The Politics of Location in Othello, Djanet Sears's Harlem Duet, and Ong Keng Sen's Desdemona

Abstract

This article begins with Ania Loomba's well-known position that analysing intercultural Shakespeare requires an understanding that ‘Shakespeare’ becomes ‘local’ in some new contexts and rendered ‘foreign’ in others. From Loomba's argument, we can suggest that just as ‘Shakespeare’ continues to be altered, so should the concept of ‘location’ (whether ‘foreign’ or ‘local’) be seen to transform and even to multiply. In attempting to pinpoint the significance of ‘location’ in this context, the author addresses the relationship between local and foreign in two plays that are loosely based on Shakespeare's Othello: Ong Keng Sen's Desdemona (2000) and Djanet Sears's Harlem Duet (1997). These two plays explore the meaning of ‘local’ and even of location itself; while Harlem Duet constructs a poetics of displacement in the context of a politics of location, Desdemona's focus on the poetics of displacement to the virtual exclusion of a politics of location reduces its potential to achieve its cultural and political goals.