Introduction — Shakespeare ever after

Stefan Herbrechter

pp. 1-19

in: Stefan Herbrechter, Ivan Callus (eds), Posthumanist Shakespeares, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Abstract

Edward Pechter's What Was Shakespeare (1995) set out to evaluate Shakespeare Studies after the so-called "Theory Wars' and concluded that, at the turn of the millennium at least, there was no "end of Shakespeare Studies as We Know It" in sight, rather a "transformation" (Pechter, 1995, p. 14). This transformation — the result of ideological battles over the role of literature, history, politics and aesthetic value — seemed to have shattered a kind of previous consensus, or, as Pechter calls it, a "unified discourse" (p. 18) in Shakespeare criticism. The unified discourse was that of "formalist humanism" (p. 30), which collapsed as a result of the combined attack of poststructuralist theory, postmodernism, feminism, postcolonialism, new historicism and cultural materialism. At the centre of this "alternative" and "political" Shakespeare were "questions about textuality and history, and about subjectivity, agency, and political effectiveness' (p. 38). Where the self-stylized radicalism of the new dissidents saw discontinuity, however, Pechter in his critique sees nothing but continuity — since dissidence and radical critique are the very backbone of the humanities and humanism itself. This is a tenet that has become quite strong in recent years: the anti-humanism of theory and new historicism often relies in fact on a caricature of ("liberal") humanism and detracts from the idea that the humanities have always depended and thrived on dissensus, rather than a kind of enforced ideological consensus, as their fundamental form of knowledge production — an argument most forcefully made in Edward Said's Humanism and Democratic Criticism (2004).

Cited authors

Shakespeare William

Pechter Edward