by disorderly roughness or noise") is both a monopolization of noise and a power to quell noisy disorder.28Despite his boasting, HCE's political control is always provisional. Serres's observation that the center of power belongs to the one "that makes enough noise to monopolize noise and impose silence, that is enough of a parasite to kill off the petty parasites" is relevant to two related descriptions of HCE that emphasize his precarious position.29 In the first, the Wake's narrator says of him that "if he outharrods against barkers, to the shoolbred he acts whitely" (127.11–12). In other words, while he makes more noise ("Hamlet III.2.15: 'out-herods Herod'") than the barking curs who oppose him, he behaves decently to those who have been taught to be quiet in school.30 The description, however, suggests that he is unable to enforce silence on everyone. The two parts of the sentence illustrate Attali's description of the two forms of noise control. While one kind silences "all other human noises," the other enforces just enough control to allow people to believe that "there is order in exchange and legitimacy in commercial power."31 The fact that "Harrods, Barkers, Shoolbred's, [and] Whiteley's" are all "London department stores" suggests that HCE's acoustic dominance is of the second kind, being just enough to keep the economy in working order.32HCE's fierce struggle to maintain his monopolization of noise is also suggested by an allusion to the Irish orator Edmund Burke. The description of HCE as one who is polite "to the shoolbred" while he "outharrods against barkers" (127.11–12) is quite similar to a contemporary's description of Burke as "gentle, mild, and amenable to argument in private society … [but] intemperate, and even violent in Parliament."33 One of his famous retorts to the ridicule of his political opponents was a quotation from Lear: "See, they bark at me."34 These oratorical struggles often degenerated into a contest over who could make the most noise, with Burke "pouring out his words in torrents of rage," while his opponents, in turn, "shouted him down."35 While Burke ridiculed his political enemies as nothing more than those "who attempt to hide their total want of consequence in bustle and noise," it was also a commonplace that his own oratorical excesses led him "to out-Herod Herod."36 His bitter last days, in which he retreated into silence and solitude—according to one story, wandering aimlessly in his fields "kissing his horses and cows"—is hinted at in the Wake's decree to "blare no more ramsblares, oddmund barkes!" (256.11–12).37 The once proud figure who had thundered "against barkers" (127.11) is reduced to an "odd man" with a barking mouth ("G Mund: mouth") who is forbidden the use of noise ("blare": "to make a loud noise").38 The allusion to the story of Jericho in Joshua combines the destructive noise that is able to raze a wall with the political control of its use. Joshua's command to the people that "you shall not shout … until the day I bid you shout; then you shall shout" (Joshua 6.10) is one source for the Wake's command to "bide in your hush, do! The law does not aloud you to shout" (305.25–26).39The representation of HCE as a domineering figure who "makes enough noise to … kill off the petty parasites" is reiterated in the observation that he "outpriams all his parasites" (131.8–9).40 Here Joyce utilizes the same line from Hamlet to suggest that HCE's kingly (Priam-like) ranting is enough to drown out the noise of his princely (Paris-like) sons. On the other hand, the reference to the fate of Troy—Priam, in effect, losing his kingdom because of the reckless actions of Paris—points to his immanent downfall. The word "parasite" should also be taken in the double sense given to it by Serres: it denotes both the dependent who lives off the host and the noise that interferes with the transmission of a signal. In electronic communication, the task of the transmitter is to "eliminate the parasites from the channel so the message can go through as best it can"—a task that can never be fully accomplished.41 This attempt to maintain power by silencing noise in order to receive a communication is again described when HCE builds his city by commanding that "open noise should stilled be" (551.27–28). Once again Shakespeare provides the context. Caesar's command to allow him to hear the words of the soothsayer—"Bid every noise be still" (1.2.14)—is both successful and unsuccessful. Though his imposed silence allows him to hear the fateful words, he doesn't comprehend their meaning.HCE's downfall begins when his