ABSTRACT
This chapter situates the New York State district court case of United States v One Book Called Ulysses within the context of the 1933 repeal of prohibition in the United States. By examining both the historical and philosophical responses to alcohol through Derrida’s analysis of the pharmakon, this chapter will explore the relation between truth and enjoyment and where exactly the literary text sits at that intersection. The defence of Joyce’s text was predicated on shifting associations with the literary text away from a form of unproductive jouissance, historically associated with both the addict and the literary text and instead positing the value of the text in its truth value. Key to understanding this shift is the manner in which the sexual aspects of the texts are made less obscene by their association with the truth, truth thus acts as a means to de-sexualize Ulysses and have Judge Woolsey declare it legal as its effects were emetic and not aphrodisiac. However, the chapter will also queer this distinction between truth and the pharmakon, analysing a latent addiction to truth operating in both literary criticism and the law itself that again attests to the presence of a form of jouissance at work within the law itself.
