Shakespeare and the denial of territory : banishment, abuse of power and strategies of resistance

This book analyses three Shakespearean plays that mainly deal with abusive forms of banishment: King Richard II, Coriolanus and King Lear. These plays present with particular clarity the mechanism of the banishment proclamation and its consequences, that is, the dynamic of exclusion and its repercussions. Those repercussions may entail breaking the ban to come back illegally and seek revenge; devising strategies of deviation, such as disguise and change of identity; or resorting to mental subterfuges as a means of refuge. They may also lead to entropy – exhaustion, letting go or heartbreak. Each in its own way, they invite us to reflect upon the complex articulation between banishment and abuse of power, upon the strategies of resistance and displacement employed to shun or endure the painful experience of ‘deterritorialisation’; they put into play the dialectics of allegiance and disobedience, of fearlessly speaking and silencing, of endurance and exhaustion; they question both the legitimacy of power and the limits of human resistance. This study draws on French scholars in Shakespearean studies, and also on contemporary French historians, theorists, anthropologists, psychoanalysts, essayists and philosophers, who can help us read Shakespeare’s plays in our time. It thus takes into account some of the works of Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Gaston Bachelard, Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, Boris Cyrulnik and Emmanuel Housset. The hope is that their respective intellectual approaches will shed specific kinds of light on Shakespeare’s plays and initiate a fruitful dialogue with Anglo-Saxon criticism. Front Matter 2 Half Title Page 2 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 6 Acknowledgements 8 Introduction 10 Part 1 The dynamic of deterritorialisation in King Richard II, King Lear and Coriolanus 22 Swearing allegiance or questioning power 24 Abuse of power and banishment: from ‘effet de retour’ to unnaturalness 49 The talion effect: deterritorialisation for deterritorialisation 66 Part II The dynamic of riposte in King Richard II and Coriolanus 84 The politics of illegal return 86 The necessity of the ‘war machine’ 99 Alternatives to the ‘war machine’ 117 Part III The experience of internal(ised) exile in King Lear 134 Dissembling and avoiding banishment 136 Assuming otherness, or the spiral of degradation 151 Home as a foreign elsewhere 165 Part IV The dialectic of endurance and exhaustion in King Richard II and King Lear 180 Mental spaces and types of interiority 182 The limits of endurance and the signs of exhaustion 198 Maps of emotions 215 Conclusion 228 Bibliography 234 Index 245 This book examines three Shakespeare plays in which abusive banishment participates in a dialectics of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation ( King Richard II , King Lear and Coriolanus ). It draws on analyses by French philosophers (notably Deleuze and Foucault), so as to understand strategies of resistance when one is denied one’s territory. This book examines three Shakespeare plays in which abusive banishment participates in a dialectics of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation (King Richard II, King Lear and Coriolanus). It draws on analyses by French philosophers (notably Deleuze and Foucault), so as to understand strategies of resistance when one is denied one’s territory. -- .