Transubstantiation as a normative process: James Joyce and Carl Schmitt in 1922.

This article examines how the theological concept of transubstantiation, as developed by Thomas Aquinas, served as a structural model for normativity in post-World War I Europe through the works of Carl Schmitt and James Joyce, both Catholics responding to societal anomie. Schmitt’s 1922 essay *Political Theology* uses transubstantiation metaphorically to describe the sovereign’s legal authority to transform exceptional social events into binding legal norms, grounding secular law in a divine order. Conversely, Joyce’s *Ulysses* employs transubstantiation as a literary device whereby everyday experiences are artistically elevated into a coherent, normative order, secularizing the concept by removing its divine dimension. While both thinkers sought remedies for the chaos of their time, Schmitt emphasized the theological foundation of legal order, whereas Joyce reimagined transubstantiation as a secular, artistic process of creating social normativity.