UC Riverside

156 Pages·2014·1.73 MB·English

UC Riverside
UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Title
Refamiliarizing Empathy Through the Aesthetics of James Joyce and Agustín Yáñez
Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7t17n7fw
Author
Fousek, Stephanie Marie
Publication Date
2014

Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
RIVERSIDE

Refamiliarizing Empathy Through the Aesthetics of James Joyce and Agustín Yáñez

A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction
of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in

Comparative Literature

by

Stephanie Marie Fousek

December 2014

Dissertation Committee:
Dr. Sabine Doran, Chairperson
Dr. Heidi Brevik-Zender
Dr. Kimberly Devlin
Copyright by
Stephanie Marie Fousek
2014
The Dissertation of Stephanie Marie Fousek is approved:

Committee Chairperson

University of California, Riverside
Acknowledgements

With pleasure I take this opportunity to first and foremost express my very great
appreciation to the chair of my dissertation committee, Dr. Sabine Doran, whose
unwavering support and enthusiasm, and whose extraordinary feedback on my ideas
made this dissertation possible. When an aspect of my theory needed development, she
directed me to compelling sources that would sometimes reinforce, sometimes challenge,
but always relate to my project in a way that it would greatly benefit from. She
additionally introduced me to haptic studies which served as the inspiration for my final
chapter. Dr. Doran therefore consistently provided me with the right balance of
encouragement and stimulation needed to strengthen my dissertation. I am particularly
grateful for the advice given by Dr. Kimberly Devlin, who as a reader on my committee
not only offered invaluable insights on my Joyce sections with her penetrating familiarity
with Ulysses, but whose research on Lacan and positionality served as the impetus for
many of the ideas presented here. I owe my understanding of Lacan’s work largely to
her. I would like to offer my special thanks to Dr. Heidi Brevik-Zender as well who, as
another reader on my committee, both helped me find where my arguments needed more
nuance, and always asked the essential questions that helped me to situate this project in
terms of my overall trajectory. I am therefore indebted to all three of my committee
members for their encouragement, kindness, and support throughout this process. Dr.
Margherita Long offered a great deal of practical guidance as I moved through the
various stages of my dissertation, and thus I would like to extend my thanks to her as
well. Many thanks to Dr. Stephanie Hammer and Dr. Raymond L. Williams, who
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provided me with very valuable direction over the years that this project was written. I
would also like to thank Dr. Theda Shapiro, Dr. Yang Ye and Dr. Yenna Wu, who were
continuously supportive and who offered standing invitations for assistance. I owe a debt
of gratitude to UCR Riverside for providing me with the financial support of the Dean’s
Distinguished Fellowship needed to make this project possible, as well as the support of
the Graduate Dean’s Dissertation Research Grant, which will enable my travel to Mexico
City to further my research. Many thanks to those in Graduate Division, especially Rory
Moore and Maggie Gover, for making the Big Bear Dissertation Writing Retreat such an
incredibly helpful and meaningful experience, and to Kara Oswood who was always
available to provide practical advice on the technicalities of my dissertation when I was
in great need of it. I would like to thank Janet O’Shea, who was a great mentor to me
during the course of the Big Bear retreat, and whose thoughtful insights inspired me to
restructure my chapters in a way that greatly improved the overall organization of my
ideas. My thanks as well to Patrick Ryan, who read my introduction and offered very
helpful suggestions for its reorganization. I could not have done without the guidance of
my colleagues, Jonathan and Regina Yung Lee, whose support through the various
difficulties I encountered helped me to far more easily navigate them. I would like to
thank Master Printmaker James F. Lorigan and printmaker Robert Norton, whose
explanations of printmaking processes, from etchings to woodcut prints, informed the
related sections of my dissertation. I wish to also acknowledge the great deal of
assistance that Peter Markman provided me. And finally, I would like to thank all of my
colleagues in the UCR Comparative Literature department, as well as all of my friends
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and family for their sustained encouragement from the beginning to the end of this
project. In particular, I would like to offer my deepest love and thanks to my parents,
Daniel and Mary Fousek, whose unceasing support I could not have done without. No
matter what day or what time it was, they were always there to offer their love and
advice. No matter how much I struggled at times, they always believed in me; and for
that, I am deeply grateful.

