Reinaldo Arenas, Caliban, and Postcolonial Discourse By Enrique Morales-Díaz

Reinaldo Arenas, Caliban, and Postcolonial Discourse By Enrique ...

Chapter 1:

Caliban, Shakespeare’s Transformative Other

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[A postcolonial perspective] is needed because it has a subversive posture towards the canon, in celebrating the neglected or marginalized, bringing with it a particular politics, history and geography. It is anti-colonial; so it may look back as far as the first moment of colonization by the West, and cover all parts of the world touched by Empire, which means it may well also take the classics of the literary canon from Shakespeare onwards as grist to its mill. (60)

Walder’s statement is relevant to the discussion about the relationship between Prospero and Caliban. This idea also complements what Ashcroft perceives as one of the purposes for the use of a postcolonial perspective. Ashcroft writes that postcolonial interpretations of the colonial process “is precisely the production that occurs through colonialism” since the process of decolonization does not erase the effects colonial empire has had on Caliban’s development (12). Therefore, Walder and Ashcroft both argue that Caliban’s use of the official narratives and juxtaposing it with that of colonized subjects allows him to control his own voice. This counter-discourse, then, will deconstruct any previous interpretation of the native subject. This practice by Caliban will be present in Reinaldo Arenas’ own attempts at counterattacking the ideologies of the Revolution.

Rey Chow poses a series of questions that add to the arguments presented by Dennis Walder and Bill Ashcroft. She asks,

Is there a way of ‘finding’ the native without simply ignoring the image, or substituting a ‘correct’ image of the ethnic specimen for an ‘incorrect’ one, or giving the native a ‘true’ voice ‘behind’ her ‘false’ image? How could we deal with the native in an age when there is no possibility of avoiding the reduction/abstraction of the native as image? How can we write about the native by not ignoring the defiled, degraded image that is an