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Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Bridgewater State University

Cultural studies

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Beyond Caliban’S Curses: The Decolonial Feminist Literacy Of Sycorax, Irene Lara Jan 2013

Beyond Caliban’S Curses: The Decolonial Feminist Literacy Of Sycorax, Irene Lara

Journal of International Women's Studies

Working from the perspective of decolonial feminism, this essay critiques works that view Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611) as a symbol of resistance to eurocentrism, as represented in the character of Prospero. I focus on the literary figure Sycorax, the racialized, sexualized and witched mother of Caliban, because the celebration of Caliban as a symbol of subaltern resistance in Latin American/Latino studies has led to her discursive erasure or marginalization. I critically trace appropriations of Caliban, as well as Miranda (Prospero’s daughter), that silence Sycorax. Fundamentally urging the construction of a “literacy of Sycorax,” this essay explores the eurocentric …