A Tempest as a post colonial text

Name: Drashti V. Dave

Assignment sub: A Tempest as a post colonial text

Submitted to: Smt. S.B.Gardi Department of English

Maharaja Krisnkumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Enrolment no: PG13101007

Paper no: 11- The postcolonial Literature

Roll no: 06       Year: 2014

Sem: 3^rd             M.A. part-2

A Tempest as postcolonial text

Simple meaning of tempest: means a very violent storm with very high winds and often rain, hail or snow (Encarta dictionary) Story is also like that Prospero call tempest from his magic.

What is post colonialism: Post colonialism or postcolonial studies is an academic discipline featuring methods of intellectual discourse that analyze, explain, and respond to the cultural legacies of colonialism and imperialism, to the human consequences of controlling a country and establishing settlers for the economic exploitation of the native people and their land. Drawing from postmodern schools of thought, postcolonial studies analyze the politics of knowledge (creation, control, and distribution) by analyzing the functional relations of social and political power  that sustain colonialism and neocolonialism—the how and the why of an imperial regime's representations (social, political, cultural) of the imperial colonizer and of the colonized people.

As a genre of contemporary history, post colonialism questions and reinvents the modes of cultural perception—the ways of viewing and of being viewed. As anthropology, post colonialism records human relations among the colonial nations and the subaltern peoples exploited by colonial rule. As critical theory post colonialism presents, explains, and illustrates the ideology and the praxis of neocolonialism, with examples drawn from the humanities—history and political science, philosophy and Marxist theory, sociology, anthropology, and geography the cinema, religion, and theology feminism, linguistics and postcolonial literature of which the anti-conquest narrative genre presents the stories of colonial subjugation of the subaltern man and woman.

     Defination of post colonialism: Post colonialism is the study of the legacy of the era of European, and sometimes American, direct global domination, which ended roughly in the mid-20th century, and the residual political, socio-economic, and psychological effects of that colonial history. Post colonialism examines the manner in which emerging societies grapple with the challenges of self-determination and how they incorporate or reject the Western norms and conventions, such as legal or political systems, left in place after direct administration by colonial powers ended. Ironically, much early postcolonial theory, with its emphasis on overt rejection of imposed Western norms, was tied to Marxist theory, which also originated in Europe. Contemporary studies focus more on the effects of postcolonial globalization and the development of indigenous solutions to local needs.  (htt5)

 Introduction about the play:

 A Tempest was originally written in 1969 in French by Aime Cesaire and translated into English in 1985 by Richard Miller. It is written as a postcolonial response to The Tempest by William Shakespeare. The story is the same: a big storm, an angry Duke who's been usurped by his brother, all the devoted courtesans, and, of course, the natives. This play deals mostly with the natives, Ariel and Caliban. It is Cesaire's comment on the colonization of the "New World." He has many of the same ideas as C.L.R. James, and Franz Fanon, and he has inspired newer Caribbean writers like Michelle Cliff.

About the author:

Aime Cesaire was born in Martinique in
1913. He is renowned poet, playwright, and essayist. He began a movement called Negritude Modernism involving the work of native Caribbean writers and artists. His work has influenced other writers as well as sociologists like Frantz Fanon.

He was "one of the founders of the negritude movement in Francophone literature".

Martinican poet, playwright, and politician, one of the most influential authors from the French-speaking Caribbean. Aime Cesaire formulated with Leopold Senghor and Leon Gontian Damas the concept and movement of negritude, defined as "affirmation that one is black and proud of it". Cesaire’s thoughts about restoring the cultural identity of black Africans were first fully expressed in (Return to My Native Land), a mixture of poetry and poetic prose. The work celebrated the ancestral homelands of Africa and the Caribbean. It was completed in 1939 but not published in full form until 1947.

Cesaire criticism of European civilization and colonial racism in Discourse on colonialism (1955) influenced deeply Frantz Fanon's revolutionary manifesto Black Skin, White Masks (1967), an examination of psychic, cultural and social damages inflicted by colonialism. Cesaire parallels the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized with the relationship between Nazis and their victims. (htt6)

A Tempest by Aime Cesaire was originally published in 1969 in French by Editions du Seuil in Paris. Cesaire, a recognized poet, essayist, playwright, and politician, was born in Martinique in 1913 and, until his death in 2008, had been instrumental in voicing post-colonial concerns. In the 1930s, he, along with Leopold Senghor and Leon Gontian Damas, developed the negritude movement which endeavored to question French colonial rule and restore the cultural identity of blacks in the African Diaspora. A Tempest is the third play in a trilogy aimed at advancing the tenets of the negritude movement. In 1985, the play was translated into English by Richard Miller and had its American premiere in 1991 at the Ubu Repertory Theater in New York after having been performed in France, the Middle East, Africa, and the West Indies.

