.....and nothing is
But what is not ( Macbeth Act 1 Scene 3)
Systemic thinking and Shakespeare’s
tragedies
Bristol 2012
Two illustrations of systemic
approaches
• How gendered and racialised constructions of
identity and processes of “othering” can enter
into ways of thinking and are played out
within relationships ( Othello)
• Ways in which changing contexts create
challenges to identity, to relationships and
highlight ideas about the “decentred”
contingent self and the limitations of power
and control ( King Lear)
..Shakespeare’s signature characteristic, his
astonishing capacity to be everywhere and
nowhere, to assume all positions and slip free
of all constraints. This capacity depends upon
a simultaneous, deeply paradoxical
achievement of proximity and distance,
intimacy and detachment.
(Stephen Greenblatt, 2005 Will in the World
p242)
Systemic “Layers”
• How relationships are described experienced
and enacted within families and in the context
of wider social and cultural signifiers
• The patterns and meanings that emerge
through interaction and through dialogue and
relational positioning
• Identity construction, individual meanings
and emotions, stories of “self”
Systems and Identities
• Identities are highly complex, tension filled,
contradictory and inconsistent entities. Only the
one who claims to have a simple, definitive, clearcut identity can be said to have an identity
problem.
• (Samie Ma’ari, Arabic poet, quoted in Gergen, The
Saturated Self 1991)
Montaigne on multiple identities
“We are all framed of flaps and patches and of
so shapeless and diverse a contexture, that
every piece and every moment playeth his
part. And there is as much difference found
between us and ourselves as there is between
ourselves and (an) other”
Montaigne’s Essays (ed by John Harmer 1910)
Systemic Concepts and “Othello”
1.
How cultural, gendered and societal contexts and inequities enter
into structures of thought and feeling and are enacted within
discursive practices, including processes of “othering”
2.
The social construction and performance of selfhood, the
“narrative” self (living the stories we tell ourselves about
ourselves ; the effects on us if we cannot live them).
3.
Gender and power in couples’ relationships; symmetrical and
complementary patterns. Constraints on communication/meta
communication
Othello and Desdemona; managing difference
within a racist society
The Duke of Venice (to Brabantio ( Desdemona’s father)
If virtue no delighted beauty lack
Your son-in-law is far more fair than black”
Desdemona
“ my heart’s subdued
Even to the very quality of my lord
I saw Othello’s visage in his mind..”
Othello and Desdemona; managing
difference within a racist society
Othello
“Nor from mine own weaker merits will I draw
The smallest fear or doubt of her revolt,
For she had eyes and chose me”
Sexualising racism
Rodrigo: I cannot believe that in her: she’s full of most
blest condition
Iago: Blest fig’s end! The wine she drinks is made of
grapes. If she had been blest, she would never have
loved the Moor. Blest pudding! Didst thou not see her
paddle with the palm of his hand? Didst not mark that?
Rodrigo: Yes, that I did – but that was but courtesy.
Iago: Lechery by this hand!-an index and obscure
prologue to the history of lust and foul thoughts
Act 2 scene 1
Othello: effects of racist discourse
In the context of such comments about black male sexuality
“an old black ram is tupping your white ewe”
( Iago to Desdemona’s father,
Brabantio)
Othello says to the Duke in response to Desdemona’s request to be allowed to
accompany him to Cyprus that he does not want her there
To please the palate of my appetite
Nor to comply with heat – the young affects
In me defunct
Othello; effects of racist discourse
Othello: And yet how nature erring from itself –
Iago: Ay there’s the point; as- to be bold with youNot to affect many proposed matches
Of her own clime, complexion and degree,
Whereto we see in all things nature tendsFoh!-One may smell in such a will most rank
Foul disproportion, thoughts unnatural..
Racism
• "Oh my body, make of me a man who always
questions!"
— Frantz Fanon (Black Skin, White Masks)
• "I, the man of color, want only this: That the tool
never possess the man. That the enslavement of
man by man cease forever. That is, of one by
another. That it be possible for me to discover
and to love man, wherever he may be."
— Frantz Fanon (Black Skin, White Masks)
“Othello moves from existing on the terms of white Venetian society
and trying to internalise its ideology, towards being marginalised,
outcast and alienated from it in every way, until he occupies his
“true” position as its other.” Ania Loomba 1989
“ In the last lines of the play when he wants to reassert himself, he
recognises himself for what Venetian society has really believed him
to be: an ignorant, barbaric outsider- like he says the base indian
who threw away a pearl. Virtually this is what Althusser means by
“interpellation”; Venice hails Othello as a barbarian and he
acknowledges that is he they mean.”
