Dehumanisation of Colonised Humans Revisited: Racial Speciesism And Caliban’s “Explod[ing] Prospero’s Old Myth” in Aime Cesaire’s A Tempest

Abstract

The political turmoil between the 1950s and the 1970s that stemmed from the liberation movements in Africa, and in the Caribbean Islands, in which African/ black diaspora is so common, triggered many writers of the time to visit colonial literature in order to be able to find a meaning for the liberation struggles of the blacks. Similarly, Aimé Césaire, a Francophone literary and political figure, revisited Shakespeare’s The Tempest (around 1611), and adapted it into A Tempest (Une Tempête,1969). A Tempest is a play in which Shakespearean Prospero’s strong and univocal status is replaced by strong and rebellious Caliban, who subverts all the colonial discourses that marginalise and dehumanise the blacks. In the light of these discussions, this paper aims to discuss that in A Tempest, Caliban becomes an instrument for Césaire in order to demarginalise the blacks contrary to Prospero’s dehumanising methods applied through racial speciesism. By means of Caliban’s “explod[ing] Prospero’s old myth”, Césaire wants to prove that blacks are humans, too, with a glorious history and identity to be proud of.