In the cultural debates of modernism the concepts of time and space were juxtaposed
representing disparate sensibilities styles of art even political camps. Artists and thinkers
of the era took sides: with time i.e. all that is fluid and transitory or with space i.e.
structure and permanence. The «space-time wars» involved such key figures as Henri Bergson
Wyndham Lewis and Gertrude Stein. Joyce was both a participant - one who often changed camps -
and an avid chronicler and interpreter of the conflict. This study employs modern narrative
theory to read Joyce through the time-space binarism. Philosophical and cultural background is
examined reaching back to Aristotle Giordano Bruno St. Augustine Lessing and Bergson. The
story of the controversy itself is told in some detail. Next its traces are examined in A
Portrait of the Artist Ulysses and finally Finnegans Wake read here as an effort to transcend
the opposition. Much attention is paid to Joyce criticism it isargued that the logic of the
binarism underlies much of what has been said about his texts.
