Therefore, Othello ventriloquizes racist discourses, but ultimately reveals the flawed nature of the societal order that such discourses and ideologies attempt to uphold or restore. These documents demonstrate how white men employed racist language to emphasize the otherness and inferiority of Africans, creating an ideological justification for their own superiority and thus maintaining societal order. In contrast , the play criticizes the racist and xenophobic ideologies of Renaissance England by associating them with the villain, Iago, an immoral and corrupt representative of white male identity. Moreover, according to these texts, such as George Best’s A True Discourse of the Late Voyages of Discouerie, miscegenation posed the worst threat since mixed children jeopardized white homogeneity and superiority.
I suggest that Shakespeare’s Othello, more so than any of the plays D’Amico discusses, similarly sought to challenge the racial and xenophobic ideologies of its audience and, by extent, Renaissance England. My analysis of select examples of 16 th century discourse s on race and Africans illuminates the foundation of these racist and xenophobic ideologies, namely: since Renaissance England’s sense of social order demanded the supremacy of white men, any cultural space for black male empowerment seemed dangerous.
In a chapter from his book The Moor in English Renaissance Drama, Jack D’Amico asserts that some Renaissance-era plays encouraged their predominantly white European audiences to reevaluate their own views on outsiders, particularly Africans, as well as the validity of their belief in their own superiority.
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