Shakespearience 5: We are Things among Things….

Hilarious! The article is funny because there is something so amusing about discussing such hysterical subject matter in such a sincere, thoughtful academic way hahaha nice one Pro F. The austere profile pic at the end tops it all off with an extra chuckle

I see another question sitting below the discussion that has occurred here so far, and that is:

What is the relationship between desire and possession?

I see this question in historical terms; the relationship has changed as humans have developed through socioeconomic stages. Under patriarchy, and certainly under capitalism, desiring usually engenders the need to possess. Therefore, in this stage of history, one might trace Petruchio’s possessiveness back to romance and its root, desire. However, this wouldn’t have been true for all of history, nor will it be true in a post-patriarchal future. This question also allows for Marxism and feminism to inform each other, since it seems to sit at the root of both. Further, for me, it sets a goal for liberating praxis – to uncouple desire and possession.

AS: ‘this black-and-white thinking – in this case, that something is EITHER an abstract truth-claim OR simple class prejudice – has to be fought against.’

CS: ‘are you an essentialist?’

That question provides a good example of the level at which you seem to be able to read and understand me, not to mention Prof. Fernie, so I don’t think any further comment from me is necessary.

 What strikes me about your responses is how you keep attacking me and labelling my responses with adjectives and calling me ideologically pre-programmed. Stick to the issues. You are obviously no theorist if you think that my words are “hysterical”. What would you do with Adorno? Do you have difficulty with people who bring in other playwrights or social issues into a discussion about Shakespeare? That’s what people do in theory.

Criticism taken on “it’s own terms” you say. Wow, you really need an education in theory and Marxism. Or are you an essentialist? Nothing that is produced by the human brain should ever be taken on it’s own terms. It is all socially constructed and open to criticism. The claim for consideration of criticism on its own terms is nothing more than a power play of the current hegemonic terms.

That’s a good try with the “no close reading” accusation. I wanted to debate the issues, which I have done, without attacking you. I also picked a couple issues to talk about. If its a full close reading debate that you want then let’s do it. Would you like to start with the Induction and then move on to Act I.

You also have not understood my argument about the form of the play and why Petruchio’s actions and attitudes can’t be both possessive and cherishing. Shakespeare’s strategy in Taming, in my reading of it, is very different than that of say The Merchant of Venice, where I read Shylock as the relationship of contradictory values.

btw, what is tedious about this thread, for me, is not that is going on long, but that there are only two of us talking on it. Where is everyone else on this issue? Does no one else have an opinion about what is being said here?

Thanks. I’m trying to make this my last post, because this debate will be becoming tedious to the readers of this blog.

Of course criticism is located in ‘the social battlefield,’ but that emphatically does not mean that it (criticism) can be REDUCED TO ideology and social prejudice. The criticism has to, before everything else comes into play, be taken on its own terms. Again, this black-and-white thinking – in this case, that something is EITHER an abstract truth-claim OR simple class prejudice – has to be fought against; these sorts of strict binaries are remnants of the Cartesian tradition, and a Marxist should be the first person to know that.

You write: ‘Fernie wants his readers to accept that Petruchio’s possessiveness of Katherine is romantic or cherishing.’ But he clearly doesn’t say this. What he says, having already registered his discontent with the play’s patriarchy, is that Petruchio’s possessiveness has ‘a suggestively positive quality.’ The two things are not the same, as is surely obvious to anyone who is not ideologically pre-programmed to a dangerous degree. Why can’t Petruchio be both possessive and cherishing? Surely these things are often (in life) two sides of the same coin. Admitting this is not the same thing as cherishing patriarchy or demanding female subservience.

I also note – once again – that your response contains no
close-reading, that it floats at quite a distance from the primary text. Instead of close-reading, we get references to ‘genital mutilation’ and Brecht.

Finally, I note that, every time I respond, it pushes you to a more hysterical condemnation of Fernie. Initially there was just a ‘barricade’ between you; then you accused him of ‘collaboration with the very objectification that is killing humanity’; now his criticism is emphatically going to ‘lead to social disaster.’

It seems to me, in my naivety, that this sort of violently rising hysteria, and complementary construction and demonization of enemies, is precisely what tends to ‘lead to social disaster,’ and that the best retort to it is the sort of sensitive, emotionally and ethically engaged analysis that Fernie practises.

But then I would say that, wouldn’t I? White, middle-class men find the craziest rationalisations for their subjection of
women!