Alan Sinfield 2004
Challenges to a self narrative
(Act four, scene two)
Othello: had it pleased heaven
To try me with affliction, had they rained
All kind of sores and shames on my bare head
Steeped me in poverty to the very lips
Given to captivity me and my utmost hopes
I should have found in some place of my soul
A drop of patience: but alas to make me
A fixèd figure for the time of scorn
To point his slow unmoving finger at!
Act four, scene two ( continued)
Yet could I bear that too; well, very well:
But there, where I have garnered up my heart
Where either I must live or bear no life;
The fountain from the which my current runs
Or else dries up- to be discarded thence!
Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads
To knot and gender in, Turn thy complexion
There,
Patience , thou young rose-lipped cherubimAy , there, look grim as hell!
Systemic Concepts and “Lear”
• The social, cultural and historical contexts within
which identities are constructed. The idea of the
“decentred” contingent self
• Exploring meaning at different levels of context
• The limitations of power and control (Gregory
Bateson)
The impact of disruption to signifiers
of identity
• Gloucester:- “Love cools, friendship falls off,
brothers divide; in cities mutinies, in countries
discords, palaces treason, the bond cracked
between father and son”,
• Lear “ Doth anyone here know me? ..who is it
that can tell me who I am? Lear’s shadow?
Co-ordinated management of meaning
Culture/Society
Family Story
Life Script
Definition of
Relationships
Episode
Speech Act
Speech Act
•
Lear: Oh you, sir, come you hither. Who am I?
•
Oswald: My lady’s father
•
Lear: My lady’s father? My lord’s knave, you whoreson dog, you slave, you cur
•
Oswald: I am none of these my lord, I beseech you pardon
•
Lear: Do you bandy looks with me, you rascal?
•
(Lear Strikes him)
•
Oswald: I’ll not be struck, my lord
•
Kent ( tripping him) Nor tripped neither, you base football player
•
Lear ( to Kent) I thank thee fellow. Thou serv’st me and I’ll love thee
Episode
• Lear is staying with Goneril who is increasingly
fed up with his behaviour and that of his 100
knights. She has instructed Oswald, her steward,
to be cool towards Lear. Lear having just returned
from hunting is incensed by being treated
disrespectfully
and
is
recognition from Oswald.
attempting
to
gain
Definition of relationships
• As Lear has handed over his kingdom to his older two daughters
and their husbands, he is now dependent on them for shelter and
for his standard of living. However he thought he had dictated what
the terms would be. Gonoril wants to indicate that she is now in
control. Oswald’s accurate and “innocent” definition of Lear as
Gonoril’s father exposes the reality of the change in relationships
which Lear cannot bear. Kent too cannot bear the loss of status and
position. Oswald moves from superficial servility to a statement
about his right not to be hit. Lear defines love for Kent as Kent’s
willingness to serve him.
Life Script
• Lear is facing old age and death. He has given up his
kingdom and is facing the loss of power, status and
identity that have accompanied him all his life. He has no
concept of his own agency and subjectivity other than
through the exercise of unilateral power and control. He
is not high on the emotional intelligence quotient and,
according to Regan, “ hath ever but slenderly known
himself”
Family story
• A father and three daughters where the mother
presumably died some time ago. Relationships are
characterised by the exercise of hierarchical patriarchal
power.. There is a confusion between affectional bonds
and the political domain. In this family there is one
favoured daughter, Cordelia, upon whom Lear had hoped
to rely for nurture in his old age but whom he has now
banished.
Culture/Society
• There is a process of transition between a medieval social system
and a more capitalist and individualistic age. There is thus a
breakdown in the feudal system in which identity is bestowed on
the basis of position within a rigidly hierarchical society. This means
that giving up a position is tantamount to being an outcast. The play
is set against a background of vulnerability of the kingdom in the
early 17th century with the death of Elizabeth and the accession of
James in a union between England and Scotland. In a patriarchal
society there are complexities involved in transferring inheritance
to daughters.
Outnumbered and out-maneouvred but still
trying to control Act 2 Scene 4
• Lear has left Goneril’s house in a rage and taken refuge with Regan
whom he is sure he can bend to his will and with who he can keep
his desired quota of attendants
• He does not know that Goneril has been in contact with Regan and
is about to arrive on the scene
• Lear’s loyal “servant” ( the disguised Duke of Kent) has been
punished by Regan’s husband, the Duke of Cornwall, further
demonstrating to Lear what the shift in power means.
On “Liberation”
“Liberation”...... as an intellectual mission, born in the resistance and
opposition to the confinements and ravages of imperialism, has
now shifted from the settled, established and domesticated
dynamics of culture to its unhoused, decentred and exilic energies,
energies whose incarnation today is the migrant and whose
consciousness is that of the intellectual and artist in exile, the
political figure between domains, between forms, between homes
and between languages.” (Edward Said in Culture and Imperialism
1993, p. 403)
Gwyn Daniel
[email protected]