Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism

by Ania Loomba

Did Shakespeare and his contemporaries think at all in terms of "race"? Examining the depiction of cultural, religious, and ethnic difference in Shakespeare's plays, Ania Loomba considers how seventeenth-century ideas differed from the later ideologies of "race" that emerged during colonialism, as well as from older ideas about barbarism, blackness, and religious difference. Accessible yet nuanced analysis of the plays explores how Shakespeare's ideas of race were shaped by beliefs about color, religion, nationality, class, money and gender.

Genres: Shakespeare, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, History

208 pages, Paperback

First published September 5, 2002

About the author

Ania Loomba is an Indian literary scholar. She is the author of Colonialism/Postcolonialism and works as a literature professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Ania Loomba received her BA (Hons.), M. A., and M. Phil. degrees from the University of Delhi, India, and her Ph. D. from the University of Sussex, UK. She researches and teaches early modern literature, histories of race and colonialism, postcolonial studies, feminist theory, and contemporary Indian literature and culture. She currently holds the Catherine Bryson Chair in the English department. She is also faculty in Comparative Literature, South Asian Studies, and Women's Studies, and her courses are regularly cross-listed with these programs.

Many of her works - such as Colonialism / Postcolonialism (1998) and Shakespeare, Race and Colonialism (2002) - engage with Shakespeare and the Renaissance Theater. Her research on the history of racism since the early modern era includes work on England's early contacts with India, the Moluccas and Turkey.

Reviews

[king bitchard 💜 · Rating 5 out of 5]

TEN OUT OF TEN READ THIS BOOK SHAKESPEARE BITCHES

[Tina Romanelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

I used this book to help me teach Shakespeare and Race, and it was chock full of interesting readings. I had a harder time pulling out a thesis through the whole text, but that actually worked out well for my students, I think.

[Momina · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The situation is that for some reason a text has become unacceptable; yet it cannot be discarded. Interpretation is a radical strategy for conserving an old text, which is thought too precious to repudiate, by revamping it. The interpreter, without actually erasing or rewriting the text, is altering it. But he can’t admit to doing this. He claims to be only making it intelligible, by disclosing its true meaning."

Ania Loomba is a star! As a literature student reading Shakespeare for almost all my life now in academic spaces, I am absolutely done with "the great Bard" who keeps being overread by enthusiasts desperate to keep him relevant. After recently reading Sontag's Against Interpretation which argues against "the hermeneutics of art" stating that zealous interpretation is a desperate measure for keeping texts alive and relevant even at the cost of replacing the original text with its interpretation, I couldn't help but think of Shakespeare and the hoards of interpretations built around him to somehow pardon or explain away the embedded discourses of proto-imperialism, racism and sexism in his plays.

I wonder along with Eagleton who dared ask whether a time will come when the world will decide that it no longer needs Shakespeare, and realize that he wasn't as timeless as we were all led to believe. Loomba's discussion of race in Shakespeare is important for it puts things in perspective, and slightly takes the poetry out of (and I will agree) one of the greatest English poets. But wise man with all the answers, who you must love unconditionally otherwise you're a philistine? No.

[Jennifer]

This is the second of the books I've read in this series, which deals with significant topics in Renaissance/Shakespeare studies. I'm finding them great for my grad class: they present fundamental information but with good depth.

[Matt Sautman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book perfectly encapsulates my hesitancies about Shakespeare’s continued privileged position in mainstream literary culture as there are plenty of racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic elements in his plays . Thankfully, within academia, there has been plenty of scholarship writing against the Western canon, and this work fits within that tradition.

[Reem · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great postcolonial reading of Shakespeare.
Not only was it very useful for my research on Antony and Cleopatra and The Tempest through a postcolonial lens, but also a very enjoyable thorough analysis of these plays, both in terms of historical context and postcolonial theory.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, yes, yes. Do read this book. Fantastic work from a fantastic scholar.