المستخلص: |
The production of Shakespeare in the Arab world from the late-nineteenth century to the early 1960s was characterized by Arabic translations, adaptations, and transplantations. These were parts of a resistance to Western 'masks of difference' or the Prospero-Caliban model of postcolonial writing-back, a writing characterized by the resistance of the West and the claiming of Othello back to his Atlas origins. However, the aura of Shakespeare's canon, in these first productions, was still preserved though criss-crossed by a multitude of significant local narratives. The second stage, from the late 1960s up to the present, has been characterized by decolonial revisions of power relationships through the practice of 'double critique' and 'border thinking'. Today, most Shakespeare offshoots on Arab stages amount to portraits of the self in a world out of joint. Since the end of the 1960s, these Shakespearean transplantations have also become powerful strategies for revisions of power within the Arab world and beyond.
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