Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism by Ania Loomba

CITATION: Loomba, Ania. Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Print.
Understanding

• Question: How does race intersect with religious, geographic, and other forms of difference in early modern England?
• Answer: Gender and sexuality provided "a language for expressing and developing ideas about religious, geographic, and ultimately racial difference" (31).
• Method: Loomba's first chapter considers "whether and in what form the concept of racial difference existed in Shakespeare's time" (22) in the following aspects (mneumonic: Libertarian Fairy Germs Claim Colorado Rastafarians Cough):
• Lineage: Race is etymologically related to "root," and this meaning of race is defined by and enforced through procreative sexuality. 
• Ex: Antony would beget a "lawful race" with his wife, if not for Cleopatra.
• Faith/Nation: Race is understood as an outward sign of inward heresy. Conversion complicated this thought, and led to theories of biological race. 
• Ex: Aaron in Titus is referred to as a black devil.
• Gender and sexuality: People in distant countries both embodied and subverted and traditional gender roles. 
• Ex: Amazons were said to inhabit faraway lands.
• Class: "Racially marginalized peoples were also described in terms of servitude..." (34). 
• Ex: Caliban is "ungrateful, incapable of learning, rude, rebellious, and physically repellent" (34).
• Colour: Blackness is a permanent sign of racial difference and depravity. 
• Ex: Aaron declares his blackness cannot be washed white.
• Racism without race: Racial difference was ascribed to the people at the bottom of the cultural hierarchy, even if they share many characteristics with the dominant group.
• Ex: The English settled in Ireland were forbidden from wearing Irish clothes or hairstyles.
• Colonialism and race: "ideologies of difference were both geographically and temporally mobile--the notion of outsiders honed in one part of the world not only influenced attitudes in another, but older habits of thought both reinforced and were themselves reshaped by newer histories of contact" (42).
• Ex: English attitudes towards the New World Indians were shaped by the English treatment of the Irish, but the English attitudes also adapted to create narratives allowing the colonization of both English subjects (the Irish) and so-called "noble savages" (the New World Indians).
• Assumptions: Loomba responds to a tradition of interpretation regarding Shakespeare's black characters: whether to reclaim and valorize the likes of Aaron, or to abolish the blackface tradition in Othello. Loomba largely objects to trans-historical applications of current racial ideology, but she analogizes early modern Turk-ophobia to contemporary cultural narratives about Islam and terrorism.
• Sententiae:
  [see "Method"]
  "Racial difference was imagined in terms of an inversion or distortion of 'normal' gender roles and sexual behaviour-Jewish men were said to menstruate, Muslim men to be sodomites, Egyptian women to stand up while urinating... Patriarchal domination and gender inequality provided a model for establishing  (and were themselves reinforced by) racial hierarchies and colonial domination." (7)

Overstanding

• Assessment: Very solid theoretical refinements, with some slightly underwhelming readings. For instance, "Othello ultimately embodies the stereotype of Moorish lust and violence-a jealous, murderous husband of a Christian lady" (95). Othello is a tragic hero not entirely defined by the early modern conception of race--though that conception of race does prove to be complex.
• Synthesis: This is a natural compliment for DiGangi, since both scholars correct trans-historical applications of contemporary terms of difference. But while DiGangi emphasizes the symbolic economies of sexuality--by which hierarchies of power can be subverted--Loomba emphasizes the adaptability of hierarchical power.By extension, Loomba can be considered alongside O'Connell. O'Connell argues that early modern drama combined logocentricism appropriate to early modern humanism with embodied iconicity appropriate to the late medieval period.
• Application: Therefore, the dramatic representations that Loomba studies in early modernity may have roots in late medieval religious theory. If Christ's pain is visibly embodied and made subject to the viewer, then dramatic vision--especially when applied to racialized others--has a preexisting characteristic of moral judgment. This explanation works for visible and dramatic forms of race, but not for other forms noted by Loomba. For example, the "idolatrous eye" may have a more difficult task viewing racial lineage.

(NB: written with reviews.)

Glaze, Stephen. "Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism." Sixteenth Century Journal. 35.1 (2004). Print.

Mallin, Eric S. "Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism." Shakespeare Quarterly. 55.3 (2004). Print.