Othello, etc. (was Re: Invention of the white race)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Dan Lazare comments on Justin:
>And concerning Justin's citation of Shakespeare's Othello as evidence that
>racism goes back to at least 1600:
>
>The example is misleading.  The curious thing about Othello is that while we
>get a lot of info about the hero's color, we get nothing about his race as the
>concept would be understood according to modern American racial ideology.
>I.e. there is nothing about the kinkiness of his hair, the thickness of his
>lips, etc., etc., all of which are more significant in the contemporary U.S.
>actual skin shade.  After all, David Dinkins and former Manhattan Dem Chairman
>Denny Farrell were both quite light skinned, more so, for ex., than many
>Indian immigrants.  Yet they were (are) "black" whereas the latter are not.

I think that Othello's susceptibility to 'murderous passion' was figured as
property of the dark-skinned. Hasn't the color-coded dichotomy of passion
and reason been one of the oldest ideological resources used to invent
races?

Speaking of the periodization, by 1600, the exploration of the 'new world'
had already begun, primitive accumulation had begun (for example, seen in
More's fictional comments on 'enclosure' in _Utopia_), England was on its
way to the world domination, the nationalist ideology was in its formative
stage, and the ideology of coloniaism with its need for racism was in its
making as well. The nature of racism has changed since then, but race was
certainly already being made.

This is a very interesting and important history to investigate, and when
we do so, we can see the simultaneous and mutually reinforcing emergence of
ideologies + social relations that have made class, race, nation, Europe,
and so on.

Yoshie