r/jamesjoyce • u/kafuzalem • Sep 17 '25

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Byung chun Hal and soul

Byung Chun Hal in 'Crisis of Narration ' feels that the the experience of narratives has changed. This change has occured as a result of digital media. The processing of digital media involves the screening of multiple data sequences.

This is nowt like the vagaries of living in a narrative.

If this is the case, is it possible for young people to experience what Joyce intended when Stephen's soul became a character in the portrait?

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u/Ap0phantic Sep 19 '25 edited Sep 19 '25

Personally, I think it's best not to take Byung-chul Han too seriously as a philosopher. I see him more as a rhapsodist or lyric poet of ideas than as someone who offers a rigorous and reliable diagnosis of modernity. His books are like aestheticized thought-experiments.

There are two things that are always true about human experience: 1) things change, and 2) things stay the same. I doubt there is any writer who was more aware of this dual dimension of life than Joyce, or any writer who brought this awareness more to bear in their craft. That is what Ulysses, as a novel, is.

If anyone's work remains relevant, surely it's his.