Materialist Criticism and Shakespeare
Lingui Yang
Abstract：The materialist approach to history has been widely applied in literary criticism and Shakespeare studies since the last century．Especially since the1960s，scholars of Shakespeare in the various critical trends—New Historicism，cultural materialism，Marxism，and feminism—have been influenced by materialist perspectives to a different degree in their vying against the New Critical methodology．Materialist critics at once analyze history and ideology in Shakespearean texts and critique ideologies in various histories about Shakespeare．The materialist discour in Shakespeare studies as a new dominant methodology demands historical scrutiny．This study ex-amines the discursive history of materialist criticism of Shakespeare in postmodern cultural land-scape，particularly in the Euro-American academia，and argues that materialist Shakespeareans’strong desire to speak with the dead lies in their stronger concern over postmodern society．
Key words：materialist criticism Shakespeare Marxism postmodern culture
Author：Lingui Yang is professor of English at Donghua University（Shanghai200051，China）．H
e has taught Shakespeare at Texas A＆M University and Skidmore College in the last years，and has published studies on Shakespeare in Shakespeare Yearbook，Foreign Literature Studies，Theatre Rearch International and other scholarly journals．His recent studies include over two dozen re-arch papers and veral scholarly editions，most recently Shakespeare and Asia and Evaluating Scholarly Rearch on Shakespeare（Edwin Mellen，2010）．Email：shks100@gmail．com
标题：唯物主义批评与莎士比亚研究
内容摘要：自20世纪以来，唯物论方法广泛应用到文学批评以及莎士比亚研究中。特别是60年代以来兴起的文艺批评流派，如新历史主义、文化唯物主义、马克思主义以及女权主义，在与新批评方法进行抗争的过程中都不同程度地受到唯物史观的影响，新历史主义更是从研究莎士比亚研究起家。运用唯物论方法的莎士比亚研究不仅考察其作品中体现的历史观和意识形态，而且批判地分析莎士比亚接受过程中体现的诸种意识形态。莎士比亚研究的唯物论方法作为新的主导批评话语本身也需要我们做历史地审视。本文考察在后现代文化背景下，特别是欧美学界的唯物论莎学话语史，论证唯物论莎士比亚学者“与逝者对话”的强烈愿望背后潜藏着更强烈的对后现代社会的关切焦虑。
关键词：唯物批评莎士比亚马克思主义后现代文化
作者简介：杨林贵，博士，东华大学外语学院教授。近年在德克萨斯农工大学、斯基德莫人文学院等美国高校教授莎士比亚课程，并在国际期刊《莎士比亚年鉴》、《外国文学研究》、《戏剧研究国际》等发表莎士比亚研究论文。其它研究成果包括近30篇论文和几部学术编著，
最近主编出版《莎士比亚与亚洲》和
《莎士比亚学术研究评析》（纽约梅林出版社，2010年）。本文为2011年度国家社科基金立项资助课题【项目编号：11BWW041】成果之一，同时得到上海市浦江人才计划资助。
The twentieth century saw the “death of God ”and the ri of Marxism．Materialist philoso-phy has overtly challenged and gradually replaced the Idea of God ，resulting in the late 19th-and the early 20th-century crisis of belief．Marxist materialism has profoundly influenced and changed the “God-created ”world by producing two types of revolution in the twentieth century —violent and cultural．The change of world perspectives has had a far-reaching influence on individuals ’views of themlves and of the world around them ，even after the collap or reformation of the former socialist states．Whether or not the international communist experiment proves to be a fail-ure ，the “specter of Marx ”（Jacques Derrida ）has exerted as much influence upon the human psyche as any religion has ever done and has inevitably transformed world cultures in the West as well as in the former socialist countries．
This influence is particularly manifest in the academic sphere ，where cultural thought is fre-quently first disminated．Addressing the omniprence of materialist philosophy in twentieth-century cultural life cannot prove its scientific validity or inevitability．Such proof is far from the purpo ofthis study．On the contrary ，we must e materialism as a discursive phenomenon ，de-veloped upon its own contingencies as well as exigencies．It is a way of interpretation of the world
and a narrative of history ，
and the materialist approach to history has been applied in literary criti-cism of the 20th century and beyond．In turn ，Shakespeare studies of the last century ，especially since the 1960s ，have borne some fruit of materialist discour．A study of materialist criticism of Shakespeare will show the rationale of different versions of materialist discour．This study exam-ines the discursive history of materialist criticism of Shakespeare in postmodern cultural land-
scape ，particularly in the Euro-
American academia．Materialist Shakespeare ：War for Dominance from Theory to Classroom
严厉的意思>汉语思维Materialist methodology has dominated Shakespeare studies in the West since the late 1970s．As a应用权限
