Tempestad caníbal: islas, océanos y colonialidad climática en ShakespeareThis article examines the role of cannibalism in the ethno-cartographic representation of imaginary islands, as they emerge from literary texts of the “Age of Discovery.” To address this topic, we elaborate on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, in which we will trace a dual visual conundrum: the construction of the cannibals’ monstrous bodies and the invention of America as an untamed island. Our working question is: How do the cannibalistic scenes of early modernity are related to the emergence of imaginary islands, the rise of visual racism, and the environmental history of the Western Islands? The theoretical framework for this paper derives from what we call the coloniality of seeing. In using this concept, we argue that the cartographic construction of Shakespeare’s “uninhabited” island is a rhetorical trope of coloniality.
Keywords:
Caliban; coloniality of seeing; cannibalism; Shakespeare; ethnocartography; imaginary islands