CONTENTS Acknowledgments ... ⅶ List of abbreviations ... ⅸ 1 The stolen birthrighr : the mimesis of orginal loss ... 1 2 Representation in a postcolonial symbolic ... 31 The (in) divisibility of the letter ... 34 The transference of the text ... 50 The semiotic status of the text ... 69 3 The language of the outlaw ... 74 Acting out the stereotype ... 82 The semiotics of narrative ... 86 The presence of the void ... 94 High modernism / poststucturalism, and the difference of Joyce ... 98 Intentionality ... 102 Jouissance / the subject who shows ... 105 The somatization of the text ... 111 Postcolonial agency ... 118 4 The primitive scene of representation : writing gender ... 120 The supplement of origin ... 131 The confessing vagina and the dark continent of femininity ... 135 The threat of an ending ... 140 Weaving the astral body ... 143 Fetishized writing : pen is champ ... 147 5 Materiality in Derrida, Lacan, and Joyce's embodied text ... 155 The letter in Lacan ... 167 Derrida's immaterial letter ... 176 Derrida and filiation ... 181 The matcriality of the mother in the void of religion ... 184 Conclusion Joyce's anmamorphic mirror ... 194 Bibliography ... 211 Index ... 224