Post-Colonial Shakespeares by Ania Loomba , Martin Orkin (review)

Abstract

802 Reviews thirteen pagesofthechapter. Limsimply asserts thattheplaydramatizes 'the motivations, fears, andanxieties that attend anyattempt toprocure union basedon ethnic diXerences' (p. I4I). Yetthis itselfbegs somany questions, andestablishes so many anachronistic terms foisted ontotheplay(suchas ethnicity), thatitwould havebeenmore productive toopenthechapter with such anassertion, rather than endit.Thesubsequent chapter, juxtaposing The Faerte Queene with A View of the Present State ofIreland, onceagainembarks onfamiliar terrain. Despite somefascinating comments on thewiderEuropean context ofSpenser's epicin relation to the imperial politics ofAriosto's Orlando Furtoso, LimoXers moreambivalence and anxiety inSpenser's vacillation between justice andpower, which seems toweakly deconstruct oratleast undermine the more explicit claims toempire-building inthe poem.Again,there is an uneasysenseofthiswork's beingcarried outmore thoroughly andcloser to thepoetry itself bythelikesofWilly Maley,andthe complete refusal toacknowledge Stephen Greenblatt's ground-breaking account of Spenser andIreland inRenaissance Setf-Fashioning isfrankly baffling. Thefinal chapter onMilton acknowledges itsdebt toJ.Martin Evans's Milton's Imperial Epic from the outset, andoffiers a useful account oftheways inwhich the'imperial narratives of Paradise Lost andParadise Regained point toMilton's disillusionment with England's failure tobuild a godly Commonwealth' (p.240), butMilton scholars arenotlikely tofind much new ofinterest here. 7he Arts of Empire isa very worthy butultimately derivative study ofthe poetics of colonialism ina standard andobvious selection ofEnglish Renaissance literature. Its problem resides initsinability tomove beyond simply deploying anachronistic notions of'colonialist discourse', 'ethnicity', and 'hybridity' ontotheperiod, recognizing their manifestations ina series ofkey texts, then pulling backfrom an ultimate condemnation ofthese texts asideologically bankrupt byreading for their 'ambivalences' and'anxieties'. Theproblem with this approach isthat somany of the texts seemtoresist suchreadings (which isinvariably thepoint atwhich Lim breaks oS toinvestigate relevant historical contexts), orwhere they dorespond to such analysis, ithasinvariably already beendonebefore byfarmorepersuasive critics. Issuesof race,empire, and colonization are of vitalimportance in understanding theliterature oftheperiod, yetwe willcomeno closerto an understanding oftheir complexities bysimply emplotting ourownurgent concerns upon texts which simply cannot sustain such readings. ROYAL HOLLOWAY, LONDON JERRY BROTTON Post-Colonial Shakespeares. Ed.byANIA LOOMBA andMARTIN ORKIN. (NewAccents) London andNewYork: Routledge. I998.x+ 308pp. £I2.99. The essays inthis volume were first aired atthe'Shakespeare Postcoloniality Johannesberg' conference inI996,anevent constituted byvolatile conjunction of individually contested andcollectively antagonistic elements, which meant, as the editors observe, that even theterms ofitstitle andtherelations between them were subject tofierce dispute. Given the central, profoundly compromised role played by Shakespeare intheculture ofempire, this ishardly surprising; what isinteresting about this collection isthe extent towhich the tensions andcontradictions mobilized by the conjuncture ofShakespeare andpostcoloniality provide the basis for a debate about critical practice (outlined inAniaLoombaandMartin Orkin's incisive and authoritative introduction) thatis potentially. explosive in itstheoretical and institutional implications. ASLoombaandOrkin succinctly note, there arenow quite a number ofcultural contexts inwhich thestudy ofShakespeare (including its MLR,96.3,200 I 803 radical varieties) mayalready seemsuperfluous orevenan insulting imposition, amidst 'sharp debates onthe continued usefulness ofWestern icons like Shakespeare orindeed ofWestern theories, post-structuralist orotherwise, toanytruly "postcolonial agenda" ' (p. I8).Inoneway, 'postcolonial Shakespeares' affiord a renewed urgency tothepolitical and ethical imperatives thatunderpinned theoreticallyinflected Shakespeare studies inthe first place;inanother, they posestark questions abouttheacademic Shakespeare industry's investment inmechanisms ofcultural power, prestige, andwealth from which itmight otherwise seek todistance itself. It isentirely apposite that thecollection should appearaspart oftheperennial New Accents series, asthe accelerating processes ofglobalization ensure that the question ofhowtonegotiate thereceived pronunciation notonly oftheShakespearean text butalsoofits attendant disciplinary discourses becomes anincreasingly vexed one. Severalof the essaysare explicitly informed by thisperception thatthe postcolonial Shakespeare isnotjustanother 'alternative' tobefiled alongside the others and subsequently traded in theacademic marketplace, buta meansof interrogating thecolonizing roleofnotonly conservative scholarship butalsoits purportedly more radical counterparts. Jerry Brotton, for example, argues that the NewHistoricist tactic ofconstructing TheXempest as a paradigmatic colonial text simultaneously suppresses itsMediterraneantdimensions and,following a pattern deeply entrenched within American literary criticism, fashions itas 'anexemplary bridge between English culture andAmerican letters' (p.27);morepolemically, Jonathan Dollimore rounds oF thecollection byinvoking theethical impetus of postcolonial theory insupport ofa cultural politics that 'strives tounderstand the contradictions welive, andwhich, after making that eXort, doesnot lack the courage torisk truth claims aboutthereal;a cultural politics thatknows thediXerence between human agency andhuman essence andthatrecognizes thatthefeeble relativism ofpost-modernism isonly viable because it'snever tested' (p.275).This senseofgenuine commitment underpins thecollection as a whole, which stresses the progressive aswell asthe reactionary potential...