Detailed information about the play: Aime Cesaire's A Tempest is the classic text to demonstrate the truism that much of Caribbean drama is concerned with "writing back" to the Empire. Much like Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre was answered by Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, Aime Cesaire re-writes another crutch of England literary canon thus undermining what it has built itself on the entire epistemology of what it means to be British. Cesaire writes back the Empire because he wants the British colonial system to confront what it has done to the colonials. To take account of its atrocities. Here, Cesaire takes the well-known Shakespearian play and re-writes it addressing the concerns a colonial subject of the Caribbean would have, and still are concerned with.
Still, this leaves the question of why did Cesaire choose this particular play of Shakespeare's to re-write? Well, The name 'the Tempest" already suggests a certain volatility which can be argued to be likened to the ontological malaise a Caribbean person constantly finds himself immersed in. To explain, this malaise is due to the fact that the Caribbean contains multitudes; a plethora of different peoples who all have mixed backgrounds and mixed blood from numerous different tribal groups in Africa, from Europe, from the Indian subcontinent, from the now decimated native groups that once populated the Caribbean, from Syria ... we can go on and on.
The benefit of this play by Shakespeare is that it is already multicultural like the Caribbean. We have the European side represented by Prospero, Miranda and the other shipwrecked Europeans, the black slave represented by Caliban, and Ariel, the mulatto slave, who all collide on the tiny island which could easily be, and might have been meant to represent a Caribbean island.

The benefit of writing this play in the twentieth century is that it can call on political and cultural icons who can easily make relatable the characters. For example, in the play Caliban shares clear parallels with Malcolm X while the "house slave" Ariel bears a striking resemblance to Martin Luther King Jr.

Caliban is the spokesman through which Cesaire can vent his postcolonial anger on Prospero, who here as we have said, is a representative of all the colonial empires of Europe. In the end Caliban holds Prospero accountable for all the psychological damage he has suffered:

You lied to me so much
about the world, about myself,
that you ended up by imposing on me
an image of myself:
underdeveloped, in your words, under competent-
that's how you made me see myself! ...

This may as well be the official letter all postcolonial subjects post to the former Empires for it speaks of the mental slavery other iconic figures such as Bob Marley, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey etc, preached about. The following classic statement from the Tempest about language has been adopted and re-advanced several times by postcolonial critics as the crucial quote which sums up all that postcolonial literature seeks to do:

You taught me language, and my profit on’t
Is I know how to curse

This shows the heart of all postcolonial literature which is the tormented relationship the colonized has with his colonizer, and his determination to use the language of the colonizer in order to expose the colonizer as the debilitating force it was on the subjects who have to go through the long process of decolonization in order to reverse the psychological effects of centuries of colonization. (2012)

‘The real tragedy of our postcolonial world is not that the majority of people had no say in whether or not they wanted this new world; rather, it is that the majority have not been given the tools to negotiate this new world.’ Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (awordchild.com, 2014)
 A Tempest as a post colonial text: 

(Character of Caliban and Prospero are very important to the study of colonial postcolonial theory)


A Tempest is the third play in a trilogy aimed at advancing the tenets of the negritude movement. It is written as a postcolonial response to The Tempest by Shakespeare. The story is the same; a big storm, an angry Duke who has been usurped by his brother, all the devoted courtesans, and the natives. This play deals mostly with the natives; Ariel and Caliban. It is Cesaire’s common on the colonization of the “new world”. He has many of the same ideas are C.L.R. James and Frantz Fanon, and he has inspired newer Caribbean writers like Michelle Cliff. It is postcolonial revision of The Tempest and it draws heavily on the original play. The cast of character is for the most part the same and the foundation of the plot follows the same basic premise.
                       Cesaire takes the well-known Shakespearian play and re-writes it addressing the concerns a colonial subject of the Caribbean had back then, and whose post-Independent is still concerned with today. Caliban is the spokesman through which Cesaire can vent his anticolonial anger on Prospero, who here as we have said, is a representative of all the colonial empires of Europe. In the end Caliban holds Prospero accountable for all the psychological damage he has suffered:
You lied to me so much
about the world, about myself,
that you ended up by imposing on me
an image of myself:
underdeveloped, in your words, under competent-
that’s how you made me see myself! …
This may as well be the official letter all postcolonial subjects post to the former Empires for it speaks of the mental slavery. (Wordpress.com)
  Prospero has been exiled and lives on a secluded island and he drums up a violent storm to drive his daughter’s ship ashore this island however is somewhere in the Caribbean;

A Tempest focuses on the plight of Ariel and Caliban the never ending ques to gain freedom from Prospero and his rule over the island.
Ariel dutiful to Prospero follows all orders given to him and sincerely believes that Prospero will honor his promise of emancipation. Caliban on the other hand slights Prospero at every opportunity. In the first act: Caliban greets Prospero by saying “Uhuru” Swahili word for “Freedom”. Prospero complains that Caliban often speaks in his native language which Prospero has forbidden.
                        Caliban generally viewed as an almost archetypal representation of the third world colonized subject originated in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
What is  the meaning of Third World? Third World the countries of Africa, Asia and South America are some tomes referred to all together as third world, especially those parts that are poor do not have much power and are not considered to be highly development compare First World. (Collins Cobuild Advanced Dictionary of English)
Both are opposite to each other and Prospero is the main subject for them.

