“Dangerous Conceits”: Racial Bodies and Microaggression in Shakespeare’s Othello

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Racial Bodies and Microaggression in Shakespeare's Othello derogatory term and simply referred to anyone of Brabantio discovers that his daughter married Othello, he accuses Othello of witchcraft, citing magic as the only possible explanation "[f]or nature so preposterously to err" that his daughter would desire a "sooty of criminality argues for the unnaturalness of miscegenation and activates negative stereotypes of the East allowed her to almost literally "overlook his blackness" racism that Othello faces, resulting in her unintentionally othering Othello (Antor 2016, 102) when she asks, tionally, in constructing Othello's race as something to be ignored, Desdemona implies that whiteness is the Iago insults Othello's "uncivilized" intelligence and la-The Duke appears to address this persistent and developing ideology of racism, dismissing Brabantio's racist ranting as "thin habits and poor likelihoods / statement criticizes racism as an unfounded "recent but widespread and popular prejudice" (Antor 2016, analogy linking what is 'fair' to virtue and what is 'vice' gressions that pervade even his praise, Othello appears most heinous racial insults, even if Othello's calm demeanour derives from ignorance of racism rather argues that "the body has memory" of the microag-

Bodily and Physical Imagery
Corporeal imagery dominates Iago and Othello's con-has on Othello: Dangerous conceits are in their natures to distaste, But, with a little act upon the Iago's description mirrors both Pierces' experience of (2014) description of them as a "daily diminishment

Introduction
As the subtitle to Shakespeare's Othello, The Moor of Venice implies, both the titular character and the play itself are immersed in the burgeoning discourse written during England's "establishment as a colonial upon "both the physical presence of racial 'others' that arose from a new, and distinctly modern, attitude towards race, and especially colour" (Schalkwyk 2004, culture develops, Othello's discussion of race remains relevant within contemporary systems of racism and racial antagonism [that] might seem small, but once properly understood are shown to play a role in large ics often read Othello's wrath and jealousy as a tragedy Microaggressions accumulate, and the racism that Othello experiences provide context for what appears to be an implausibly quick turn against Desdemona devastating impact of microaggressions on racialized bodies and the collective function of those microag-

Microaggressions in Othello
commonplace daily verbal, behavioural, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial, gender, sexual orientation, and religious slights and insults to the target person or group" (Rini 2021, as a second-class citizen, feeling like an alien in one's own land, assumption of criminality, colourblindness, and (often negative) ascription of intelligence from Sue's taxonomy of microaggressions (60), all of which Before the audience encounters the titular character, "Othello is othered by Iago and Roderigo onstage, and this emphasis on his alterity is closely linked to his through the sexual and colour-coded bestial imagery of "an old black ram / Is tupping your white ewe" foreignness of the Moor of Venice within the Venetian a "wheeling stranger / Of here and everywhere" insinuation of witchcraft when he tells Desdemona that if to see whether the one person who supposedly does Othello's repetition of the racial microaggressions he experiences further illustrates the complete racialization deteriorates, Desdemona remarks that "[m]y lord is not sudden and transformative change in Othello's temper mirrors Rankine's assertion that the eruption of anger due to a triggering microaggression "might make the witness believe that a person is 'insane'" (Rankine al's response to them, may appear like an isolated event to those who do not constantly experience microaggressions, they are both connected to a larger system of

Structural Power Dynamics breaks the conventions of "social structures [treated]
tio directly invokes this transgression, as he perceives racial body, as he argues that Desdemona should be with someone "Of her own clime, complexion, and repeating, without any prompting from Iago, Brabantio's espousal of unnatural miscegenation, as Othello wonders aloud whether Desdemona marrying him is aware of the racial microaggressions directed towards Othello worries that he cannot be loved and, like many victims of microaggressions, experiences issues voices his doubt of Desdemona in racial terms, and he to negative conceptions of his race: "Haply, for I am black / And have not those soft parts of conversation" animal comparison from Act 1" (Antor 2016, 100) in referring to himself as a "hornèd man's a monster gives the epilogue to his story, instructing his audience to "[s]peak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, / Nor us of the complex interaction of the empirical and the does not use the absolutes of white and black, and only refers to Desdemona as a more relative "pearl" and of otherness and draw attention to microaggressive language that works to create and enforce seemingly

Conclusion
Othello demonstrates how microaggressions, as some of the smallest links that connect to larger systems of oppression, can arrest and trap bodies into racial catmicroaggressions accumulate, they can undermine an individual's self-worth, even to the point of contributing to a complete and abject catastrophe worthy of im-Othello's audience within the play seems to understand Gratiano's statement that "[a]ll that is spoke is marred" understanding of any such discursive concepts" as otherness, Lodovico's comment on the bed-grave that though the play does not escape the "mechanisms of dichotomy between Turks and Venetians and Lodovico still refers to Othello as "the Moor" in addition clearer perception and the right conversations, could crushing experience of asserting one's identity only to realize that "no amount of visibility will alter the ways nition scene, where he asserts his presence to the play's diegetic audience during the very inception of systemic racism, creates the possibility of awareness within the non-diegetic audience regarding the consequences of Othello's marriage as not only unnatural but as a threat to the established political and social hierarchy (Antor have passage free, / Bondslaves and pagans shall our promoted, similarly raises his self-worth and reasserts his power "by reducing Othello and others to his own the play's "villains 'continually invok[ing] the clichés of cially employs sweeping statements and a priori logical that Desdemona must be unfaithful, not only because she is a Venetian woman and "[i]n Venice they do let God see pranks / They dare not show their husband" generalizations as "a misogynist and racist who uses the bodily otherness of blacks as well as women to construct a discourse of negative alterity that marginalizes and subjects them to his own masculine authority" Iago works to restore the power relations of the world Though microaggressions are harmful, "the problem is a vast social structure that operates through individduality of the internal and external nature of microaggressions, as he resembles "both the Vice and the devil, suggesting his relationship both to Othello's inner temptation and to a preexistent evil force" (Bevington and wrathful inclinations as inherent "inner temptation[s]" ignores the microaggressions that slowly erode exploiting Othello's racial insecurities using patterns of oppression; Othello's sinful vices can therefore be read as symptoms of Othello internalizing the racist stereotypes he constantly encounters throughout the director or explicit plan", narratives often require "villains, people who set out to cause massive harm through deviously clever manipulation" (Rini 2021, malignity", as Samuel Taylor Coleridge terms it, evokes his nebulous and amorphous motivation also leaves an individual-shaped hole in the play that invites the audience to look through Iago to the systems behind his Othello ends with bodies becoming "defamiliarized and na before killing himself; Othello describes Desdemona as "whiter skin of hers than snow, / And smooth as monumental alabaster" and states that she "dost stone racialized and gendered, immobilized through Iago's use of microaggressions and their connected systems of