The Different Western Perception of the Oriental Moor in the Renaissance and the Twentieth Century: Shakespeare's Othello and Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North: A Post Colonial Critique
Year: 2013

The western perception of the Muslim Orient is always affected by the political, cultural, and economic factors. This paper aims at relocating the transformation of the discourse of Orientalism from the Renaissance, as represented by Shakespeare's Othello (1604) to the post eighteenth century, as represented by Salih's Season of Migration to the North (1966) By contrasting the power relations difference between the West and the Crescent, this study highlights the historical difference of the western perception of the Orient from a coloniser, liberator, and guide to the West, as in Shakespeare's Othello, to a colonised subject, as in the characters of Mustafa Sa'eed and the narrator in Season of Migration to the North. This paper bridges the gap left by modern scholarship which focuses on applying post colonial theory on Salih's novel and neglects its resonance to Shakespeare's Othello in terms of power relations' vantage. When comparing Shakespeare's Othello and Salih's Season of Migration to the North, this study assumes the impossibility of applying postcolonial theory simultaneously on the two literary masterpieces since the historical western perception of the Orient in each period Renaissance and twentieth century is different.1 Salih's novel laments, rather than deconstructs, the Renaissance Shakespearean powerful Moor, as represented by Othello in Shakespeare's Othello.Some modern scholarship, as the case with Laouyene and Harlow, does not take into consideration the difference between Renaissance and post eighteenth century delineation of the Oriental Moor, as represented in Salih's Season of Migration and Shakespeare's Othello, in terms of the power relations' stream. For example, in his article "I am no Othello. I am a lie" Shakespeare's Moor and the Post Exotic in Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North' Atef Laouyene asserts that Salih's Season of Migration deconstructs the Renaissance stereotypical delineation of the Moorish character as represented by Shakespeare's Othello: 'In Season of Migration, appropriating Shakespeare involves a twofold process: a deconstructive cultural resistance to the Renaissance master code of Moorishness and a constructive understanding of postcolonial history within a less antihumanistic perceptual mode'.2 Even though Laouyene brilliantly analyses the two literary pieces namely, Othello and Season of Migration he does not address, as represented in the two works, the issue of the transformation of the discourse of Orientalism from Renaissance to the twentieth century in terms of power relations difference. For example, Laouyene asserts ahistorically that Othello in Shakespeare is a 'servant' and 'informant' to the Venetians: 'Sa'eed repudiates his Othelloness because, unlike Othello, he is a self declared avenger of the West, not its informant. While the Moor of Venice remains a foreign soldier but a lifelong servant of his 'reverent signiors, Sa'eed rebels against his European tutors.'3Laouyene's reading of Shakespeare's Othello is ahistorical since the Orient in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries constituted a cultural and political threat to the West. Othello is the master, liberator, and noble leader rather than the 'servant' as assumed by Laouyene to the Venetians against the Turkish invasion to Cyprus. In this sense, I posit that Sa'eed in Salih's novel imitates and incarnates the powerful and noble Othello to dismantle the British colonisation to Sudan. Just as Othello defends Venice against the Turkish invasion to Cyprus, Sa'eed insists on liberating his country, Sudan, from the British colonial regime.Also, in her article, 'Sentimental Orientalism: Season of Migration to the North and Othello' Barbara Harlow posits that Salih's novel deconstructs what she calls, 'the sentimental Orientalism'4 of Othello, who is 'governed by his passions and lust and irrational jealous desires that he fell victim to his baser nature'.5 Unlike Othello, Mustafa Sa'eed rejects the element of 'pity' which Othello seeks at the end of the play, since it gives justification to the 'civilising mission' and colonisation: 'Mustafa Sa'eed sees in this pity a lie, the lie that might be taken as a hallmark of much of the imperialist and colonialist endeavors of the modern age, the era of the "civilizing mission"