Despite the character’s minor role in the play Caliban has gained critics’ interest due to his subsequent re-contextualization within postcolonial contexts. Initially the figure of Caliban was read as the symbol of primitive humanity a degenerates character exhibiting greed, lawlessness and lust.
                     In his development up to mid-20^th century Caliban symbolized the third world as imagined by Europe to justify colonialism. Conversely in third world countries this character has developed into a positive symbol of the third world view that high lights the implacable spirit of Caliban against Prospero’s subjugation. The reiterations of Caliban as a symbol of the third world can be found not only in a dramatic work such as in Amie Cesaire’s A Tempest but also in psychological and political treatises such as those written by Octavia Mannoni and Fernando Retamar. It is interesting to situate the process of Caliban’s subrogation within the realm of postcolonial theory. Postcolonial theory has raised some problematic definitions and articulations due to ambiguities of term itself.
Taken literary the term may mean theory after colonialism culturally and economically various forms of neocolonialism. Secondly if postcolonial theory is understood as theory written after colonialism, it contradicts the fact that many postcolonial works were written during the colonial period.
Bill Ashcroft defines postcolonial theory as; “that dynamic of opposition the discourse of resistance to colonialism which begins from the first moment of colonization. I must definitely do not mean after colonialism because that would be to suppose an end to imperial process.”
                                        Ashcroft’s defination of postcolonial theory anticipates the above reductive meaning and generally accepted since it denotes that colonialism is still at work and that postcolonial theory has been written in resistance to colonialism. One key postcolonial issue concerns the matter of identity  indicate that ; like the figure of Caliban the formulation of identity in postcolonial theory cannot escape from the process of surrogating. During their argument (between Caliban and Prospero) Caliban tells Prospero that he no longer want to be called Caliban;
Caliban: put it this way I’m telling you that from now on I won’t answer to the name Caliban.
Prospero: what put that notion into your head?
Caliban: well, Caliban isn’t my name it’s as simple as that
Prospero: It’s mine I suppose!
Caliban: It’s the name give me by hatred and every time it’s spoken it’s an insult
Prospero: My hoe sensitive we’re getting to be! All right suggest something else, I’ve got to call you something what will it be? Cannibal would suit you, but I’m sure you would not like that would you? Let’s see what about Hannibal? That fits and why not ...they all seem to like historical names.
Caliban: Call me X. that would be best like a man without a name or to be more precise a man whose name has been stolen, you talk about history? Well that’s history and everyone knows it! Every time you call me it reminds me of a basic fact, the fact that you’ve stolen everything from me, even my identity! Uhuru!
These conversations between Caliban and Prospero are very important for postcolonial aspect. The allusion to Malcolm X cements the aura of cultural reclamation that serves as the foundational element of A Tempest. It also shows postcolonial issue of identity, Caliban’s character which also shows relationship master- slave.
                        Cesaire very beautifully describe colonial postcolonial situation through the text, especially conversation between Caliban and Prospero through them Cesaire gave us point of view about colonial postcolonial situation. Here this dialogue shows us that type of situation which accrues in that time;
Caliban: And that’s why you will stay just like those guys who founded the colonies and why now can’t live anywhere else, you’re just an old colonial addict that’s what you are!
Near the end of the play Prospero sends all the lieutenants off the island to procure a place in Naples his daughter Miranda and her husband Ferdinand.  When the fleet begs him to Prospero refuses and claims that the island cannot stand without him; in the end only he and Caliban remains on the island. As Prospero continues to assert his hold on the island and Caliban’s freedom song can be heard in the background. Thus Cesaire leaves his audience to consider the lasting effect of colonialism.
                                   Caliban is the spokesman through which Cesaire can vent his postcolonial anger on Prospero who here as we have said is a representative of all the colonial empires of Europe. In the end Caliban holds Prospero accountable for all the psychological damage he has suffered, this may be situation presents all postcolonial literature or subjects post to the former empire for it speaks of the mental slavery. There have been many different interpretations of the character in the history of the production of the play; with a range that Caliban’s character half human and half bestial figure third world inhabitant. Despite Caliban’s minor role in the play the character has gained critic’s interest due to his subsequent recontextualization within postcolonial contexts.
Conclusion: We would critically analyze Caliban as a character not as a class of slaves, we therefore argue that who feel marginalized the play from Feminist critics the character of Miranda and from the perspective of postcolonial critics the character of Caliban. But the loophole is that just to quote Miranda and her speeches or a faulty perception of Caliban’s character in order to acclimatize with the feminist or postcolonial theory kills the beauty of totality of the play.
                                     “The real tragedy of our postcolonial world is not that the majority of people had no say in whether or not they wanted this new world rather it is that the majority have not been given the tools to negotiate this new world”.