sons overcome the prohibition of noise. One of the key myths in this regard is the story of "The Fate of the Children of Turenn."42 The three children—Brian, Ur, and Urcar—are analogous to Shem, Shaun, and "Shimar Shin" (10.6), the tertium quid that overthrows the father.43 In the myth itself, the act of parricide is displaced in two ways: at the beginning of the tale the sons of Turenn kill Kian, the father of Luga; at the end they kill Midkena, the father of three sons. One of their penances for the former act is to give three shouts on the Hill of Midkena. As they later learn, Midkena and his sons are "under gesa not to allow anyone to shout on it"—another source for the Wake's command to "bide in your hush, do! The law does not aloud you to shout" (305.24–26).44 When HCE is described as having "a family all to himself, under geasa" (392.23–24) we can assume that his power over his family is based on a similar prohibition of noise ("Gesa means solemn vows, conjurations, injunctions, prohibitions").45 In the myth, the three sons of Turenn break this probation by killing the displaced father figure and raising "three feeble shouts on Midkena's Hill"—an act that costs them their lives.46 In the Wake, these three shouts are repeated in the wedding celebration between the Norwegian captain and the ship's husband's daughter when "the three shouters of glory. Yelling halfviewed their harps" (329.15–16). The half view of the harp suggests that the three sons are suspended between noise and music—an anticipation of Attali's claim that "what is noise to the old order is harmony to the new."47 In addition, the shout is amalgamated with a song of praise for the divine harmony when "Cannmatha and Cathlin [two stars in Macpherson] sang together" (329.14–15)—an elision of the Irish myth of parricide and the creation myth in Job where "the morning stars sang together/and all the sons of God shouted for joy" (Job 38.7).In a related passage, the monopolized noise of the old order is translated into the harmony of the new in the ritual that precedes the singing of the parricidal "BALLAD OF PERSSE O'REILLY" (44.24). By naming the fellowship of the sons the "companions of the chalice for the Loud Fellow" (44.3), Joyce implies that the eucharistic sacrifice of HCE allows his sons to usurp his power of noise. Once again, the measure of this power is its ability "to impose one's own noise and to silence others"—as we can see from the subsequent command of "silentium in curia!" (44.4) ("silence in court").48 Along the same lines, Attali's claim that "noise is a weapon and music … is the … ritualization of that weapon as a simulacrum of ritual murder" is illustrated by the raising of the chalice to a "bludgeon's height" (44.2), as noise of "the Loud Fellow" (44.3) is ritualized into the murderous yet harmonious ballad (a "canto was chantied there chorussed" [44.5]) intended to bring about HCE's fall.49 The reverse side of Hosty's creation of the new harmony out of noise in his song is the translation of old harmony back into noise. The ballad itself declares that HCE "fell with a roll and a rumble" (45.2), and his arrest is preceded by "the bailiff's bom at the door" (46.8) ("bomb": "a humming noise")—an anticipation of the "battering babel allower the door" (64.9–10) that will awaken Maurice Behan.50Shaun's struggle with Shem to monopolize noise after the overthrow of their father is given a concrete focus in the figure of Wyndham Lewis and the two fables that allegorize his relation to Joyce. When Shaun characterizes Shem "as a boosted blasted bleating blatant bloaten blasphorus blesphorous idiot who kennot tail a bomb from a painapple" (167.13–15) ("blast" allied to "blaze": "to proclaim, noise abroad," "blatant": "noisy, roaring," "bomb": "a humming noise"), the reference, as McHugh points out, is to Lewis's Blasting and Bombardiering—an autobiography that frames the fall and rise of generations in terms of the authority of noise.51 As Lewis proclaims in the introduction, "That noisiest of all old cocks, Mr. Shaw, is silent at last," and as a result "myself and a few other people are now likely to have our turn at the loud-speaking mechanism" and thereby produce "the 'big noise.'"52 In an early draft, the Wake appears to oppose this ambition when it states that "I will not have a reptile the like of McGrath Bros who thinks he's the big noise here to be spreading his dirty lies all round."53 In another section, however, the Wake seems resigned to the displacement of the older generation by the younger when it states "old cocker, young crowy, sifadda, sosson" (232.27–28)—in