SHAKSPER 2000: Re: Marx, Religion, and Nobility

From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@ws.bowiestate.edu)
Date: 01/24/00 

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.0151  Monday, 24 January 2000.

[1]     From:   Sean Lawrence <seanlawrence@writeme.com>
        Date:   Friday, 21 Jan 2000 10:59:51 -0800
        Subj:   Re: SHK 11.0133 Re: Marx, Religion, and Nobility

[2]     From:   Larry Weiss <pgw@idt.net>
        Date:   Friday, 21 Jan 2000 16:42:54 -0500
        Subj:   Re: SHK 11.0133 Re: Marx, Religion, and Nobility

[3]     From:   Abdulla Al-Dabbagh <al-dabbagh@rocketmail.com>
        Date:   Saturday, 22 Jan 2000 07:06:06 -0800 (PST)
        Subj:   Re: SHK 11.0123 Re: Marx, Religion, and Nobility



[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Sean Lawrence <seanlawrence@writeme.com>
Date:           Friday, 21 Jan 2000 10:59:51 -0800
Subject: 11.0133 Re: Marx, Religion, and Nobility
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.0133 Re: Marx, Religion, and Nobility

Patrick Dolar writes:

>We ought to be careful about saying that looking at Shakespeare through
>any particular ideology is out of court because that ideology wasn't
>invented then. After all, he wrote before Darwin, Vatican II, the
>industrial revolution, the enlightenment and any of a number of events
>and considerations that have radically changed the nature of
>Christianity over the last four centuries. A Christianity that doesn't
>countenance burning heretics, gutting Jesuits or intimate contact
>between Church and state provides an anachronistic lens as well.

Of course.  But as with material conditions, there are continuities.  If
we can pick up on the parallels between (say) witchcraft trials and
McCarthyism or violence against women, then we should also be able to
find parallels between Cranmer's opposition to the established forms of
authority, and Tutu's.  In any case, we should recognize the reality of
spiritual motivations, just as we recognize the reality of material
necessity in both contexts, and the continuity between them.  Note that
this isn't the same thing as believing the basis of such motivations.  I
don't have to be a Lollard to understand why they might be willing to be
burned rather than recant.  It strikes me as profoundly wrong, however,
to describe them as simply driven by economic forces.  It is, to use one
of your parallels, at least as wrong as seeing them driven by daemonic
forces (which, BTW, doesn't seem to be how Thomas Cranmer approached
them).  The simple martyrs weren't so simple as all that.

>The claim that human spiritual nature hasn't changed over time strikes
>me as just as unfalsifiable as the claim that it's all material
>(whatever you mean by material) or that class struggle is the basis of
>all human social reality (all three "vulgar," I know, but I'm in a
>hurry).

This makes all such lenses equal, which seems to be the claim that
Marx's dictum at least appears to be avoiding.  Moreover, the fact that
spiritual nature is unchanged strikes me as a more modest suggestion
than that class struggle is the basis of all human social reality, and
on par with the (widely accepted) notion that the materiality of the
material is continuous.

>I know Thomas More pretty well. In his hands, especially after Henry's
>divorce, Roman Catholicism was a totalizing discourse. (Take a look at
>Dialogue of Comfort for the palatable version. Any of the writings
>against heresy will provide the unpalatable version.) He wasn't the only
>one. His version no more makes religion ineluctably totalizing than
>Lenin and Stalin make Marxism so.

Of course not.  But the claim that Marxism is totalizing isn't based on
empirical evidence, but on logical necessity.  Conversely, the fact that
Marxism seems (at least) to lead necessarily to a totalizing discourse
doesn't mean that individual Marxist thinkers can't escape this trap, in
various ways.

Robin Hamilton's examples, by the way, struck me as very good ones.  In
the case of Richard with his prayer book, the implication isn't that all
prayer is deceit for something else; if it were, there would be no irony
in Richard's self-presentation.  Similarly, while Machiavelli recognizes
that religion has a certain weight in the world of politics, he doesn't
exhaustively desanctify religion.  He's reputed to have received extreme
unction, in fact.  Seeing the period as religious doesn't mean that we
don't recognize its tie with materiality, only that we don't make
materiality exhaustive.

Cheers,
Seán.

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Larry Weiss <pgw@idt.net>
Date:           Friday, 21 Jan 2000 16:42:54 -0500
Subject: 11.0133 Re: Marx, Religion, and Nobility
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.0133 Re: Marx, Religion, and Nobility

Patrick Dolan asks

>Is it just me, or do other people find the epithet "vulgar
>Marxism" etymologically hilarious?

