Tactics of the Excluded: Barabas, Shylock, and the Illusion of Social Mobility

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative analysis of Barabas in The Jew of Malta by Christopher Marlowe and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare who seek to achieve a social mobility in the orders that assign a status of outsiders to them being Christian dominated. Despite both having an extensive capital of the economic type, neither can be transformed into the symbolic capital or social legitimacy, since exclusion is enforced systematically in terms of religious identity. Taking its point of departure in the works of Pierre Bourdieu (capital) and Michel de Certeau (tactics vs. strategies), the discussion compares the highly improvisational and generally destructive actions of Barabas and the largely institution-facing appeals of Shylock. Barabas welcomes the opportunities in periphery, making use of deceit and vengeance; Shylock asserts his right according to the contract, only to be shown that even law is structured according to hegemonic ideology. Close readings of their texts reveal how their narrative arcs mobilize early modern anxieties of money, citizenship and order, wealth-without-status foments volatility, and procedural belief proves ineffective when rules determine who can address the world as an authentic speaker. This paper holds that the two plays explore the boundaries of the promise of meritocracy when it is part of an exclusive system. When convertible symbolic capital does not exist no tactics or strategies are able to provide durable status, and instead both implode under the pressures of the system, which congeals identity and patrols the borders of power.