混合型n intellectual activity ，the flow of materialist knowledge must integrate the material and non-material ，the spheres that interest both religion and philosophy．Materialism as a method of know-ing ，which studies the relations between the two spheres ，or the interction between the materi-al world and the human conscious ，is itlf a form of discour．If we apply the materialist episte-mological principles to the analysis of materialism itlf ，we must materialize this special form of discour ，which is inconstant and polymorphous．Its materiality is intriguingly realized in the past espousing or debunking of the practices utilized by materialist critics of Shakespeare in new histor-ical ，cultural materialist ，Marxist ，and feminist publications as challenging means against New Critical methodology ，the dominant approach to literature for the past decades．The publications bear the footprints of how materialism has become a new dominant methodology and of how it is materialized through the practices of materializing the dead Bard and the knowledge of the unre-coverable past．
Yet ，does materialist critical prominence signify any inevitability of its historical develop-ment ？Or ，has history lected materialism and necessitated its appearance as a dominant method-ology ？We may e some clues to the emergence of materialism in the practices of materialist Shakespeares．The practices have shown a two-way traffic between materialism and Shake-3感恩父母作文
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speare，whether or not the practitioners take materialism as a practical meta-language．They at once analyze history and ideology in Shakespearean texts and critique histories and ideologies a-bout Shakespeare．One exemplar of materialist practices is Ivo Kamps’s Materialist Shakespeare，which followed its predecessors，①and has been succeeded by a cond Alternative Shakespeares and five anthologies in the Accents on Shakespeare ries．②I put Kamps’s collection at the cen-ter of the materialist works becau of its central place in the analysis of materialist criticism of Shakespeare．For one thing，Kamps articulates the materialist practice in Shakespeare scholar-ship．Secondly，his introduction to his anthology attempts to“historicize”materialist criticism of Shakespeare，although we have to go further in terms of historical time and analytic depth to ex-amine this critical approach adequately．Thirdly，Kamps’s anthology is a link between earlier practices and later，a pivotal work in the on-going attempts to popularize the method．Unlike Dol-limore，who ems to have given more credit to British cultural materialism（most essays in his anthology were by British authors and even the few American new historicist essays are“co-op-ted”to become part of“Cultural Materialism”），Kamps us a more synthetic name to integrate various pr
actices and balances European and American materialist arguments．Under the name of materialism，Kamps makes British cultural materialist and American new historicist and feminist，and even Russian Marxist arguments co-exist．
And finally，I consider Kamps’s work as a transitional marker of the movement of materialist methodology’s recent journey from a struggle for acceptance to wide application within pedagogi-cal curricula，from theory to the classroom．Kamps’s anthology connects the past and the prent and looks toward a future for materialist Shakespeares．It carries on the project of Shakespeare Re-produced，who editors wanted their book“to be of u in changing specific practices—beginning with pedagogical practices—associated with the dismination of Shakespeare in culture”（How-ard and O’Connor5）．The authors of the essays in this collection had to fight for a place for ma-terialist perspectives in the curriculum．Meanwhile，the editors were still concerned that material-ism’s theoretical orientation toward Shakespeare only remained in theory and targeted only a pro-fessional audience in monographs that left the common reader far behind．They thus called for ap-plications of materialist theory to the classroom and to theatrical practices．
This concern over the paration between theory and practice was not without ground．Al-though the materialists already took the theoretical front in the1980s，they had to follow the tradi-tional curri
culum dominated by New Critical clo readings．They had to wrestle with traditional-ists about how to read Shakespeare and“reconstitute the teaching of Shakespeare within an overtly depoliticized anddehistoricized curriculum which took Shakespeare as a central warrant for prac-tices”（6）．When Kamps collects his essays，he is sure that materialist criticism has permanently changed the way Shakespeare is read and that Shakespeare studies are“most unlikely”to return to“the comfortable pieties of their idealist past”（Kamps17）．Furthermore，the now-antholo-gized materialist methodology marks the establishment of the practice，while its earlier practition-ers had to fight for the newness of their theory when they strove to move the method from the mar-gin of the critical and the pedagogic spheres．The essays in Kamps’s collection are reprints of what would be called“new essays”in earlier collections（e．g．，New Essays in Cultural Material-ism，the subtitle of Political Shakespeare），or which were written by some of the same authors of the essays in the earlier books．
