![]() Hall explains these cultural anxieties, stating that the English associated fairness and whiteness with “Englishness” and blackness with the racial “other”: a black person could not be English. ![]() Hall asserts in her book Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England, “Best’s anecdotal evidence … articulat the cultural anxieties-about complexion, miscegenation … and, above all, ‘Englishness’-brought out by the presence of blacks” (Hall 11). Furthermore, his claim that the “infection” of the father’s blackness consumed the mother’s “fairness” and “good complexion” corroborates the belief that blackness had the potential to dominate whiteness. His use of the term “infection” suggests that black skin possesses both negative and contagious properties. (29)īest’s explanation for the cause of blackness, though no less erroneous than the hypothesis it seeks to disprove (that black skin comes from overexposure to the sun), reinforces the supposed inferiority of black skin and its potentially dominating qualities. I myself have seene an Ethiopian as black as cole brought into Englande, who taking a fair Englishe woman to Wife, begatte a Sonne in all respectes as blacke as the father was, although England were his native Countrey, and an English woman his Mother: whereby it seemeth this blacknesse proceedeth rather of some naturall infection of that man, which was so strong, that neyther the nature of the Clime, neyther the good complexion of the Mother concurring, coulde any thing alter, and therefore we cannot impute it to the nature of the Clime. Best, an English chronicler, includes the following anecdote in his 1578 book A True Discourse of the Late Voyages of Discouerie: Reports on Africa and Africans from the 16 th century reveal how stories regarding “the penetrating powers of blackness” fueled concerns about Europe’s “vulnerability” to outsiders and the consequences of miscegenation. In her paper on the role of cosmetics in the creation of racial identities in Renaissance England, Kimberly Poitevin suggests that Renaissance England’s “preoccupations with … the penetrating powers of blackness gesture toward a larger concern about the vulnerability of English or European borders to foreign goods and persons” (Poitevin 80). Therefore, Othello ventriloquizes racist discourses, but ultimately reveals the flawed nature of the societal order that such discourses and ideologies attempt to uphold or restore. These documents demonstrate how white men employed racist language to emphasize the otherness and inferiority of Africans, creating an ideological justification for their own superiority and thus maintaining societal order. In contrast , the play criticizes the racist and xenophobic ideologies of Renaissance England by associating them with the villain, Iago, an immoral and corrupt representative of white male identity. Moreover, according to these texts, such as George Best’s A True Discourse of the Late Voyages of Discouerie, miscegenation posed the worst threat since mixed children jeopardized white homogeneity and superiority. I suggest that Shakespeare’s Othello, more so than any of the plays D’Amico discusses, similarly sought to challenge the racial and xenophobic ideologies of its audience and, by extent, Renaissance England. My analysis of select examples of 16 th century discourse s on race and Africans illuminates the foundation of these racist and xenophobic ideologies, namely: since Renaissance England’s sense of social order demanded the supremacy of white men, any cultural space for black male empowerment seemed dangerous. In a chapter from his book The Moor in English Renaissance Drama, Jack D’Amico asserts that some Renaissance-era plays encouraged their predominantly white European audiences to reevaluate their own views on outsiders, particularly Africans, as well as the validity of their belief in their own superiority.
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