Social Abjection in Edward Bond’s Bingo: A Historicist Approach

Bingo is a historical play written by the contemporary British playwright Edward Bond. In Bingo, Bond depicts England at the initiation of capitalism in Shakespeare’s time. However, Bond’s main objective is to reflect the socio-political problems of his own society on the brink of Thatcherite era. The play stages the disenfranchised population of the capitalist England and the ways they become abject by the new-established capitalism. In Bingo, abjection and marginalization of the poor go hand in hand. The symbolic abject character in Bingo is an unnamed woman, a prostitute and tramp, who is hanged brutally. Therefore, in this article, Bingo is analysed by social abjection theory put forth in Imogen Tyler’s Revolting Subjects. According to Tyler, the disenfranchised have always been considered as abject populations in Britain’s capitalist society. They are behaved as non-citizens or stateless within the state and this trend has continued to our day. Thus, his article tries to analyze Bond’s historicist approach in Bingo in order to study Bond’s depiction of social abjection in British society during its history.