Shakespeare, Authority, Sexuality: Unfinished Business in Cultural Materialism (review)

While the subtitle's phrase unfinished business suggests a score-settling polemic, Alan Sinfield's most recent book instead presents a measured "reassessment" of the legacy of cultural materialist scholarship (5). He notes that the term cultural materialism comes from Raymond Williams and that it emerged in the 1980s in Britain as both an alternative to American New Historicism and a critique of older "idealist" traditions in literary studies (4). Sinfield's previous work figures prominently in this tradition. His introductory chapter begins with a reply to his Sussex colleague Andrew Hadfield's accusation in 2003 that cultural materialism had become "ossified, predictable, and institutionalized" (1). Sinfield replies that cultural materialism remains defined by "its eagerness to take up problems, rather than suppress them" (6). He then rigorously applies a revitalized "dominant-emergent" cultural paradigm, defined by fissures within a "dominant ideology" (10, his emphasis), to Hadfield's recent historicist reading of early modern "republicanism," thus showing not only that Sinfield thinks his Marxist-inflected way of reading is still viable, but also that it enables him to joust effectively with newer voices and their methodologies. As the introduction continues, he reclaims critical terms like authorship, reading "against the grain," resistance to the claims of literature as an ideal, and (most productively for the remainder of the book) the social construction of gender.

These defenses of cultural materialism as a set of reading practices generate some lively and informed readings across a range of early modern texts. Highlights include an attack on the conservative politics of "literary history," which Sinfield pointedly terms "a version of pastoral" (39); persuasive gender-based readings of The Merchant of Venice and the lyric poems of Sidney, Barnfield, Marlowe, and Shakespeare; and a stirring reading of Measure for Measure in the context of homosexuality and the legal system. His conclusion admits that "cultural materialism does not claim one true mode of reading" (198) and reaffirms his commitment to a criticism informed by "mistrust of authority," which he places squarely in contemporary political context (199).

At times the book has a greatest-hits feel — six of the eleven chapters have been published previously, at least in part — but in all it comprises a substantial display of what a sensitive reader can do with the tools of cultural materialism. Sinfield, however, is not merely showing off the critical trophies of a career spent hunting early modern game. Alongside his measured tone lurk pointed jabs at emerging trends in early twenty-first century scholarship, including Hadfield's historicism, Jonathan Bate's interest in neurological responses to works of art, and Ewan Fernie's turn to religion. Sinfield also addresses several critical schools that emerged alongside his own, including a rival materialism (associated with onetime cultural materialist Peter Stallybrass, among others) that focuses on objects as objects, Terence Hawkes's "presentism" (21), and Eve Sedgwick's queer theory. His responses to these critics are judicious, and he often finds a way to make use of their work. But his implication throughout is that these methodologies work best within the big tent of cultural materialism. By insisting that his critical project remains "unfinished," Sinfield keeps the focus on the ways of reading (and political commitments) championed by his generation. It may seem unfair to complain that he neglects newer strains in early modern studies: ecologically-inflected criticism; new developments in genre, audience, and performance studies; postcolonial theories of history and empire; histories of urban culture; and the early modern publishing industry. To the extent that the present critical moment seems uneasily poised among multiple paradigms, Sinfield's rearticulation of the strengths of cultural materialism reminds us that this methodology still has some kick left.