Cesaire's Tempest Writes Back to the Empire

Abstract

Aimé Césaire, who lived the experience of colonialism, wrote back to Shakespeare’s play The Tempest in a play of his own, which he called A Tempest. Unlike notions of A Tempest as a simplistic writing back, the current research reveals A Tempest as a sophisticated play in which Césaire uses his own creative methods, some of which incorporate the colonizer and others the colonized, to write back to the Empire which Shakespeare represents well and reflects. This research performs a deep analysis of A Tempest, revealing the voice of the Other as enabled; arguing with and disabling The Tempest’s deep bias in relation to the issue of colonialism, and therefore broadening the umbrella of postcolonial thought and discourse, which is welcoming to original methods of writing back. The research reveals Césaire’s practice of transformative methods of writing back, some of which focus on the colonizer and some of which focus on the colonized. The writing back method is achieved by analyzing A Tempest closely— revealing not only the involvement of the colonizer but surprisingly the colonized in the colonizing agenda. In addition to that, new motives of the colonizer’s practices are exposed. On another level, revealing the narrative through the colonized, about what happened and between whom, is the primary method by which the colonized gains back his legitimate power and ownership. Keywords: Oppression, Colonialism, Tempest, Writing Back, Colonizer, Colonized.