“Our Blackamoor or Negro Othello”: Rejecting the Affective Power of Blackness

ABSTRACT

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Shakespeare’s Othello became a site of tension as the previously uncontested blackness of the titular hero sat uneasily with critics, actors, and audiences under the sway of contemporary racial politics, science, and philosophy. In this paper, I explore that historical moment and how the visual and emotional impact of a black Othello on stage led to Edmund Kean’s groundbreaking “tawny” Othello. I argue that a whitened Othello is the result of affective anxiety and that this Romantic rejection of the affective power of blackness gave birth to a tradition that even today limits the roles black bodies can assume.

Notes

1 For more Othello performance history and further discussion of the period’s racial issues, see Virginia Vaughn’s work, Ayanna Thompson’s introduction to the Arden Othello, Diana Henderson’s chapter “Re-staging Othello: Race, Theatricality, and the Marketplace” in Collaborations with the Past, and Mythili Kaul’s essay “Background: Black or Tawny? Stage Representations of Othello from 1604 to the Present.”