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

language in use does not belong to him. He has appropriated this language that has been imposed on him and, as a result, he uses it to curse those who have remolded and reshaped him in their own image. However, how can Caliban attempt to reconstruct an identity denied to him by a colonizing/patriarchal society, since to do so will mean to deconstruct Prospero’s language? It is a challenge that he undertakes because he refuses to adopt the established order of the society that represses him. This language, however, raises questions of an unclear and uncertain future. The adaptation of the colonizer’s language relates to the acceptance of the dominant and imposed culture (Walder 44). At the same time, this acceptance serves to distance Caliban from his past, deconstructing his identity, turning him into a colonized subject. Fanon also discusses the problematic relationship between the settling into the language of the colonizer and its culture:

Adapting Prospero’s language and culture ensures Caliban’s elevation from his inferior status. The conclusion is that the native/Caliban begins to feel out of place in his home. He finds himself deterritorialized because of the loss of what once was his. Until the postcolonial moment, Caliban’s voice had been considered dark and barbarous, albeit the need for Prospero to silence him. This is done by acclimatizing the language of the colonizer, which for Latin Americans, according to Fernández Retamar, continues to be problematic since there is no native