Reanimating Shakespeare's Othello in Post-Racial America

Abstract

At the close of Shakespeare’s play, Othello supplicates, “Speak of me as I am,” as Venetians congregate and pass judgment, subsequently pleading that they “nothing extenuate,” leave out, or make thin (5.2.352). Othello’s anxiety about narrative accuracy lays bare his fear over the fate of his story, that it will misrepresent the singular Black Moor in the Venetians’ midst. As the first monograph examining Othello’s history of reanimation—meaning works and moments that bring the tragedy back to life—Reanimating Shakespeare’s Othello in Post-Racial America takes up this question of retelling Othello’s story, turning to reanimations crafted in a time and place imagined as having overcome racial injustice: post-racial America (2008-2016). Reanimating Shakespeare’s Othello reveals, however, that twenty-first century appropriations do not necessarily break with but often reify the problems inherent in Shakespeare’s tragedy, thereby troubling the narrative of racial progress. This book argues that representational choices across a range of appropriations perpetuate varying racial frameworks, or ideological perspectives, that advance either antiblack or antiracist versions of the play, which in turn shape how audiences engage with the contested issue of race in Othello and in American society. By elucidating the presence and function of these competing frameworks, Reanimating Shakespeare’s Othello illuminates the more or less ethical ways to wrestle with Othello and race—in appropriations, scholarship, the classroom, and beyond.