ABSTRACT
In his Lindberg lecture, “Post-Racial Othello,” given at the University of New Hampshire, Professor Douglas Lanier attempts to explain why select film adaptations of Shakespeare’s Othello avoid its racial aspects (2010). Since the majority of these movies were produced outside Anglo-American culture, which has been preoccupied with issues of race for centuries, Lanier suggests that, since Shakespeare went global, his Othello has been interpreted through the prism of local issues, for example, identity, politics, class, love, eroticism, and homosexuality. Glocalized cultural politics, in a way, reject the racial discourses that comprise the “Grand Narrative” – to borrow a phrase used by Jean-François Lyotard (1984) in a different context – of Shakespeare’s play. In other words, different cultures have appropriated his play, rebranded its message and erased the question of race.
