ABSTRACT
Although virtually every discussion of Othello must at some point contend with the play's references to sight and seeing, no study that I know of—Karen Newman's observations about the play's “scopic economy” notwithstanding —has explored Iago's manipulation of the iconic sign system that privileges male eyes. While Steven Baker's “Sight and a Sight in Othello” describes the play as “a history of seeing, looking, and watching” (302), Baker is more interested in exploring how the play's references to sights and seeing construct the literally hoodwinked Othello as an emblem of Blind Love than in investigating a semiotics of vision. In her exploration of the “sights” in Othello, Katherine E. Maus focuses on the relationship between the legal “visibility” of invisible evidence in English witchcraft trials and Iago's attempts to convince Othello that he can see what cannot be seen. Newman's essay on “Femininity and the Monstrous in Othello” argues that Desdemona's desire is punished precisely because it is “non-specular.” Newman identifies the “orality/aurality” of Desdemona's sexuality “as frightening and dangerous,” even monstrous, to the “male-dominated Venetian world of Othello,” a world “dominated by a scopic economy which privileges sight” (152).
