Othello, Oserō, Washirō: Reflecting (on) Hegemony through Global Shakespeares

Abstract

Recently, Global Shakespeare critics have begun to situate Shakespeare within a wide network of cultural exchange.1 This “global turn” expands the scope of New Historicist scholarship, in which Shakespeare is often read as a tool of nationalist and imperialist projects. Within this field of Global Shakespeare studies, however, certain approaches fall back on the historicist tendency to privilege nationalist narratives wherein Shakespeare stands in for Western cultural dominance, seen as emanating from the center to the peripheries. Critique from the margins under this model merely reverses the polarity of cultural dominance, reaffirming the authority of the “center” under critique.2 Thus, other critics, recognizing the limitations of this binary approach, have attended to the rhizomatic, multidirectional nature of Shakespeare’s dissemination, which decentralizes and fragments the very cultural authority and hegemonic power Shakespeare is meant to name.3 In response to the notion that Global Shakespeare “perpetuate[s] global inequality...