Bond, Jew's Bond: Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

Welcome back dear listener!

5 Star Tossers grudgingly presents: Shakespeare's 1596 play The Merchant of Venice! And boy do the grudges flow in this one: Marx, Jew, Woman, Lacan... even Peggy Kamuf and Beyoncé were pretty miffed by the end there.

Capitalism is of course (grudgingly) on the table, since both place and time are almost unanimously hailed as the cradle of global capitalism. But Christianity too, insofar as the play deals in the lives, loves, hatreds and pains of those that lived-out these realities in the context of Renaissance Europe (that just recently discovered Protestantism). The Jew -- by a necessity not of his making -- occupies an important structural support for the entire edifice as a money lender for expensive,  trust-unto-God's-mercy Capitalist ventures that involve Europe's colonial plundering of the rest of the world. The need for usury, for someone to bear the actual burden of risk, is prevalent, but no less "spiritually" reviled for it; perhaps even more.
As you can see (notwithstanding Andrew's totally phoning-in the summary) this one was less dumb than the  last one!
(you should really ask yourselves who is writing these blurbs at this point)..

Jake shows how Shakespeare, in his subtle brilliance, calls upon the agency of the merchant and muses about the spirit of mercy, and how -- not coincidentally, if near-obliviously -- the two words come from a single etymological source.
Alicia for her part spies a pervert in Shylock's insistence on the Letter of the Law (refusing the fantasy of "mercantile mercy"). Sagi wants to ossify everything, as per usual, in Jewish Law, and foreground how Christianity is only able to sustain its fantasy through foreclosing upon it, a denial of real-world stakes (and suffering) that underwrites Shylock's insistence on the flesh.
We all agreed that the flesh in this case represents the real, a remainder of the  Christian-Capitalist "mercy-fantasy" that sticks in its throat ; something irreversible, that, unlike money, cannot be redeemed or reconciled.
Put your flesh where your mouth is, mothafucka'! Then you'll see how easy you had it when it was just "money"...

There were many more strands that our attentive listener can pull on, like the place and role of women in the play (and in masculine structures of property and power, like Dowry and Marriage); the use of "fair" and its white-Christian "implications" (or, as Sagi puts it, an axiom), where the Jew's demand for fairness is never as "fair" (or as felicitous) as the Christian man's; or the vagaries of Christian "fraternity," as the love between Antonio and Bassanio is shown -- again with subtle brilliance -- to be the strongest love in the play (and the world it takes place in). And there's also the origin story for this podcast, and our podcast in general...
So we hope you forgive the length of this one which is almost 2 hours long.

Stars that were tossed include: Marx Grudge; Beast and Sovereign; Pervs 'R Us; and of course WWJD. Plus tard, Lyotard...