Tuesday
Today I begin teaching my two Sewanee classes remotely, meaning that you, dear readers, will be the beneficiaries of some of what I’m writing for my students. In my Composition and Literature class, we have been focusing on the issue of identity. They are currently reading Othello, which raises an identity problem all to familiar to Americans.
At the end of the play, bewildered by why his apparent friend and confidant Iago would betray him, Othello asks the authorities,
Will you, I pray, demand that demi-devil
Why he hath thus ensnared my soul and body?
Iago, however, refuses to illuminate us. Perhaps he himself does not know. At any rate, he retorts,
Demand me nothing: what you know, you know:
From this time forth I never will speak word.
Before explaining why I think the psychology of identity offers a powerful answer, let me outline the course. We opened with a poetry section in which we looked at different poets wrestling with identity issues, including Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Alfred Lord Tennyson (“Ulysses”), T. S. Eliot (Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock), Lucille Clifton (“wishes for sons,” “homage to my hips,” “questions and answers”), and Adrienne Rich (“Diving into the Wreck”). The drama section includes Twelfth Night (sex and gender issues) and Othello (more on that in a moment). For fiction we will be reading Toni Morrison’s wondrous novel Song of Solomon. I also had the students write essays about a dramatic incident that caused them to become aware of some aspect of their identity that they had previously been oblivious to. (The model was Cullen’s “Incident,” in which the poet recounts his first encounter with the n-word.)
In recent years there has been much talk of “identity politics,” with political scientists arguing that identity may play a bigger role in a person’s political choices than economic self-interest. Of course, the two are never entirely separated, but the concept helps explain certain otherwise strange alliances, such as that between GOP billionaires and members of the white working class. Integral to this drama is “status anxiety,” the fear of losing cultural and social dominance. When people are afraid that their status is being undermined, they may countenance behavior—and even themselves behave in certain ways—that they would condemn in other contexts.
Status anxiety lies behind the behavior of many who join hate groups, whether organized by Islamic terrorists or white supremacists. Mass killers like the 9-11 bombers, Charleston killer Dylann Roof, Norwegian killer Anders Breivik and many others have voiced grievances that don’t make logical sense but that can be traced to fears of “the Other.” Some version of “Othering” is going on in Othello.
Iago may not tell the authorities why he hates the Moor, but early on he offers up an explanation to Roderigo, whom he has seduced with false promises. His purported reason is Othello choosing Cassio over him for lieutenant. As Iago sees it, he would have been the worthier choice since he has seen battle at Rhodes and Cyprus whereas Cassio is a mere desk warrior. “Be-lee’d and calm’d” means being cut off from favorable winds:
But he, sir, had the election:
And I, of whom his eyes had seen the proof
At Rhodes, at Cyprus and on other grounds
Christian and heathen, must be be-lee'd and calm'd.
...
He, in good time, must his lieutenant be,
And I--God bless the mark!--his Moorship's ancient [flag bearer].
Many worthy people have been passed over for promotion, however, without resorting to slander and murder. In fact, after Iago subverts Cassio and takes his position, his bitterness doesn’t go away. Thus we must look for other explanations.
From our modern point of view, race is the obvious place to look, and it certainly is borne out by the way Iago fans miscegenist nightmares, a black man sleeping with a white woman. As he cries out to the Desdemona’s father after she has eloped with Othello,
Zounds, sir, you're robb'd; for shame, put on
your gown;
Your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul;
Even now, now, very now, an old black ram
Is topping your white ewe. Arise, arise;
Awake the snorting citizens with the bell,
Or else the devil will make a grandsire of you:
Arise, I say.
And later, using further comparisons of black man and beast,
Because we come to
do you service and you think we are ruffians, you'll
have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse;
you'll have your nephews neigh to you; you'll have
coursers for cousins and gennets for germans.
Scholars debate whether the 17th century saw race in the same way we do, but as an exotic stranger, Othello is subject to the same Othering that people of color suffer today.
The sexual slurs get at another dimension of racism, which is a fascination with black sexuality. In his groundbreaking study of fascist fantasies, based upon studying Freikorps novels written after World War I, German sociologist Theweleit says that authoritarian personalities are simultaneously attracted to and repulsed by such sexuality. They long for pure women who will cleanse them (the clean image of singer Taylor Swift has long been a figure of fascination to American white supremacists) but secretly resent such women because their purity accentuates the men’s own dirtiness. In this way, they identify with the black savage, an identification they then must exorcise through ritual execution of this dark desecrator.
The drama can be seen in D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915), where the KKK rises to defend of white womanhood. First, however, viewers get to see “black renegade” Gus pursue Little Sis until, to save her honor, she throws herself off a cliff.
In other words, in their fantasies racists and fascists get to have their cake and eat it too (which is how fantasies work). As voyeurs, they pruriently enjoy the desecration, which tickles their sadistic and misogynist fantasies. Then they assert their manhood and reclaim their purity by exterminating the blight. Some version of these psychological dynamics lie behind many of the brutal lynchings in America’s history.
Does Othello encourage such fantasizing? The fact that Desdemona’s bed is front and center at the end of the play suggests it might. The place where prurient fantasies have been acted out offers a kind of moral: bed down with a black man and we will watch you suffer the consequences before our eyes on this very bed.
Shakespeare, however, no more turns Othello into a one-dimensional projection of white fears than he turns Shylock into a one-dimensional projection of anti-Semitic hatred. Othello is too complicated and too noble to fit the stereotype. For that matter, Shakespeare also depicts Desdemona as something more than a white angel, giving her agency and intelligence.
There’s an 1822 account of an American soldier at a Baltimore production shooting Othello and breaking his arm. Afterwards he explained, “It will never be said that in my presence a confounded Negro has killed a white woman!” In other words, the play invites racist responses. Shakespeare’s drama, however, clearly reveals such people to be Iagos.