scaramouche

...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad

About me

User: scaramouche
Irreverent, contrarian, delighted to be out of synch with the zeitgeist, I depend on my sense of humour (such as it is) to keep me sane in this wacky world.

  • Contact me
  • My profile
  • Linkme

Counter

visited *loading* times

« View the previous post.  |  Home  |  View the next post. »
Saturday, 11 July 2009

The redemption of Caliban: In his 2003 book Diversity: The Invention of a Concept (a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the ramifications of this sweet-sounding but fatuous ideology) Peter Wood, an anthropology professor who writes with clarity and wit, explains why and how academe has embraced one of Shakespeare’s more repellent creations:
In 1976, the literary critic Stephen Greenblatt published an essay, “Learning to Curse,” that began Caliban’s rehabilitation as a figure of native resistance to European imperialism. Since then, the conceit has grown and it is now difficult to find a college Shakespeare course in which The Tempest is taught that does not attempt to salvage Prospero’s “poisonous slave” who “never/ yields us kind answer.” Caliban is multiracial, “got by the devil himself/upon [his] wicked dam,” the black witch Sycorax. He is the indigenous human population of the island where Prospero and his daughter Miranda were cast up years earlier. Prospero at first treated Caliban kindly (“Strok’st me and made much of me,” recalls Caliban), gave him flavoured water and taught him to talk. In turn, Caliban welcomed the newcomers and showed them “the fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile.” But Prosepero at length subjects Caliban to servitude and limits his movement (“here you sty me/in this hard rock”).
Or maybe not. Prospero remembers a different history. He responds to Caliban’s account by calling him a “lying slave,” and declaring that he treated Caliban with “human care” and exiled him from Prospero’s own house only when Caliban “didst seek to violate/The honor of my child.”
Caliban, the indigene--dispossessed of his land by a white European male, who subjects him to harsh labor and stereotypes him as a sexual predator--is cultural diversity in all its oppressed innocence and authenticity. We can overlook his plots to have Stephano murder Prospero by knocking a “nail into his head,” or battering him with a log, “paunching” him with a stake, or cutting his throat; his wish to burn Prospero’s books, and his lascivious eye for Miranda. Caliban is shameless (“Let me lick thy shoe”), craven (“I’ll fall flat./Perchance he will not mind me”) and murderous, but he is also a victim of hierarchy and therefore the man/child for our time.
His plans having come to nothing, Caliban accepts Prospero’s pardon and declares, “I will be wise hereafter/And seek for grace.” But it seems unlikely. All Caliban has really gained from his subjection to Western culture is the ability to speak, a gift which he uses, as Professor Greenblatt noted, to curse his oppressor.
Today, of course, Caliban would be on a different footing altogether. Admitted to an elite college on a full scholarship (mixed-race, single parent family; great diversity essay), he would find a whole Caliban curriculum to choose from.
Heh. And after graduation, were he to head north, he could undoubtedly have a great career in the grievance industry or the government bureaucracy (Caliban on the Refugee Review Board, say?). Eventually, he could be tapped to run one of our nation’s many, many august “human rights” bodies, and perhaps even pick up an Order of Canada.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:41 | link | comments

Comments: