Loomba and Othello

Right at the end of class on the 21st you said something that got me to think more about Ania Loomba's article on Shakespeare. In class we discussed the possibility of Desdemona representing "Englishness". I thought this was very interesting because if the characters in the play are worried about Othello somehow tainting Desdemona by being with her, by using some form of witchcraft to seduce and lure her and maker her his own, then the characters themselves could be worried about Englishness being tainted. And by this I mean, they worry about it becoming something no longer unique to themselves, no longer their (the English) own. In looking at the time when this was written to understand it better, Loomba even points out that the in the time these plays were written the English people were looking to define themselves by defining what is "other" or "outsideness". As the English were discovering new peoples and customs, and contact with these different beliefs were ever on the rise, the people sought to place their culture in juxtaposition with these others, to define a clear boundary between "them" and "us" to ensure that they could maintain some sense of "national identity." Perhaps in this play Shakespeare is looking to call attention to this taxonomy of cultures occurring around him, and perhaps he intends to point to the flaws of such a process. He seems to be doing this by showing "Othello the Moor" as possessing the qualities with which many of the English associated with their own culture (logic, power, emotion, etc) and giving Iago the characteristic traits commonly associated with the "outsiders" of the time. As he is portrayed as brutish, emotionless, villainous, untrustworthy and so forth.