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

language to return to in some parts of the region. Accordingly, Fernández Retamar adds, “[W]e Latin Americans continue to use languages of our own colonizers” (5); it is all Caliban knows because the direct connection to his past has been ruptured by colonization. However, the appropriation of Prospero’s language is a form of resistance, a way of saying no to the control on his part. In terms of this resistance, Ashcroft writes,

Therefore, Caliban has found a way by which to combat the colonial discourse under which he has been imprisoned. By adopting both Prospero’s language and culture, he has not abandoned his past but has instead manipulated the tools of oppression to counterattack that control, since colonialism sought to dismantle and appropriate for itself an already-existing notion of identity, culture, and self-rule/representation. It established a system suitable to its needs, thereby “obliterating” a previously existing sense of self (Loomba 1). Prospero had placed himself at the center of the “village” where now he was seen as all-powerful and all-knowing. Therefore, according to Marina De Chiara, “[W]ho is watching whom cannot be established since what occurs is of an exquisite reciprocity, where the two roles of watcher and watched perfectly merge” (228). A deconstruction of the norms established by Prospero has begun, which allows Caliban to combat his dominators by adapting their tactics. Homi Bhabha adds,