The Performance of Embodied Authorship in Shakespeare’s Nigga: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Cultural Production

  1. Pilar Cuder Domínguez 1
  1. 1 Universidad de Huelva
    info

    Universidad de Huelva

    Huelva, España

    ROR https://ror.org/03a1kt624

Revista:
Interferénces Litteraires/Litéraire Interferenties

ISSN: 2031-2970

Año de publicación: 2017

Volumen: 21

Páginas: 73-86

Tipo: Artículo

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Otras publicaciones en: Interferénces Litteraires/Litéraire Interferenties

Resumen

This essay undertakes the analysis of the performance of embodied authorship in Joseph Jomo Pierre’s Shakespeare’s Nigga (2013), a play that turns the canonical English writer into a stage character, William Shakespeare the slave owner, father to Othello by an enslaved African woman and to Judith by his white wife. It argues that in recontextualising Shakespeare’s body within the material practices of slavery, the black Canadian playwright frames some still urgent questions about the politics of cultural production, and specifically about the ethics of authorship from gendered and racialised perspectives.