You are here
PHALLIC POWER AS MONSTROSITY: CALIBAN’S THREAT OF MISCEGENATION IN AIMÉ CÉSAIRE’S A TEMPEST
| Title: | PHALLIC POWER AS MONSTROSITY: CALIBAN’S THREAT OF MISCEGENATION IN AIMÉ CÉSAIRE’S A TEMPEST. |
 97 views 42 downloads |
|---|---|---|
| Name(s): |
Dickson, Reba Karrie , author Lettman,Stacy J. , Thesis advisor Florida Atlantic University, Degree grantor Department of English Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters |
|
| Type of Resource: | text | |
| Genre: | Electronic Thesis Or Dissertation | |
| Date Created: | 2022 | |
| Date Issued: | 2022 | |
| Publisher: | Florida Atlantic University | |
| Place of Publication: | Boca Raton, Fla. | |
| Physical Form: | application/pdf | |
| Extent: | 70 p. | |
| Language(s): | English | |
| Abstract/Description: | This thesis takes a postcolonial, critical race, and monster theory approach to understanding Caliban as a “monstrous” figure, primarily because of threat of miscegenation within the ideological power structure of the Caribbean slave plantation system as depicted in A Tempest by Aimé Césaire. Through the lens of Louis Althusser’s theory on the construction of ideologies and recognizing race as an ideology, this thesis asserts that the colonized subject is interpellated or hailed as a “monster,” thereby allowing the colonizer to moralize and rationalize their altruicide and dehumanization of the colonized subject. Prospero, the colonial master serves as the arbiter of white masculine power whereby his phallus can be understood as a “characteristic feature of making horror and pleasure coincide” (Mbembe, Postcolony 175). When Caliban, the colonized subject, refuses to function within the interpellated identity of the “monster,” he attempts to redeem his lost honor by interpellating himself as a “BLACK MAN” (Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks 95). Prospero regards this as a threat to deconstruct the ideology of race and destroy his colonial legacy through an “unholy miscegenation” between Caliban and Miranda, his daughter, thus transforming them into “monsters.” The colonial master’s response to this attempted usurpation of phallic power results in the recourse to honor killing which Achille Mbembe identifies as altruicide—the altruistic homicide of the “monster,” of the colonized subject, that plagues society as a threat against whiteness (Critique of Black Reason 10). | |
| Identifier: | FA00013932 (IID) | |
| Degree granted: | Thesis (MA)--Florida Atlantic University, 2022. | |
| Collection: | FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection | |
| Note(s): | Includes bibliography. | |
| Subject(s): |
Césaire, Aimé. Tempête. English Césaire, Aimé--Criticism and interpretation Miscegenation Caliban (Fictitious character) |
|
| Persistent Link to This Record: | http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00013932 | |
| Use and Reproduction: | Copyright © is held by the author with permission granted to Florida Atlantic University to digitize, archive and distribute this item for non-profit research and educational purposes. Any reuse of this item in excess of fair use or other copyright exemptions requires permission of the copyright holder. | |
| Use and Reproduction: | http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ | |
| Host Institution: | FAU | |
| Is Part of Series: | Florida Atlantic University Digital Library Collections. |
