The politics of minoritarian becomings: a Deleuzian approach to Macbeth and Othello

Abstract

This paper intends to bring together the plots of Shakespeare’s Othello and Macbeth through examining their leading Shakespearean figures under the light of Deleuzian thought. A Close study of the two texts reveals these two Shakespearean plays as sites for excessive barbarism recited in form of verbal achievements in which a series of minoritarian becomings/mutations take place to consequently dislocate and disturb the majoritarian tradition by depicting identities that are open to change and mutation, and to show the majoritarian system, along with its Oedipalizing forces, as unorganized and faulty. Findings indicate that in the two plays, the identities of the two leading characters of Macbeth and Othello undergo various stages of metamorphosis through which both try to form their temporary lines of flight and have their specific mode of liberation and deterritorialization from majoritarian forces that are dominant in either of the two hegemonic domains to which they belong. Also discussed is Shakespeare’s writing which, in this sense, qualifies as minor literature in that it depicts such a series of transformations and becomings against the long-held belief of stable identity, and lets the readers become one with the process of reading and hence challenge the identities that are forced upon them. © 2017, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary.