| Chapter 1: | Caliban, Shakespeare’s Transformative Other |
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between, a third space where time converges. Said introduces a similar argument:
There is a connection to whether a lost past can be reconstructed. However, Prospero and Caliban confront each other in one shared space. Each gazes into the other, causing previous subjective images and beliefs to come into question and conflict. Iain Chambers writes, “As the inhabitants of ‘peripheries’ and ‘marginality’ come to challenge and dislocate subjects who once centred themselves by creating the necessity for such categories, so the very conditions of these others became proximate and integral to the state of the subject, to our selves” (52). Chambers also adds to the concept of the merging not only of time but also of space. Caliban is present in the metropolis to reappropriate something lost or stolen. By coming into contact with the center, he no longer remains an unknown and is instead acknowledged. His presence away from the periphery represents what Lamming alludes to regarding Prospero’s encounter with Caliban: In order to be validated, Caliban’s presence in Prospero’s life is necessary. For this reason, Prospero justifies his need to construct this image-identification to change Caliban so that the threat he represents for Prospero ceases (Lamming 15).
By creating Caliban, Shakespeare brings forth queries and fears not just about the unknown but of the assumed as well. According