“Decolonizing Shakespeare” Part Of Ongoing Assault On Western Civilization

“Decolonizing Shakespeare” Part Of Ongoing Assault On Western Civilization

Thankfully, events like this are still a scandal: William Shakespeare’s birthplace Stratford-upon-Avon announced it will decolonize itself, conceding that the Renaissance maverick promotes white supremacy. Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust, the NGO based in the playwright’s hometown where it’s charged with safeguarding his legacy, unveiled a new program aimed to “create a more inclusive museum experience”.

The initiative is based on an investigation launched in 2022:

The research argues that European culture was forced to become the world standard for high art via “colonial inculcation” and that Shakespeare was deployed as a symbol of “British cultural superiority”.

The researchers declared that such a narrative was harmful and urged the trust to stop referring to the playwright as the “greatest” writer and encouraged them to say that he was part of a group of “equal and different” international authors.

The idea that arts and literature have to be decolonized is only tangentially related to actual decolonization or the process by which colonies liberate themselves from former imperial masters. But forsaking the Western classics in the lands that produced them is the agenda pushed mainly by prominent descendants of the formerly colonial subjects to curtail and dismantle the cultural excellence of our civilization. Launched in the 1970’s, it takes place mostly within the European and American institutions.

The late Egyptian American Columbia professor Edward Said is the key figure in the cultural decolonization movement. A literature professor, Said examined Western masterpieces not on their own merit but in terms of power relationship with the Arab world, positioning himself as a representative of it. Having spent most of his life in the West, he saw it as his objective not to change the culture of former colonies — as, for instance, when Estonia rid itself of Russian influences — but of his host.

Decolonizing Shakespeare has been an ongoing project since the late 20th century. Multicultural — and later woke academics — argued that, on one hand, the appeal of the Bard is far from universal and is only a function of European cultural hegemony. On the other hand, even though he died in 1616, before the British colonial expansion had begun in earnest, and had little interest in overseas military adventures, Shakespeare nevertheless enabled the relatively brief period of European territorial conquest. How so?

To this end, Said, who self-identified as a Palestinian —  which is of a Roman, and later a British and a Soviet imperial construct — argued in his enormously influential 1979 book Orientalism, that the Orient is a Western cultural construct used to create harmful stereotypes and justify imperialism. That construct was built out of literary characters like Shakespeare’s Othello. In 1993 Culture and Imperialism, Said proposed that teaching Shakespeare in colonial schools was used as a tool of oppression. Although like many other Arab elites, Said was a fan of the Renaissance genius, he made a name for himself by elevating group grievances above personal tastes.

By the end of the Cold War, this kind of politicized critique had thoroughly infected academia. As pervasive and well-funded as it still remains, the popularity of decolonization among the American public has always been marginal. In the 1990’s, for instance, the hottest public intellectual was Camille Paglia who reemphasized the individuality of the artist, along with aesthetic and psychological considerations, over geopolitical power plays.

It’s worth mentioning that Paglia’s graduate advisor and intellectual influence, the Yale literary critic Harold Bloom, was one of the leading champions of Shakespeare. Bloom’s own work was dedicated to enhancing our appreciation of English language poetry, focusing towards the end of his life on Jewish religious tradition. Nevertheless, the canon continued to be stripped of important artists, attempting to replace them with random contemporary titles, but in reality, leaving gaping holes.

In the aftermath of the George Floyd riots, monuments to the greats fell and every single feature of Western civilization was up for decolonization. That included fields like math that are ostensibly not open to interpretation. Some decolonizers even went as far as to argue that 2+2 is 5. At that time, multiple Shakespeare projects, including the Globe Theater in London, went woke, jeopardizing the legacy of the poet who was now to be seen as racist and sexist. For instance,

Writing in School Library Journal, Amanda MacGregor, a Minnesota-based librarian, bookseller and freelance journalist, asked why teachers were continuing to include Shakespeare in their classrooms.

‘Shakespeare’s works are full of problematic, outdated ideas, with plenty of misogyny, racism, homophobia, classism, anti-Semitism and misogynoir,’ she wrote, with the last word referring to a hatred of black women.

Dating back to 2022, the woke project at Shakespeare Birth Trust came out of that environment.

Because the great playwright provides Anglophone civilization with a source of pride, dismantling Western political power necessitates an attack on his legacy. He is one of the few great men still left standing in the Western canon — and even then he’s hardly taught appropriately. For instance, most students in California public schools don’t encounter Shakespeare until their high school years. In high school, they typically read one play a year — not bad, considering that not much is left of the classics. Yet although many students like him, more needs to be done to ease teenagers’ familiarity with Elizabethan English — and enjoyment of his work. If a 21st-century Shakespeare museum feels the need to justify its existence, it should set the pace for reconnecting the new generation with their heritage, not self-flagellation on account of white supremacy or some other idea that did not exist in the writer’s time.

Moreover, with all the talk about Orientalism and settler-colonialism, we are forgetting that there is nothing uniquely Western about either stereotyping or imperial conquest. Yet Occidentalism feels like a strange idea and the fact that the Dome of the Rock mosque sits on top of the altar of Solomon’s temple is not mentioned in polite society.

Not that Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust needs to be entangled in any of these issues. Its role is to popularize timeless works of art, not OpEd writing. Nor should it invite the descendants of former colonial subjects to bring up their grievances against imperial capitals.

Of course, Shakespeare isn’t the only author worth celebrating, but he is one of the greats. As I mentioned above, so far we have been unable to replace our classics — and the fact that no alternative exists suggests the Western canon emerged for a reason.

Moreover, there is something deeply insecure about the efforts to diminish it. Decolonizers themselves enjoy the art from which they want to alienate the first world. They know it’s excellent, but insist on diminishing it in our eyes, depriving the West of its history and with it the source of purpose and hope for the future. It’s demoralizing.

Lastly, if the former colonial subjects would like to champion their own standards of excellence, that’s their prerogative. They can teach it in their own countries and they can tell the world about it. None of it suggests that the Anglosphere should ditch Shakespeare.

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.