Spatial Politics in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Abstract

This article examines the notion of spatial politics in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The two courtiers enter the politically convulsive world of Hamlet, where no legitimate power structure takes hold of the state. Their regularized political rationality ceases to apply to the world; reality violates the empirical knowledge — emplacements, geographical and spiritual directions, and generally identity — of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The previously defined functions of places, or heterotopias (in Foucauldian terms), are in a state of abeyance. Therefore, they are lost in the midst of the unknown sets of spatial relations; any sorts of intentional act evade them; and they die and vanish absurdly in a placeless place.

Keywords

• tom stoppard
• rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead
• spatial politics
• power structure
• identity
• heterotopias