Da Shylock alla ‘génération beure’ alla ‘culture banlieue’. Identità lacerate, emarginazione e incomunicabilità tra conflitti e cliché

Abstract

Abstract – The main antagonist of the play The Merchant of Venice , Shylock is one of Shakespeare’s most famous yet controversial characters, an incarnation of the stereotype of the zealous, cruel Jew while at the same time being a tragic outsider figure who is censured by society. From this perspective, Shylock embodies the paradigm of otherness, the foreign immigrant, someone ‘different’ who provokes fear and distrust. The phenomenon of migration has greatly impacted the French context, the latter being our object of interest in this paper. It is here that, in the 1980s, the ‘Beur generation’ gained national visibility. The word beur denominates a generation of young people, the children of North African immigrants, who were born or raised in France but do not feel deeply French. They claim a space for themselves, enjoying citizenship rights, yet without renouncing their own specificities. Their torn identities are expressed in ‘Beur literature’, which focuses on these individuals condemned to a state of inclusion/exclusion, a permanent ‘in-between’ status. Writing represents a literary, political and identity act, an authentic account as well as a denunciation of the problematic issues of exile, discrimination and difficulties of adaptation. During the ’90s, the notion of ‘Beur culture’ gave way to ‘suburban culture’ ( culture banlieue ), an expression used to label unfavorable, borderline groups excluded from the center of the city and attributed insulting, discriminatory nicknames. In summary, even more than 400 years later, Shylock can be considered a modern-day character and a symbol of human beings with all their conflicts and complexities. By conveying themes of incommunicability, marginalization and racism, Shakespeare’s plays maintain their universality even in present times, where the detrimental rhetoric of “us against them” may still prevail, and where demonizing or directing hate towards groups of people considered inferior or less human than others continues to exist.