other words, just as the father monopolized noise, so will the son. (In Macpherson's Ossian, when Cuthullin rejoices "in the noise of my course," his rush into battle is accompanied by the "loud and resounding" sound of the hoofs of the horse, "Sulin-Sifadda").54 In addition, the Wake stages the displacement of King Mark by Tristan in terms of the same metaphor: "where the old conk cruised now croons the yunk" (387.36–388.1). The word "croon" that according to the OED is from the Middle Low German "chrón, crôn adj. talkative, chattering noisy" embellishes the theme.55 The connection between noise and animal force is also evident from a secondary meaning of "croon" relevant to Lewis's loud personality: "to bellow as a bull, to roar."56Lewis's role as an "eminent … spatialist" (149.18–19) who opposes philosophies of time in such works as Time and Western Man can also be seen in terms of the monopolization of noise. As Serres points out, "Power is nothing but the occupation of space," and the origin of private property can be traced to the way "the rooster, or the lion" is able to fill a territory with a "voice, sound, cry, sonorous shaking."57 This observation is relevant to Lewis's appearance in the Wake as "Professor Loewy-Brueller" (150.15) (lion roarer: "G Loewe: lion"; "G bruellen: to roar").58 (The reference to Lucien Levy-Bruhl can be explained by two facing passages in How Natives Think describing the animistic terror inspired by a picture of "bull-roarers" and a pot "shaped like a lion").59 In Blasting and Bombardiering, Lewis speaks of himself as "both an artist and a lion" and boasts of how he "roared and blustered."60 In the Wake, the professor revels in his "own most spacious immensity" (150.36), and he associates his bulky oeuvre with both extensity of space and intensity of sound when he speaks of the "cube of my volumes" (151.2).The professor's transformation into the Mookse in the allegorical fable also frames various binary conflicts—Shaun vs. Shem, Lewis vs. Joyce, space vs. time, church vs. state, orthodoxy vs. heterodoxy—in terms of a struggle to monopolize noise. When the Mookse appears as Nicolas "Bragspeare" (152.33) ("brag": "to sound loudly … cognate with L. fragor, noise"), he issues his decree "loudy bullocker" (154.33–34)—a reference, as has often been pointed out, to the (possibly fictitious) papal bull Laudabilitur that legitimated the colonial ambitions of Henry II in Ireland.61 On one level, the fable is an attempt to mock "Wyndham Lewis's literary-critical bulls that had anathematized Joyce."62 Just as the Mookse "bullow[s] … most telesphorously" (154.7), Lewis brags in his autobiography that "I continued to bellow in the field."63 On another level, however, the Mookse merges with one of the most orthodox guardians of Christian doctrine: St. Thomas Aquinas. As Albertus Magnus said of him, "You call him a Dumb Ox; I tell you this Dumb Ox shall bellow so loud that his bellowings will fill the world."64 The Mookse invokes the authority of Aquinas when he speaks of "this foluminous dozen odd. Quas primas" (155.20–21)—the Latin phrase appearing, as McHugh points out, at the "beginning of an argument in the Summa."65 In addition, the neologism "foluminous" includes both the word "fulminous" ("pertaining to thunder & lightning") and the three senses of "volume" referred to when the professor speaks of the "cube of my volumes": philosophical tome, spatial extensity, and acoustic intensity.66Serres's observation that noise has both "a value of destruction and a value of construction" is also illustrated in the dual reactions of the Gripes to the loud aggression of the Mookse.67 The Mookse's bellowing exclamation of "Rats!" (154.7) is simultaneously a cry of dismay at seeing the parasite, an identification of the parasite, and a noise meant to expel the parasite. In this part of the fable, the Mookse plays the role of the farmer in La Fontaine's fable of the city mouse and the country mouse—the text on which Serres bases his book The Parasite. According to the story, the two mice are eating the leftover food from the house of the tax farmer, but they "scurry off when they hear a noise" made by the farmer late at night.68 As the Wake translates the story, "the sissymusses and the zozzymusses in their robenhauses quailed to hear his tardeynois" (154.8–9). The farmer's victory over his parasites, however, is only partial. While the country mouse (in this case, the "sissy mouse") surrenders to terror and retreats to the simplicity of his former country life, the city mouse (in this case, the "zôsimos: capable