Materialist anthologists after Kamps intend to reach more students and are concerned more with the prent and the future．One of the Accent on Shakespeare ries，Shakespeare and Mo-dernity：Early Modern to Millennium，explores what the early modern Bard means to the postmod-ern society around the millennium．After addressing the function of the ries in the establishment
of “theory ，”the General Editor claims that its volumes “will either ‘apply ’theory ，or broaden and adapt it in order to connect with concrete teaching concerns ”（Hawkes 2）．Actually this at-
tempt to apply materialist theory to teaching has been carried out in another project ，
demonstrating a pedagogical shift from New Critical clo reading to historical explorations already popular by the turn of the century．
An MLA Approaches book ，行政介绍信
Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare ’s Romeo and Juliet features the applications of materialist perspectives to the Shakespeare classroom．In this more practical teaching guide ，the authors describe their own materialist ways of teaching Shakespeare ，citing and embracing Greenblatt ，Bely ，Montro ，and other materialist critics．Their methods range from historical investigations of the social contexts of the play ，to a contemporary popular cultural approach （through rock and roll music ）to the play ’s artificiality of love ，to the study of cultural conditions surrounding film adaptations．One of them ，for instance ，through historically examining the early modern discours of xuality ，attempts to help the classroom reading of students return to contexts ，shifting “the emphasis of investigation away from xual behavior toward the social in-stit
utions that authorized or condemned that behavior ”（Radel 97）．Thus ，complaints that materi-alists talk about “only theory and no praxis ”are refuted．
The materialist way of thinking has been exerting its influence further into cultural life through pedagogic practice since the 1980s and has become especially widely adopted at the uni-versity level since the 1990s．As the editors of Marxist Shakespeares make clear in summarizing the essays in the collection ，the “path to Shakespeare begins insistently in late modernity with a refusal to let the ‘historical ’Shakespeare be parated off from prent concerns ”（Howard and Shershow 10）．For materialist Shakespeareans ，therefore ，the exigency of historicizing the early modern moment always lies in the postmodern moment．In other words ，their strong desire to “speak with the dead ”dwells on a yet stronger impul to deconstruct the “late capitalist ”system within the social context of the more and more capitalized Globe．
Historicizing Shakespeare ’s Materialist History
My historicizing of materialist Shakespeares will examine works both before and after Kamp ’s anthology in order to configure the construction of its past ，prent and perhaps a future ，with an emphasis on its constituting discours of its early moments when it began to distinguish itlf in the theory wars of the 1980s．But first ，Kamps．In addition to the essays in his anthology ，Ka-
mps ’
s Introduction covers aspects of materialist praxis ，giving a “historical ”form to the esnce of materialism．This anthology purports to capture a history of materialist criticism of the Bard and parallels variations of materialist criticism —cultural materialism ，new historicism ，Marxism （old and new ），and materialist feminism．Although Kamps refers to their historical relations ，he does so only sketchily ，since obviously they are not his immediate focus．In his Introduction ，Kamps shows what Shakespeareans who take materialism as critical methodology have actually been do-ing．However ，he also ems to imply the “exigencies ”and “contingencies ”of materialist Shake-speares —social realities and theoretical developments around the latter half of the twentieth centu-ry —although Kamps could not have discusd them in depth in an introductory essay．Materialist literary studies derive their genetic disposition from Marxist historical materialism and proliferate into —or have been assimilated by —various postmodern approaches through different theorizing channels ，namely （British ）cultural materialism ，（American ）new historicism ，and materialist feminism．Materialism ’s basic conception is that the Marxist historical materialist rubric —the re-lation between economic ba and superstructure —should form the rudiment of all social relations rather than metaphysical or idealist perspectives of history．Thus ，traditional materialist literary 5
