Beyond Historicism: Presentism, Subjectivity, Politics

Abstract

The article spells out the theory and practice of presentism, a ‘new kid on the theoretical block,’ and examines its implications for Shakespeare studies. It theorizes the critic as temporal mediator who owns up to constructing meaning. It investigates the politics of the vexed relationships among historicism, materialism, feminism, queer theory, and postcolonialism, exploring presentism as a way out of the theoretical thickets of recent years. The article theorizes the radical potentiality of adopting a presentist lens to analyze gender and queer issues in Shakespeare’s texts; in addition, it briefly explores the implications of presentism for postcolonial studies of Shakespeare. In opposition to historicist studies that theorize the subject as straitjacketed by manifestations of political, social, and economic power, presentism theorizes subjectivity as resistance. In opposition to ‘new materialist,’ or antiquarian, studies that drain politics out of Shakespeare’s texts, presentism (re)politicizes Shakespeare. The article offers several examples of presentism as an intervention on 400 years of theoretical and critical tradition.