Abstract

Starting from the various ways in which the name of James Joyce is evoked in Cixous's critical books and essays, I sketch her unique position as a writer between psychoanalysis and philosophy. If James Joyce's last name can be translated as ‘Freud’ in German, if his first name can be variously Jim, James or even Jacques, then we may translate him into French as Jacques Joyeux. Taking my cue from varying strategies of address deployed in The Exile of James Joyce, I conclude by calling upon my own father, another Jacques, to provide a vignette that aims at replacing Joyce's gnomon between the psychoanalytic symptom and the deconstruction of the letter by the postcard.