Shakespeare’s Othello resists readings that consider the text quintessentially anti-black, but does that mean that we should not consider it a racist text? This essay engages the more equivocal contours of the play’s intolerance toward its Moor, arguing that it is precisely this complexity that characterizes regimes of racialism. Colin Powell provides a helpful point of juxtaposition because the former American secretary of state encourages debates about the prevalence of modern-day racism. To many, Powell’s ascent signals racism’s disappearance, because a number of his characteristics appear to extricate him from racialized stereotypes concerning African Americans. But critics of such post-racial perspectives have cogently demonstrated that an over-investment in narratives of racial transcendence hides and thus aids the persistence of more subtle and pernicious forms of racialization. In this essay, a study of Powell’s reception informs an approach to Shakespeare’s tragedy. Where much criticism on Othello argues against the text’s capacity for racism by emphasizing its more tolerant aspects—especially Othello’s social status, occupation, and irregular humoral description—this essay reads the Moor’s racialization as entangled with these complex, sometimes favorable features. Thus, it prompts the field to move away from conceptions of racism in which intolerance is too easily controverted by shows of tolerance, because such reductive notions inhibit the historicization of a nuanced early modern racialism.

中文翻译：

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奥赛罗、科林鲍威尔和后种族时代错误

莎士比亚的《奥赛罗》抵制将文本视为典型的反黑人的读物，但这是否意味着我们不应该将其视为种族主义文本？这篇文章探讨了该剧对其摩尔人的不容忍的更模棱两可的轮廓，认为正是这种复杂性才是种族主义政权的特征。科林鲍威尔提供了一个有用的并列观点，因为这位前美国国务卿鼓励就现代种族主义的盛行展开辩论。对许多人来说，鲍威尔的崛起标志着种族主义的消失，因为他的许多特征似乎使他摆脱了对非裔美国人的种族刻板印象。但是，对这种后种族观点的批评者有力地表明，对种族超越叙事的过度投资会隐藏并因此有助于更微妙和有害的种族化形式的持续存在。在这篇文章中，对鲍威尔接待的研究提供了一种处理莎士比亚悲剧的方法。许多对奥赛罗的批评通过强调其更宽容的方面来反对文本的种族主义能力——尤其是奥赛罗的社会地位、职业和不规则的体液描述——这篇文章认为摩尔人的种族化与这些复杂的、有时是有利的特征纠缠在一起。因此，它促使该领域摆脱种族主义的概念，在这种概念中，不容忍很容易被容忍的表现引起争议，因为这种简化的概念抑制了细致入微的早期现代种族主义的历史化。