Othello, “Dull Moor” of Cyprus: Reading Racial Trauma and War Trauma

Abstract

The concept of trauma has emerged as a key concept in our lives and consequently literature in the twentieth century which is marked by gloomy concepts such as terror, horror, and agonies of heart; historical violences such as World War I, World War II, atomic bomb attacks, and civil wars; social troubles such as domestic violence, sexual abuses, and child labor; and economic crises and, eventually, natural disasters. Representations of these concepts and events in the form of movies, fictions, documentaries, and news bulletins shaped the worldview of the twentieth century man. Shoshana Felman describes the age very well when she remarks that the age is “the age of testimony” (Felman and Laub 5), which is notorious for being marked by millions of trauma victims, the survivors of various catastrophes, who have miserable histories within themselves, which are like an airplane‟s “black box” which has witnessed the final moments before the crises (Berger 571).