Just oxymoronic

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Abdulla Al-Dabbagh <al-dabbagh@rocketmail.com>
Date:           Saturday, 22 Jan 2000 07:06:06 -0800 (PST)
Subject: 11.0123 Re: Marx, Religion, and Nobility
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.0123 Re: Marx, Religion, and Nobility

My apologies first of all if I seem too simple, or ramble or ask too
many elementary questions. But can any "system" of thought or any way of
thinking (christian, marxist, liberal, whatever) explain everything? If
we agree that no system and no thinker can or has, not in its own time
and certainly not when it is superceded, to a greater or lesser degree,
by time and events, then is there anything intrinsically wrong with a
system or thinker which/who explains a larger number of things?
Shouldn't we, in fact, aspire, in the field of the humanities, to be
able to explain as many things as possible? (Natural scientists, of
course, have never been ashamed of such a search and often openly
advocate it). As academics, we are multi-disciplinary by profession. Or
should we throw this term away too because it may become "totalizing"?
Should the legal oath be changed to: "I swear to tell the truth, only
half the truth and nothing more"? Is there anything wrong with seeking
to find, understand and tell the WHOLE truth, not just in the legal
court, but in all courts of learning, so to speak? OK, ever since Hannah
Arendt we have leant that totalitarianism equals dictatorship equals
communism equals fascism. Isn't it about time the term was
re-scrutinized? Shouldn't a clear distinction be made between ways of
thinking and systems of government?  Fascism, for example, is notorious
for being highly eclectic as "thought" and far from any rational,
comprehensive system. Many argue that indeed it is not a system of
thought at all, but merely a collection of insane prejudices coupled
with a totally unprincipled political practice. In that particular
aspect, it seems to have more in common with certain phases of
capitalism than with communism, although it shares with the latter its
dictatorial control of the state.

Now, where does Shakespeare come into all this?  To call Shakespeare a
Marxist is of course an anachronism (even if meant metaphorically, as I
think Jan Kott's famous phrase, "Shakespeare our contemporary", should
be taken, i.e. we can only look at Shakespeare through our contemporary
eyes; naturally, since they are the only eyes we've got, and it is they
that make him "our contemporary") but so is calling him (God forbid) a
fascist, or , perhaps most importantly, an ordinary, conservative,
God-fearing, king-worshipping defender of the 16th century English
establishment. Yes, Shakespeare's world, the world of his plays, is
pluralistic, but aren't there patterns, internal patterns and not any
that are superimposed from outside, that we inevitably detect, regularly
discuss and usually find very illuminating to the works as a whole. Take
the example of Caroline Spurgeon's classic study of Shakespeare's
imagery and one of my old favourites. Shakespeare's sympathy for the
underdog, his hatred for flatterers, his bitterness towards any betrayal
of trust, his own very specific perspectives on love, death, good and
evil, power and authority, and so on, all of which are supported by
regular patterns of imagery that appear throughout his plays, are not
mere indications of personal inclination, but guidelines to, not a
system perhaps, but certainly definite ways of thought.  Which, finally,
brings me to my key word.  Shakespeare's thought. A subject (admitting
my vested interest here) I have been thinking about and trying to write
about for some time and on which I look forward to comments from fellow
SHAKSPEReans.

As is well-known, early 20th century criticism either denied that
Shakespeare had any thought at all --e.g. Eliot, who denied that poets
could or should think at all. The better ones (like Dante) would simply
borrow (or follow) a System of Thought intact and not bother about the
details (was Eliot a totalitarian?), and the SCRUTINY group who liked to
talk about the plays only as linguistic and poetic patterns and ruled
out all discussions of thought or even character-or reduced his thought
to the conservative caricature of The Great Chain of Being of the
so-called Elizabethan World Picture (two very totalitarian models, it
would seem, wouldn't it?)And the contemporary debate between the New
Historicists and the Cultural Materialists, even when they bring a
wealth of new detail and seem to make a radical break with previous
criticism, seems, to me at any rate, rather inconclusive and
unsatisfactory. I may be wrong, but to me it lacks, ironically, the
historical, and more broadly comparative framework that seems to be
needed for the study of Shakespeare and of Elizabethan and Renaissance
literature generally. Help, anyone?

Gratefully, once more, Abdulla al-Dabbagh


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