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ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

Refamiliarizing Empathy Through the Aesthetics of James Joyce and Agustín Yáñez

by

Stephanie Marie Fousek

Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Comparative Literature
University of California, Riverside, December 2014
Dr. Sabine Doran, Chairperson

In my dissertation, "Refamiliarizing Empathy through the Aesthetics of James Joyce and
Agustín Yáñez," I perform a comparative study of aesthetic portrayals of empathy
primarily through two representative novels of Latin-American and European
modernism: Yáñez's Al filo del agua (The Edge of the Storm) and a work that greatly
inspired it, Joyce's Ulysses. In doing so, I advance a new interdisciplinary approach that
incorporates aesthetics, Lacanian psychoanalysis, narratology, ethics, and the haptic in
order to show how these two narratives, despite generally being more associated with
modernist themes such as alienation, not only contain but construct empathy as well. In
Al filo del agua I focus primarily on the character Father Reyes as a figure of empathy,
while in Ulysses I namely analyze Bloom, particularly within the blind stripling scene. I
also include an examination of the striking woodblock prints that accompany the original
edition of Al filo del agua in order to demonstrate how this text features empathy not only
textually, but also visually. I ultimately argue that empathy primarily makes an
appearance in Al filo del agua through its more political form, prosocial action, while in
Ulysses empathy occurs principally in the form of perspective taking via the
perspicacious musings of Bloom.
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Table of Contents
List of Images…………………………………………………..…………………..x
Chapter 1: Introduction
Approaches to Empathy…………………………………………………….…….…3
Why Modernism?.……………………………….…………………………..………7
European Modernism……………………………………………………….….……8
Latin American Modernism………………………………………………….….…10
Woodblock Prints…………………………..………………………………......…..14
Overview of Chapters…………………………………………………….……...…16

Chapter 2: Empathy and the Gaze
Theoretical Background ……………………………………………………..........21
The Catholic Gaze………………………………………………………….…...…27
Lack of Empathy………………………………………………………….…….…31
The Students……………………………………………………………….…....…34
Stephen Dedalus and Luis Gonzaga Pérez: The Artist’s “Look”…………….....…36
Mercedes……………………………………………………………………..….…42
Don Dionisio’s Struggle………………………………………………….……..…43
Father Islas: And Island Unto Himself………………….………………....………46
Burial of Sins……………………………………………………………….….…..50
Music and Yáñez’s Aesthetics of Empathy……………………………….……….52

Chapter 3: Empathy and Overdetermination
Mujeres, Marys, and Mothers: The Incorporation of Joyce’s female as “Musa-
Musica/Mater-Materia” into Yáñez’s “Daughters of Mary”……………....….……59
Ulysses: The Molding of Mary, Martha, Molly and Milly………………...…….…60
The Merging of María, Marta, Mercedes and Micaela in Al filo del agua……..…..62
The Overdetermined Figure of Gerty MacDowell…………………………..…...…69
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Chapter 4: Empathy and Agency
Bloom: Empathizing with Men, Not Masculinity……………….……………...…83
Finding Altruism: Father Reyes………………………………….………………105
María…………………………………………………………………………..…109

Chapter 5: Haptic Empathy
The Stripling Scene……………………………………………….………...……122
Intuiting or Projecting Oneself into Another’s Situation…………..….…………124
Imagining How Another is Thinking and Feeling………………….……………127
Imagining How One Would Think and Feel in the Other’s Place………….……129
Condescending Pity……………………………………………………….…...…130

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….132

Bibliography…………………………………………………………..…………139

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