Thanks for that. I’ll make two points.

It is, I think, important to believe in things, and to believe passionately and publically. But there remains the constant danger that one’s beliefs will harden, which necessitates an equally constant attempt to reflect honestly on one’s positions and to refine one’s responses to life.

What worries me here is how crude your criteria seem to be. Things, for you, seem to divide very cleanly into binaries: into, for example, progressive or non-progressive, feminist or sexist, capitalist or Marxist, and so forth. This all means that, when confronted by a phenomenon, all that you do is decide on which side of ‘the barricade’ it stands, and then respond on cue. So, Fernie intuits a romance in Petruchio’s ‘my anything,’ and your response to this is – very simply – that it is ‘Certainly not feminist.’ And then you move on. Is that adequate intellectual practice? Is there not something damagingly pre-programmed about it all?

It seems to me that a large part of Fernie’s project, as evidenced in his books and blogs, is to push us beyond simple moralistic interpretations, and beyond damaging critical impositions, in order to open up, for the reader, the messy depths of Shakespeare’s plays: to the life therein, in all of its potentially disturbing complexity. But you seem to have made your project to police the interpretive borderlines, so that anyone with whom you disagree ethically is cast to the other side of an ideological ‘barricade’ and bombarded with accusations of sexism and collaboration with capitalism. Again, is that adequate intellectual practice? Is it not, in a way, quite dangerously anti-intellectual?

Second: Fernie is a critic, and so his claims – that, for example, ‘my
anything’ is romantic – are truth claims about Shakespeare’s play. This means that it, in a sense, doesn’t matter what Fernie’s personal ethics are, or what your ethics are, or indeed what my ethics are: if this is what Shakespeare is doing, then this is what he’s doing. If he’s not doing it, close reading and dense argumentation will bring that out. But it is not adequate to just accuse the critic himself of sexism and move on, taking one’s work to be done. That practice surely misunderstands the very nature of criticism.

 Hi Paul,
yes, the truth is certainly more mixed. One question that I ask is: In what direction does interpretation take the field (or the philosophy)? For me, an important aspect of criticism is the ‘why’ of our criticism. Why does one do a feminist criticism? or a psychoanalytic one? or a … one? I would like to see this disclosed more. I would also like the critic to own his/her position instead of using the ‘we’. There is a relevant discussion of this that I had with Dominic Dromgoole. It will come out soon, on this blog site, in the second part of my interview with him. One thing that Adorno wrote about was to critique language used in theoretical discourse – to find that hidden fascism in the phrases employed. He even upbraids Marx for an excessive use of the sarcastic speechmark. My purpose for posting my comment was to point out a hidden power play in Fernie’s essay. I hold that this is an important task for Critical Theorists.

Now about the issue of the direction of Fernie’s essay. I notice a number of set-up phrases that start in a feminist direction and an anti-objectification direction:

“We will instinctively bristle at the equation of wife and ‘goods and
chattels’, not to mention ox and ass. As well as at his assertion of
possession…”

Anoymous, above, also does this in his response. And he places (“who doesn’t”) in for thrust in the direction of the first phase of the sentiment. I notice this sort of set-up occuring at times when someone is about to say something un-progressive. The signal alerts me to the volta – the “yet” or “but”. Fernie writes:

“And yet, a palpable if pragmatic poetry opens up in Petruccio’s speech here.”

Now I look to see where he is going with this. His next move is to read Petruchio’s words about Katherine, “my anything”, as an “incredible touch of romance”. I ask, why? What is Fernie’s philosophical direction here? Certainly not feminist. Then he writes a one sentence paragraph:

“This suggestively positive quality to Petruccio’s possessiveness may
make us wonder if we can finally root out objectification from human
life and relationships.”

What does this mean? In what direction is it moving? Does the conditional “if” speak to the possibility of getting rid of a society based on owenrship of humans or against that possibility? The next paragraph makes his direction and his politics clear.

He begins by picking up on the animal imagery from the opening paragraph and stating the cry of the sociobiologists, “we are animals”. Sociobiology has also crept into the work of Gabriel Egan and completely tainted his Green Shakespeare. Why go this way, I ask? Does the word Shrew in the title really take interpretation towards the animal? Isn’t that actually the sexist animalisation that Shakespeare is depicting? Isn’t the defining quality of humans that they have a consciousness and that raises them to a different level than animals? Specifically – a level in which they can think critically about how they treat each other.

