Re-thinking Vulnerability and Resilience through a Psychosocial Reading of Shakespeare

Abstract

Resilience has become a prominent signifier in public discourse over the last decade. Its use abounds in advertising, across academic disciplines and, particularly, in the policy documents of Western governments.¹ As the use of the term multiplies, its meaning seems to shrink. The logic that underpins the use of the term resilience in academic, advertising and policy discourses positions the rational, enlightened,² normal ‘I’ against the uncontrollable, malefic and hazily defined ‘it’. Resilience has come to signify the binary opposite of vulnerability: the ability to shore oneself (or one’s community) up against attack from the other, from nature, or from socio-economic crisis, coupled with the redoubtable ability to bounce back and resume normality after that attack has happened.³ The event itself now seems inevitable. The reasons for ‘our’ vulnerability to that event are generally unproblematized, as is the hurt we experience as a result of that event, and the relationship between the normality we resume and the way that we anticipate future events.