Alan Sinfield
Cultural Materialism^ Othello, aed the Politics of
Plausibility
Alan Sinfield
Alan Sinfield's Faultlines (1992) is one of the best examples of Cultural Materialism at work. This chapter on
Shakespeare's Othello is an especially forceful rendering of the Cultural Materialist argument that texts are not simple registers of social power. Rather, they must necessarily harbor dissident, fractious energies that undermine the sense of cohesive certainty that ruling elites seek to impose on a culture.
'Tis apt and of great credit
Cassio, in Shakespeare's Othello, is discovered in a drunken brawl. He laments: "Reputation, reputation, I ha' lost my reputation!" (2.3.254). Iago replies, "You have lost no reputation at all, unless you repute yourself such a loser" (2.3.261-3), but this assertion is absurd (though attractive), since reputation is by definition a social construct, concerned entirely with one's standing in the eyes of others. In fact, language and reality are always interactive, dependent upon social recognition; reputation is only a specially explicit instance. Meaning, communication, language work only because they are shared. If you invent your own language, no one else will understand you; if you persist, you will be thought mad. Iago is telling Cassio to disregard the social basis of language, to make up his own meanings for words; it is the more perverse because Iago is the great manipulator of the prevailing stories of his society.
Stephen Greenblatt has remarked how Othello's identity depends upon a constant performance of his
"story";2 when in difficulty, his immediate move is to rehearse his nobility and service to the state.
Actually, all the characters in Othello are telling stories, and to convince others even more than themselves. At the start, Iago and Roderigo are concocting a story - a sexist and racist story about how
Desdemona is in "the gross clasps of a lascivious Moor" (1.1.126). Brabantio believes this story and
Plausibility
Alan Sinfield
Alan Sinfield's Faultlines (1992) is one of the best examples of Cultural Materialism at work. This chapter on
Shakespeare's Othello is an especially forceful rendering of the Cultural Materialist argument that texts are not simple registers of social power. Rather, they must necessarily harbor dissident, fractious energies that undermine the sense of cohesive certainty that ruling elites seek to impose on a culture.
'Tis apt and of great credit
Cassio, in Shakespeare's Othello, is discovered in a drunken brawl. He laments: "Reputation, reputation, I ha' lost my reputation!" (2.3.254). Iago replies, "You have lost no reputation at all, unless you repute yourself such a loser" (2.3.261-3), but this assertion is absurd (though attractive), since reputation is by definition a social construct, concerned entirely with one's standing in the eyes of others. In fact, language and reality are always interactive, dependent upon social recognition; reputation is only a specially explicit instance. Meaning, communication, language work only because they are shared. If you invent your own language, no one else will understand you; if you persist, you will be thought mad. Iago is telling Cassio to disregard the social basis of language, to make up his own meanings for words; it is the more perverse because Iago is the great manipulator of the prevailing stories of his society.
Stephen Greenblatt has remarked how Othello's identity depends upon a constant performance of his
"story";2 when in difficulty, his immediate move is to rehearse his nobility and service to the state.
Actually, all the characters in Othello are telling stories, and to convince others even more than themselves. At the start, Iago and Roderigo are concocting a story - a sexist and racist story about how
Desdemona is in "the gross clasps of a lascivious Moor" (1.1.126). Brabantio believes this story and