Trust and Suspicion: Gabriel Josipovici on Shakespeare and Modernity

Résumé

The aim of this paper is to present Gabriel Josipovici’s seminal publication On Trust: Art and the Temptation of Suspicion (1999) as a valuable contribution to the contemporary affective debate and the post-postmodernist undoubting perspective. An eminent British novelist, playwright and critic, Josipovici attempts in his study to characterise pre-modern cultures and the modern world in terms of contrastive emotional attitudes of trust and suspicion. This article seeks to present the part of Josipovici’s extended discussion which pertains to the crucial phase in modern history when the feeling of suspicion began to gain intensity; hence the concentration on the moment of transition, the advent of modernity in the Renaissance and the way Shakespeare’s plays thematise the tension between trust and suspicion in the face of the tenets of humanism and Protestantism. Additionally, the presentation of the central idea of On Trust is aided with references to Josipovici’s other publications such as Writing and the Body (1982), The Book of God (1988), What Ever Happened to Modernism? (2010) and Hamlet: Fold on Fold (2016) in order to show the author’s concern with the interplay in culture of trust and suspicion as informing his entire critical thought.