>I Am Not What I Am<: Iago and Negative Transcendence

  • This chapter tackles the perennial critical conundrum of Iago’s motivation. Agreeing with Coleridge’s assessment of his >motiveless malignity,< it argues that all attempts to explain Iago’s character in terms of individual psychology prove inadequate and that he can be more satisfactorily understood by employing Fromm’s concept of >social character.< Iago is the prototype of early modern capitalist man who exhibits the >pathology of normalcy< and exemplifies three of Fromm’s four >unproductive orientations<—exploitative, hoarding, and marketing. Iago’s lack of a sense of self leads him to destroy rather than to create, and thus manifests the impulse for negative transcendence, or what Fromm terms necrophilia. As necrophilia is the most malignant form of the anal character, this analysis accounts for the pervasiveness of anal imagery in Othello, including in the speeches of the otherwise feeble Clown. Iago, neither devil nor human, is at once a product of his age and the quintessence of all those, from Caligula to Hitler, for whom madness is a way of life because they seek to transcend through destruction the limits of human existence.

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Metadaten
Author:Peter L. Rudnytsky
Parent Title (English):P. Rudnytsky: Formulated Experiences. Hidden Realities and Emergent Meanings from Shakespeare to Fromm, London and New York (Routledge) 2019, pp. 187-204.
Document Type:Articles
Language:English
Year of first Publication:2019
Release Date:2020/11/03
Format:to purchase via publisher
IdNo:Rudnytsky_P_L_2019i
Writings about Erich Fromm (Secondary Literature):Articles / Artikel
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Articles / Artikel
International Erich Fromm Society's Writings:Articles / Artikel
Licence (German):
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