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生态文明思想
theory would emphasize the“relation between human praxis and socio-economic formations and their joint production of various literary forms（and/or genres）and meaning，”as Kamps puts it （2）．③However，influenced by the Althusrian concept of the superstructure’s relative autono-my，as articulated in his“Ideological State Apparatus，”more recent materialist critics analyze the ideological formation of culture．The British materialist critics，following Raymond Williams’s analysis of cultural elements，namely the dominant，residual，and emergent，go even further in this respect by focusing on the cultural process in literary analys．They do so in spite of the fact that Williams himlf emphasizes that“we cannot parate literature and art from other kinds of social practice，in such a way as to make them subject to quite specific and distinct laws”（44）．Some American new historicists also adopt this approach．In their studies，materialists of this persuasion are more interested in the cultural system，or the context，than in the text．Here aris the problem of the complex relations between texts and history．Louis Montro ems to have kept a balanced view of the relations between text and context in his famous distinction between the “textuality of history”and the“historicity of texts”④．Curiously，in materialist us of the term，vario
us ns are vying for pre-eminence and sometimes intermix so that confusions and misun-derstandings are inevitable．In other words，when epistemological ideology is vulgarized in materi-alist practices as a political instrument，the term is split（i．e．，the signified is parated from its signifier）and becomes an object independent of its material carrier．A way to redeem possible bi-as，I will argue，will be to u the same method to reflect back upon the critic herlf：at the same time that the materialists historicize the text，they need to historicize their own ideologies and the status of ideological criticism．
Of cour，the materialist trends—traditional Marxism，cultural materialism，new histori-cism，and feminism—show different preferences in their specific historicizing practices in terms of Shakespeare studies．Marxists engage in macroscopic studies of Shakespeare，analyzing relations between Shakespeare’s literary works with his time and linking the changes in literary forms to historical epochal shifts，as shown in Delany’s essay in Kamps’s anthology．In this approach，Shakespeare’s time is usually considered to be a transition from feudalism to capitalism；thus we may find reflections of the decline of feudalist aristocracy and the ri of the bourgeoisie in his world from the world of his plays．Siegel，for instance，develops this proposition in veral of his works：“that Shakespeare’s drama is an expression of the Christian humanist ideology of the new Tudor aristocracy”（164）．国防科学技术大学
Unlike Marxists，more recent materialists，especially new historicists，have been“less inter-ested in the individuation of specific literary texts”（Kamps5）and e no causal connection be-tween the“historical”event and the text．They explore the“cultural field”—in Alan Sinfield’s terms—at a particular moment or point by examining the“intertexuality”of veral contemporary “texts”to find therein a certain ideological imbedding．Shakespeare’s text then appears only as one version of this grand cultural picture．Although both new historicism and cultural materialism emphasize the historical context of literary texts，they divide when they discuss the relations be-tween text and the contemporary ruling ideology and between literary criticism and the cultural he-gemony of the critic’s society．New historicists e，in the sphere of Shakespeare’s drama and his theater，how the emergent，marginal，represd，and subordinate，or the non-dominant ele-ments are contained；whereas，cultural materialists obrve that Shakespeare’s texts are charged with subversive strategies．The British materialists even suggest exploring the“institutions through which Shakespeare is reproduced and through which interventions may be made in the prent”（Dollimore and Sinfield iii）as exemplified in the last ction of Political Shakespeare．Thus，they should not only study the politics in Shakespeare but also the politics of Shakespeare reception．
