Je suis Shakespeare: The Making of Shared Identities in France and Europe in Crisis

Nicole Fayard

doi:10.18778/2083-8530.19.02

Authors

Nicole Fayard University of Leicester, UK

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.19.02

Keywords:

Shakespeare in France, Eric Ruf, Jérôme Hankins, Cultural production and social change, European crisis, Heterotopia, Shakespeare myth, Postcolonialism

Abstract

This essay investigates the ways in which Shakespearean production speaks to France and wider European crises in 2015 and 2016. The Tempest and Romeo and Juliet were directed by Jérôme Hankins and Eric Ruf respectively in December 2015 and reflected significant contemporaneous issues, including: (1) two Paris terrorist attacks which sent shock waves throughout France and Europe; (2) the belief that shared identities were under threat; (3) concerns over shifting power dynamics in Europe. The portrayal of these issues and their reception bring into question the extent to which cultural productions can help to promote social change or shape perceptions of national and pan-European events. This essay focuses on whether the plays successfully complicate binary narratives around cultural politics in a context of crises by creating alternative representations of difference and mobilities. It concludes that appropriating Shakespeare’s cultural authority encourages some degree of public debate. However, the function of Shakespeare’s drama remains strongly connected to its value as an agent of cultural, political and commercial mobility, ultimately making it difficult radically to challenge ideologies.

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Author Biography

Nicole Fayard, University of Leicester, UK

Nicole Fayard is Associate Professor of French at the University of Leicester. Her research interests focus on the politics of the performance, translation and remediation of Shakespeare in France and Europe, with particular reference to cultural memory and transnational identities. Her numerous publications in this field include The Performance of Shakespeare in France since the Second World War: Re-Imagining Shakespeare (Mellen 2006) and Comparative Drama: Over His Dead Body (2016) co-edited with Erica Sheen. Her other research interests focus on the history and politics of gender violence and trauma, social movements and feminist activism in contemporary France. She published Speaking Out. Women Healing From the Trauma of Violence in 2014.

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