Shakespeare’s Planetary Roots and Routes. African Oral Literature as a Re*source of Shakespeare’s Trans*Textuality
This panel explores the ways in which Shakespeare has been transtextually impacted by African literatures and oratures. In doing so, we start off from the thesis that Shakespeare knew people of African descent that have had an impact on his work in two respects. For one thing, Shakespeare was most sensitive to the power and violence of colonialism, slavery and racism. For another, Shakespeare’s plays display a profound knowledge of African folktales as well as other textualities of African societies such as the Yoruba-religious corpus of “Ifa divination” (Nigeria). We hold that both layers of knowing are intersected.
By thus transgressing the normative focus of Shakespeare Source Studies on written texts in languages that Shakespeare is said to have been able to read, the panel will thus offer a step towards reconfiguring Shakespeare Source Studies. Accordingly, we will present a respective theoretical and methodological framework. By looking at power constellations, particularly also with respect to British-West African encounters around 1600 and to the subsequent reception histories, we will complicate conventional notions of “the global” and “universality”, while using “planetarism” (Spivak), “decoloniality” (Mignolo) and “provincialising” (Chakrabarty) as categories of practice (Brubakar).
Thus tuned, we will discuss the modalities of the “contact zones” (Pratt) between Shakespeare and African Oral Literature. In doing so, we will also trace the sources as well as roots and routes of such textual meetings and possible encounters with persons of African descent. We even dare to investigate into Shakespeare’s relatedness to travelling the world and seaman/sailorship.
Another goal of this panel is to employ “cultural memory”, claiming that contemporary African dramatists Shakespeare’s amplify Shakespeare’s indebtedness to African orature by focalizing this transtextuality. These objectives will be pursued in three entangled papers that focus on Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, The Tempest and the Sonnets 127, 130, 132 and 144 as well as respective contemporary theatre productions by Femi Osofian and Ahmed Yerima. The panel is a plea to study Shakespeare and the respective adaptations by taking the very power constellations into account that code ideas of Shakespeare being global and universal.
Susan Arndt, Professor of English and African literature, Bayreuth University
Black Knowledge in Shakespeare’s: Othello, The Tempest and The Sonnets
The first paper “Black knowledge in Shakespeare’s: Othello, The Tempest and The Sonnets” by Susan Arndt will discuss the theoretical and methodological context for complementing Shakespeare Source studies with a decolonial perspective on Shakespeare’s indebtedness to African oral literature and Black knowledge. Thus framed, Susan Arndt will focus on the decoloniality that informs the character design of Othello and Caliban in general and their monologues in particular. Moreover, she will pursue the thesis that sonnets 127, 130, 132 and 144 address a Black woman of African descent.
Ife Aboluwade, University of Bayreuth, Postdoctoral Researcher
Othello’s Nigerian Ancestors and their Future Heirs
The second paper “Othello’s Nigerian ancestors and their future heirs” by Ife Aboluwade is designed as a case study of Othello, bridging it to Ifa-divination as well as other Nigerian folktales. In doing so, a close reading of given parallels in terms of characters and phrasings between the Ifa-divination poetry and Shakespeare’s tragedy is at the fore. To conclude her paper, she will discuss the adaptations of Othello by Femi Osofisan and Ahmed Yerima and the ways in which they focus on the given textual analogies between Othello and the Ifa-divination.
Michael Steppat, Professor of English, University of Bayreuth
Of Witches and Tricksters. Archetypes and Contact Zones
The third paper “Of Witches and Tricksters. Archetypes and Contact Zones” by Michael Steppat will look at “universal” archetypes such as the trickster and witches in both Shakespeare’s work and West African oral literature. In doing so, given commonalities and differences are discussed – as well as the modes that have prioritized Western versions of this archetypes at the cost of silencing West African ones. This paper will suggest modes of reconfiguring Shakespeare (Source) Studies as well as tools of how to allow Shakespeare to be multiversed. In doing so, the sources for Shakespeare’s knowledge about Africa as well as for his critical stance racism and colonialism will be mapped, focusing on Antony and Cleopatra and its most recent performance at The Globe.