Then Fernie moves on to say that “we are also things”. Why? To critique reification? To critique the damage that Petruchio is attempting on Katherina’s humanity? No. He does none of that. He moves on to a discussion of our relationship with things. In my view, he upholds the very fetishism that Marx rails against in the final section of the first chapter of Capital. Hernie ends by describing “Petruccio’s possessiveness” as having a “cherishing aspect, which isn’t unattractive”. In what direction has this essay now moved? I say sexism and collaboraion with the very objectification that is killing humanity.

It seems to me irrelevant what assignments you give your students. Your initial comment was absurd, whatever background informed it.

And, while I’m content to remain masked, I will happily engage ‘in a public debate.’ I’m just not sure how far it would be able to go, given that you have already drawn up the ‘barricade,’ and placed yourself on the opposite side to anyone who disagrees with you. But if you’d like to descend from arrogant posturing, and make some serious critical points, I would be happy to engage with them.

The respondent below – Christian Smith – objects to the use of ‘the first person
plural, “we”, in an essay.’ What word would he prefer? In the context
of a piece of writing like this, it’s surely obvious that ‘we’ should be
taken to mean ‘any one of us,’ as opposed to the a priori ‘all of us.’ That is, the word is not oppressively inclusive in the way that Mr. Smith feels; it
instead ties into the basic attempt of literary criticism, which is to move beneath/beyond
both the subjective and the objective, in order to establish semi-truths with which ‘we,’
sharers of a language-game, can engage. If someone doesn’t share them, then
that is all to the good: cue further thought and writing. But words like ‘we’
are used to encourage discussion, and it seems to me that a person who objects to them reveals more
about himself than about anyone/anything else, perhaps about his own
insecurities or frustrated power-will. And one doesn’t have to have read Nietzsche or the other ‘masters of suspicion’ to feel this.

The writer goes on to state: ‘Capitalism subsumes the
subject under the object and this essay seems to celebrate that.’ But
capitalism is not mentioned in the essay; nor is economics; nor is politics,
except in the area where it is coextensive with ethics. So why bring capitalism up? One can
be Left-wing, a Marxist, an anti-capitalist, and various other things, and still object
to the way in which Mr. Smith uses his Marxism as a weapon with which to bludgeon
his opponents; one can still object to the fact that, seemingly, he takes his sole critical task to be to make negative points about capitalism (it ‘subsumes the subject under the object’),
to set himself up as proud antagonist to it (‘the purpose of my work is to…’), and
to condemn anyone who disagrees, who stands ‘on the other side of the barricade.’ What’s the
point of all of this? (Apart, obviously, from the fact that it must make Mr. Smith
feel good to write such things.)

Nietzsche has a great aphorism: ‘A very popular error:
having the courage of one’s convictions; rather it is a matter of having the
courage for an attack on one’s convictions.’

English students should memorise that, and take it as a
guiding principle. Mr. Smith may feel that women are not objects (who doesn’t?),
that humans are not just animals (who doesn’t?), that capitalism has wrought
tremendous damage on life (who doesn’t?), and that it is necessary to fight for
human subjectivity and subjective experience (who doesn’t? – Prof. Fernie certainly feels this). But it is painfully obvious that he has
allowed these feelings to harden into something unpleasantly brittle and destructive.
It is obvious that, having read Prof. Fernie’s blog-post, he has not taken the time to
think it through, to chew over its positions, to take it as seriously as his
imagination allows him, perhaps to formulate an intelligent response, perhaps even one – is this asking too much? – that actually addresses the Professor’s specific points, and bolsters
its own points with close reading and theoretical agility.

No! It’s enough to just react on cue: Capitalism is bad!
Objectification is bad, a priori! Prof. Fernie’s not a Marxist! And that’s enough to
condemn him. Thus begin the nasty criticisms and insinuations.

To conclude with a cliché: with people like Mr. Smith as your ideological friends –
I speak as someone who broadly shares his positions – who needs enemies?

(The blog-post itself is, I think, superb. No need to say anything further; Ewan has said what needs to be said, and said it brilliantly.)

Very nice & lively, Ewan; makes me wish I were teaching Shrew this semester.  Makes me think, also, of all the Object-Oriented theory that’s swirling around these days, via people like Graham Harman, Tim Morton, and in medieval studies Jeffrey Cohen and Eillen Joy, among many others.  Do you know those folks?  Some interesting stuff there.