Reflexive reading toward a pedagogy of alterity

Multicultural Education, Fall 2001 by Schechet, Nita, Kohn, Ayelet

Otherness, within and wi hoL4, is constantly renegotiated by individuals and cultures, an inherent part of their self-fashioning. We aim to view evolving approaches towards otherness in modern Western culture through analysis of the intertextual relation between Shakespeare's 16th-century play, The Merchant of Venice, and Rafi Bukaee's 20th-century film,Avanti Popolo. So doing, we locate ourselves generically within Stephen Greenblatt's concept of "a poetics of culture...a study of the collective making of distinct cultural practices and inquiry into the relations among these practices" (1988: 5).

Briefly, our thesis considers a possible pedagogy of alterity, looking at two texts in their representations of otherness in light of Seyla Benhabib's insightful conception of generalized and concretized otherness (1992). The Merchant of Venice represents a tactic of incorporation and a concept of generalized otherness in its forced conversion of Shylock (an interesting element of Shylock's sentence, as coerced conversion was "contrary to predominant Christian tradition" in Shakespeare's cultural milieu (Gross 1992:91)). Here conflict with the other is resolved by incorporation, both in the characterization of Shylock and that of his daughter Jessica.

The 20th-century Israeli film Avanti Popolo, using an Egyptian soldier quoting Shylock to Israeli soldiers in the Sinai desert, all making their way home immediately following the1967 war, also offers an interesting look at modes of relation. While retaining the binarism of Shakespeare's Christian resolution, this late 20th-century Jewish perspective is less optimistic. Genre has shifted from comedy to tragedy, the comic resolution of multiple marriage Merchant replaced by a tragic resolution of multiple deaths.

Finally, we briefly consider in this context the integration of philosophy and Freudian psychoanalysis offered by Jonathan Lear (1990), where accepting responsibility for the otherness within us is part of a lifelong process of individuation, thereby suggesting an alternative mode for relating to otherness wherever located.

Our argument has, we hope, practical implications for educators. It is our intention to offer this dialogic reading as a suggestive pedagogical strategy which aspires to promote personal growth and social agency and change through attentive, informed, reflective, and reflexive reading. In this, we align ourselves with educators who use the classroom to combat "the culture's urge to agnosis: the terrifying desire not to know...the multiple and conflicting realities of our complex society" (Moglen 1996: 211-212; see also Spacks 1996).

Intertextual reading (such as this look at an Elizabethan drama together with a contemporary Israeli film which quotes it) is a methodology that we amplify here by writing interactively in a co-authored text, a collaboration tellingly undervalued in the humanities, though lively and even fundamental in other sciences.

The focus of our analysis of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice (c. 1596-7) is on the conclusive moment where Antonio's trial for debt default turns into Shylock's sentencing as an alien for threatening the life of a Venetian:

Resolution of this conflict, with Shylock's choice of death or Christianity, enables a return to the romantic comedy plot, and is followed by the comic resolution of the play and its several marriages. This plot shift, whereby Antonio's trial becomes Shylock's, is founded on jurisprudential otherness legitimized in Shakespeare's Venice. Shylock has been granted the literal terms of his contract, his pound of Antonio's flesh, only if he can convert the literal into the actual, i.e., no loss of blood and an exact pound (no more, no less) of flesh. Thwarted in his desired revenge, Shylock is then detained by it. Venetian law defines threatening the life of a citizen as a capital offense when the source of the threat is a legally defined alien (IV.i.342352). Shylock, as Jew, is an alien in his hometown, and it is this status that facilitates the dramatic turnabout, putting the plaintiff on the defense. Furthermore, it seems that Shylock had no perception of himself as at risk, initiating enforcement of his bond at his own expense (111. 1.99). What is the source of Shylock's potentially lethal blindness to the risk he is taking by calling for his bond?

Shylock's belief in legal recourse stems from his awareness ofthe commercial foundations of Venetian jurisprudence; he is blind to the narrowness of that foundation. The Merchant of Venice can be read as offering a representation of an exemplary capitalist society, where contractual obligations are strictly honored in the interests of capital gain. As Antonio himself recognizes:

Venetian law gives alien and citizen equal status only in commercial law, and Shylock, at the greatest personal cost, fails to perceive the limitation of that equality and the power relations it preserves.

One can read Shylock's professional usury as respected by the play, as part ofthe success of this Venetian society, a tool enabling people to risk interaction outside familial or tribal bonds; and "the contract has the same valuable function as usury insofar as it allows the establishment of safeguarded relationships between strangers who would otherwise not be able or willing to interact" (Kaplan, 2000: 349). In M. Lindsay Kaplan's reading, Portia and Shylock both use the law "to protect their independence from forces that would work to nullify it", though Portia