Citizen-Saints: Shakespeare and Political Theology

Abstract

Drawing on what she terms the "messianic materialism" (5) of Walter Benjamin's The Origin of the German Tragic Drama (1927), Lupton tracks citizenship's "attempt to rezone the complex landscape of religious, etfrnic, sexual, and economic differences in terms of formal equality and due process" (10). Beginning with St. Paul's defense of his rights as a Roman citizen in the process of revising the covenant of circumcision as a foundational idea for die new religion of Christianity, citizenship is baptized in blood and sacrifice.

Julia Reinhard Lupton, Citizen-Saints: Shakespeare and Political Theology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Pp. xii + 277.

In her previous books - After Oedipus (Cornell, 1993) and Afterlives of the Saints (Stanford, 1 996) - Julia Reinhard Lupton has juxtaposed early modern literature and religious thought with contemporary theoretical concerns. In a similar vein, and building on her religious interests in Afterlives, Citizen-Saints tackles neoliberal aspirations of universal citizenship and a modern interest in political theology, a topic tfrat has recently been taken up by Deborah Shuger and Oliver Arnold, among others. Drawing on what she terms the "messianic materialism" (5) of Walter Benjamin's The Origin of the German Tragic Drama (1927), Lupton tracks citizenship's "attempt to rezone the complex landscape of religious, etfrnic, sexual, and economic differences in terms of formal equality and due process" (10). As we might expect, the results are not always pretty. Beginning with St. Paul's defense of his rights as a Roman citizen in the process of revising the covenant of circumcision as a foundational idea for die new religion of Christianity, citizenship is baptized in blood and sacrifice.

Lupton's "citizen-saint" encompasses the modalities of civic naturalization, religious fellowship, executive states of emergency, and what Heidegger calls "mere life," or extra-political and extra-social existence. She offers readings of St. Paul, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Twelfth Night, and The Tempest, as well as chapters on The Jew of Malta and Samson Agonistes (plus a reading of Sophocles' Antigone in her Twelfth Night chapter). In her opening chapter on St. Paul, perhaps the best in the book, she traces the effect of Paul's new covenant, which elevates internal spirit over external law, on understandings of Judaism as merely particular and tribal. Paul's covenant, by contrast, constructs Christianity as a "naturalized . . . purely legal . . . identity" (37). She then turns to Marlowe's Jew of Malta, which she reads as a discourse on the fragmentary nature of civil community: Jews live in a state of internal exile but they are also allowed to cultivate new forms of association based on the model of the theater itself (71). Barabas must "die out of citizenship," scorning the Christian community that has refused him entrance. Shylock, by contrast, is pressured to leave his particular religion behind for the promise of Venetian mercantile society. Shakespeare's depiction of the Jew in Merchant of Venice confirms the Pauline discourse that situates Jews as historical precursors who make space for the later community. Shylock rebels within the play to the degree that his literalism in his bond witfr Antonio - his insistence on the pound of flesh rather than the money that is owed to him - reasserts the literal nature of circumcision (92).

Shylock emerges as the (anti)hero of Citizen-Saints, an "exemplar of modern citizenship and its discontents" (9). Lupton views his conversion to Christianity as not "forced" so much as nominal and empty, a mere procedural offer of corporate privilege (101). Portia's Christian universalism cannot reconcile this loss of self evident in Shylock's response to die court, suggesting that Shakespeare himself must employ a rather conventional mode of romance in order to reconcile the multiple communities - and varied citizen-saints - in the play. She reads Odiello as a converted Turk whose suicide ironically fulfills Paul's directive of circumcision through the heart. This reading puts her at odds with recent accounts of the play by Ania Loomba, Kim Hall, and Emily Bartels, whom Lupton regards as too reductive in their view of religion. Ironically, Lupton's revision aligns her more closely with the position of G. K. Hunter in his famous essay on the play. But she suggests that Othello, like Shylock, highlights the tension between ethnos and démos, between nativism and legal identity. Both plays emphasize the costs of citizenship rather than their benefits.

In chapter 5, Antigone is the prototype of the heroine who must die into citizenship, one answered by the figure of Isabella in Measure for Measure, who marries into it. Yet Antigone seems a bit out of place in this discussion, as do Caliban and Samson Agonistes in later chapters. Lupton claims a "new universalism" in The Tempest in which all humans are "creatures" or non-human, thus posing an exception to their own species identity. But this is perhaps to stretch the concept of citizenship in unhelpful ways. She reads Milton's Samson as an outline of non-state forms of sovereignty since Samson, a biblical judge, acts outside of any political jurisdiction (184). But to compare his status as "creature" to that of Caliban requires us to diminish Samson's specificity as a character.

In her epilogue, Lupton affirms the idea of citizenship as a more promising hermeneutic than "culture" for approaching the links between literature and society. She offers a "manifesto for the humanities" that urges universities to make a space for literature and citizenship as a theme for collaborative projects and seminars to remedy an "insufficiency of civic discourse" (208) (in America, presumably, though she doesn't say). No one who is committed to the study of literature can afford to ignore Lupton's manifesto, yet this reader at least remained unclear how the bulk of the book achieves the kind of resynthesization of humanities that she praises. I share her desire to wrest the discourse of citizenship away from politicians and technocrats in order to emphasize the civic dimension of literary study, but questions remain about the relationship between the literature of citizenship and the citizenship of literary study, including questions of authorial identity, canonicity, and the complexities of the manner in which a "literary" work represents itself to the broader world.