Becoming-Wolf: The Nonhuman Life of Shem the Penman

This chapter investigates the human/nonhuman continuum of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake by focusing on the character of Shem as a hybrid figure who displays traits of both wolf and human, yet does not truly belong to either category. Particular attention is paid to Finnegans Wake episodes I.7 and III.4, in which Shem is associated with animals, in particular with wolves. The chapter reads Shem’s animal instinct and animalesque behaviour through Giorgio Agamben’s concepts of the wargus and the homo sacer in order to shed light on his outcast position in the family and his struggle with his brother Shaun. Indeed, as a homo sacer, Shem is banished from the city and treated as a dangerous beast or an outlaw. However, he remains at the threshold between nomos and physis, between law and nature, civil state and bare life, the latter also encompassing animal instinct. Accordingly, the evocation of wolves in the nightmare scene in Finnegans Wake III.4 establishes an ontological connection between Jerry (the Shem figure of the Porter family) and the animals, transforming him into a shaman.