Patrick Gray
Shakespeare and Henri Lefebvre's 'Right to the City': Subjective Alienation and Mob Violence in Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and 2 Henry VI
Gray, Patrick; Samely, Maurice
Authors
Maurice Samely
Abstract
In his treatise The Right to the City, published in Paris just before the student riots of 1968, Henri Lefebvre claims that inhabitants have a ‘right to the city’ which supersedes the rights of property owners and advocates ‘re-appropriation’ of the city, resulting in ‘collective ownership and management of space’. Lefebvre’s radical proposals inspired his students to take more direct action, and present-day movements such as the Occupy protests continue to cite his concept of ‘the right to the city’ as their inspiration. Shakespeare for his part, however, in his history plays presents what amounts to a nightmare counterpoint to Lefebvre’s dream. In 2 Henry VI, an analogue of ‘the right to the city’ appears as might be called ‘the right to the commons’. Far from bringing about any kind of ‘concrete utopia’, however, the Jack Cade Rebellion quickly degenerates into horrifying bloodshed. In Julius Caesar and Coriolanus, Shakespeare again presents what seems to be point-for-point opposition to anarchic populism such as Lefebvre’s. Shakespeare and Lefebvre share some important common ground, however, in their sense that mob violence is a response to subjective alienation, distinct from any more objective deprivation. Within the Hegelian tradition, Charles Taylor, Francis Fukuyama, and Axel Honneth have written extensively on the desire for recognition as an engine of political conflict. Violence is not always coldly calculating, but instead, spurred on by an emotion: indignation. More than any material change in what Marx would call the ‘conditions of production’, Shakespeare’s peasants and plebeians want to be recognized as worthy of respect; in the language of Coriolanus, they want their ‘voices’ to be heard. Riots and rebellions are their way of protecting that right.
Citation
Gray, P., & Samely, M. (2019). Shakespeare and Henri Lefebvre's 'Right to the City': Subjective Alienation and Mob Violence in Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and 2 Henry VI. Textual Practice, 33(1), 73-98. https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236x.2017.1310755
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Oct 20, 2016 |
Online Publication Date | Apr 12, 2017 |
Publication Date | Jan 31, 2019 |
Deposit Date | Oct 24, 2016 |
Publicly Available Date | Oct 12, 2018 |
Journal | Textual Practice |
Print ISSN | 0950-236X |
Electronic ISSN | 1470-1308 |
Publisher | Taylor and Francis Group |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 33 |
Issue | 1 |
Pages | 73-98 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236x.2017.1310755 |
Files
Accepted Journal Article
(343 Kb)
PDF
Copyright Statement
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Textual Practice on 12 April 2017 available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/0950236X.2017.1310755
You might also like
Shakespeare versus Aristotle: Anagnorisis, Repentance, and Acknowledgment
(2019)
Journal Article
Seduced by Romanticism: Re-Imagining Shakespearean Catharsis
(2018)
Book Chapter
Shakespeare and War: Honor at the Stake
(2018)
Journal Article
Shakespeare, William
(2017)
Book Chapter
Downloadable Citations
About Durham Research Online (DRO)
Administrator e-mail: dro.admin@durham.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2024
Advanced Search