Образ, въобразяване, съобразяване: „Арабия” на Дж. Джойс
James Joyce’s “Araby”: Image, Imagination, Conformity

Summary/Abstract: The paper presents a close reading of J. Joyce’s short story “Araby” and attempts at defining the relationship between the notion of image as represented by the story and the fictionality at work in it. The analysis reveals the paradoxical intricacy of fiction and reality (the two no longer being opposed, but rather interwoven) in the very heart of the fictional image, which for its part tends constantly to disintegrate. In fact, through the image fictionality is disclosed as taking place in the rupture produced by the non-coincidence of reality with itself. Borrowing a concept of C.Malabou’s, the author of the present paper names the aspect in the image that drives it toward incessant alteration, bringing it to the edge of explosion and disintegration, “plasticity”. On the one hand, plasticity defines what could be called “transformation” of the image; on the other, it partakes in another characteristic feature of the image, namely its function to concord, to make other agencies of the subject, such as memory or perception, as well as the different aspects of the image itself (imagination, resemblance, and transformation) “conform” to it. Though advancing no more than a theoretical model, the paper’s main (and for the most part unachievable) goal is to delineate the unique field of potentiality of the story through this model, while avoiding the danger of reducing it to the reader’s own (mis)interpretation.

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