Monstrous Indigeneity and the Discourse of Race in Shakespeare’s England

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines the intersections and distinctions between the fields of critical race studies and critical Indigenous studies regarding the study of Shakespeare’s works. In recent decades critics have become increasingly aware of the issue of race within Shakespeare studies and have also explored the place of colonialism within the same context, but what has come to be known as critical Indigenous studies has only recently become part of the broader discourse in early modern literary studies. ‘Race’ in the early modern era depended largely on descent and culture (i.e. language and religion), whereas ‘Indigeneity’, as we use the term now, did not exist. Its closest intellectual cognate would have been ‘native inhabitant’. With the rise of early modern imperialism came the establishment of settler colonialism, and I argue that a racialized notion of monstrosity was deployed to abrogate Indigenous sovereignty and dispossess them of their territories. Caliban, like other Indigenous figures, must first be rendered monstrous in order to legitimize European conquest and rule.