ABSTRACT
There is a moment in Shakespeare’s fi nal play The Tempest when we fi rst encounter the monster Caliban. Caliban and Prospero have had a bitter exchange in which each call upon their respective powers to damn the other, when fi nally Caliban threatens to overwhelm Prospero by miscegenation-‘to people the isle with Calibans.’ [Tmp I: ii 349]1 Although this is directed at Prospero, it is his daughter, Miranda, who replies:
Her speech defi nes the colonial relationship. Caliban is an ‘abhorred slave’, ‘savage,’ ‘brutish,’ ‘vile.’ Miranda’s language has the power to construct Caliban, a power that refl ects Prospero’s very tangible control of his body, his actions, his destiny. The terms are those that produce a ‘truth’ about the colonial subject because that is the power of colonial discourse. Prospero and Miranda’s treatment of Caliban stems from their belief that Caliban is no more than a barbarous brute who could not know his own meaning without their language. Their civilized and rational language entitles them to raise him to the level of competent slave. If he is recalcitrant he must be shown to be incapable of improvement: as Prospero says, he is ‘A devil, a born devil, on whose nature/ Nurture can never stick’ (Tmp. IV:
i 188-189).2 The moral framework of the relationship is entirely determined by the dominant party. More specifi cally, the entire relationship is constructed within the boundaries of colonial discourse: Caliban should be grateful for having been taught the language because it has given him meaning, it is capable of rendering him human.
