EXPLAIN THE NEW HISTORICISTS THEORY OF POWER-SUBVERSION-CONTAINMENT IN RELATION TO

SHAKESPEAREAN STUDIES

New historicist critical studies on Shakespeare evolve around three main concepts: “ideology”, “discourse”
and “power”. In his essay “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”(1970) Louis Althusser develops the
concept of “ideology” that will be widely used by new historicists. According to Althusser’s theory, human
subjects are all modelled by ideology, which is the result of the immense social influence of what Althusser
calls Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA). For example, the educational, religious, political, legal or cultural
systems of every social organization are considered ISA that exert a great influence on all its subjects. Also,
the family and the mass media are ISA that shape the way a human subject thinks, behaves and even feels.
Think, for example of the way women are treated in Afghanistan and in England. The set of values that ISA
transmit in England radically differs from the one conveyed by ISA in Afghanistan. This fact sets up the
origin of the completely different situations of women in both countries.But how is such transmission
conveyed?

Through language, that is, through discourse. Every ISA makes use of a very specific ideological discourse,
that is, it selects a certain sets of ideas which are expressed through a carefully selected language aimed
to serve the purposes of the dominant classes and maintain the status quo. Consequently, though we
have the illusion that we have been free to choose our ideas and values, the fact is that they have all been
imposed on us since we were born. What we consider as natural on most occasions is just culturally
constructed by discourse, by language. Think, for example, the way your family, the social organization in
which you have been raised, or the religious and political thoughts you have been transmitted have shaped
your views and values.

As we have said, ideological discourse always serves the interest of those who try to rule and subdue.
That is, discourse and power are closely related. But in order to understand the way new historicists use
the term “power” we have to go back to Foucault’s idea of the “microphysics of power”. That is, to
Foucault, power is not just wielded by dominating institutions such as the family, the school, the church,
the state, or the mass media. Power, for Foucault, is everywhere. That is, it can also be found in those
marginal, silenced and repressed areas of society that, through an oppositional discourse, that is, the one
that contradicts and alters the status quo, transgress the ruling discourse.Foucault also represents the
theory of subversion-containment that will be later developed by new historicists. He considers that the
moments of resistance to the ruling discourse are provoked by authority. That is, Foucault regards that
resistance is necessary for power to be consolidated. Once defiance to the dominant class is carried out,
its containment will emphasise the supremacy of authority. But even though authority is reaffirmed after
rebellion is crushed. Foucault believes that resistance always brings about a change in society.
New historicists consider that, since power is everywhere, it is also in the literary texts, and consider
Elizabethan drama as a cultural discourse and a site of power during the early modern period. For
Tillyard, an Elizabethan drama was viewed as a mirror of historical facts, as an objective reflection of what
he considered the Elizabethan world picture. Consequently, to the critic there was a clear differentiation
between history and literature, the latter was the reflection of the former. However, for new historicists,
such a binary is dismantled since the literary text is an active part in the construction of history. In order
to understand such an idea we have to take into account the new historicist definition of history. For
Tillyard, there was just one history, that is, the history narrated by the Elizabethan ruling class, by a
dominating discourse that portrays a society ruled by a divine and monarchic authority. However, new
historicism brings to light all types of discourses: the dominant, the emergent, the residual, and the
oppositional discourses. For new historicism history is then multiple and not unified, and it is a
convergence of various social discourses embedded within historical, religious, political, educational or
cultural narratives.

New historicists consider that, within the cultural discourse, Shakespearean plays, especially the history
plays, function as a site of power in which the Foucauldian theory of subversion-containment is clearly
represented. According to American new historicists such as Greenblatt, the ideological stance of
Shakespeare’s plays clearly reinforces the status quo, that is, the supremacy of the monarchy. Form a
cultural materialist point of view, critics such as Dollimore consider that his plays also represent clear
challenges to Elizabethan dominant and monarchic discourses.