of living") incorporates the noise into a more complex pattern of behavior.69 The two alternatives illustrate Atlan's theory of "destructive" noise that breaks down a system and "autonomy producing" noise that leads to greater complexity.70 While one aspect of the Gripes becomes a submissive "culla vosellina" (154.29) ("little voice"), the other becomes a rebellious "raskolly Gripos" (156.10) who opposes the papal infallibility of the Mookse with his schismatic rascality (rascal/ R raskol: schism).71 Placing the fable in the context of Heinz von Foerster's remark that "in my restaurant self-organizing systems do not only feed upon order, they will also find noise on the menu," we can see the rats' meal as more the noise the farmer makes than the food they are stealing.72 In any case, when the Mookse changes his cry to "Rots!" (154.13), he recognizes that his struggle against the corruption of heretical noise is futile. As Serres puts it, "the battle against rats is already lost; there is no house, ship, or palace that does not have its share. There is no system without parasites."73The parasite as noise that disturbs a system is necessary to a system that feeds on noise. As Serres puts it, the system "works because it does not work"—an observation dramatized by La Fontaine's fable of the grasshopper and the ant in which the latter works and the former doesn't.74 Joyce uses the same fable to, once again, allegorize his relation to Wyndham Lewis. Serres's observation that "the ant works and is at home in pure reason … [and] … forms a system or a city by making order" accords with the Wake's remark that "the Ondt was a weltall fellow, raumybult and abelboobied" (416.3) insofar as the rational Ondt thinks in terms of universals ("G Weltall: universe"), builds a city patterned on Rome, and is fit for work (able bodied).75 Above all—since work "is a struggle against noise"—he strives to drive out the grasshopper. On the other hand, the stable, spatial order of the ant is continually undermined when "the grasshopper sings, passes through space."76 As the Wake puts it, "the sillybilly of a Gracehoper had jingled through a jungle of love and debts and jangled through a jumble of life in doubts" (416.8–10). The process of passing through instead of enclosing and claiming ownership over space disturbs the Ondt with its combination of eros, economic inefficiency, skepticism, and disorder. The words "jingle" ("a noise such as is made by small bells") and "jangle" ("to talk excessively or noisily") emphasizes that much of the Gracehoper's power of subversion is based on noise.77Another way the Gracehoper overturns the ordered world of the Ondt is by reducing his systems of thought to noisy fragments. For example, the totalizing ambition of the Aquinian summa (either Summa contra gentile or Summa theologica) is subverted by a noisy multiple that "is not summed up."78 While we have already met Aquinas in the Mookse and the Gripes fable—where he appeared as an upholder of orthodoxy—in this fable it is said of the Gracehoper that "the next time he makes the aquinatance of the Ondt … these mouschical umsummables, it shall be motylucky if he will beheld not a world of differents" (417.7–10). As McHugh points out, the un-summable musical ensemble subverting the Aquinian system is also an ambient buzzing of flies ("F mouche" [flies]; "G umsummen: buzz around").79 While the Ondt's summas are ordered systems, impervious to noise, reducing multiplicity to the same, the Gracehoper is here opening, as Serres puts it, "the book of differences, noise, and disorder."80 While it is characteristic of the universalizing mind to "shove multiplicities under unities," an opposing anarchic tendency attempts to think a multiple that is "neither a flock, nor a school, nor a heap, nor a swarm, nor a herd, nor a pack."81 As the Wake puts it, there is then "no chare of beagles, frantling of peacocks, no muzzing of the camel, smuttering of apes" (245.3–4).Serres's observation that the one who drives out the parasite occupies "the position of the philosopher" suggests that such figures as Leibniz and Hegel, who also appear in Joyce's fable, are agents of order and noise control.82 On the other hand, as we have seen in the Wake's treatment of Aquinas, Joyce often uses the swarming ambience of noise to subvert this position. Just as Serres claims that though Leibniz tried to eliminate noise by making his monads "without holes or doors … noise and chaos irrepressibly return— parasites," the Wake remarks of the Gracehoper that "the gril
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