George Washington University Iago's Alter Ego: Race as Projection in Othello Author(s): Janet Adelman Source: Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 48, No. 2 (Summer, 1997), pp. 125-144 Published by: Folger Shakespeare Library in association with George Washington University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2871277 . Accessed: 16/07/2011 13:23 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=folger. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Folger Shakespeare Library and George Washington University are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Shakespeare Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org Jago'sAlterEgo: Race as Projectionin Othello JANET OTHELLO ADELMAN FAMOUSLY BEGINS NOT WITH OTHELLO BUT WITH IAGO. Other tragediesbeginwithancillaryfigurescommentingon thecharacterwho willturnout to be at the centerof the tragedy-one thinksof Lear,Macbeth, and Cleopatra-but no otherplaysubjectsitsostensiblytragichero to Antony so long and intensivea debunkingbeforehe even setsfootonstage.And the audience is inevitablycomplicitin thisdebunking:beforewe meet Othello, we are utterlydependent on lago's and Roderigo's descriptionsof him. For the firstlong minutesof the play,we knowonlythatthe Moor, "the thicklips" (1.1.66),' has done somethingthat Roderigo (like the audience) feels he should have been told about beforehand;we findout whatit is for the first time only throughlago's violentlyeroticizingand racializingreportto Brabantio: "Even now,verynow,an old black ram / Is tuppingyourwhiteewe" (11. 88-89).2 At thispoint in myteachingof the play,I normallypoint to all the waysin which Othello belies lago's descriptionas soon as he appears; in the classroom myreadingof race in Othello turnson thiscontrastas Shakespeare'sway of denaturalizingthe tropes of race, so that we are made to understand Othello not as the "natural" embodimentof lago's "old black ram" gone insanelyjealous but as the victimof the racistideologyeverywhere visiblein Venice, an ideologyto which he is relentlessly subjected and whichincreasinglycomes to definehim as he internalizesit-internalizes it so fullythat, I Quotations followthe Arden edition of edited by M. R. Ridley (London: Methuen, Othello, 1958). Ridleyfollowsthe 1622 quarto,whichoftendiffers I have noted the fromthe Folio Othello; differenceswhere theyseem significantto my argument.Citationsof plays other than Othello followWilliamShakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. AlfredHarbage (Baltimore:Penguin, 1969). 2 Race is of course a vexed term;manyhave pointed out thatthe word racegained its current meaning onlyas it was biologized in supportof the economic institutionof slaveryand thatthe linkbetweenrace and skincolor is a peculiarlycontemporaryobsession,that(forexample) Irish and Jews might in 1604 have been thoughtof as raciallyseparate from the English. For a particularlylucid account of the questions surroundingthe invocationof race as a category in earlymodern England, see Lynda E. Boose, " 'The Gettingof a LawfulRace': Racial discourse in earlymodern England and the unrepresentableblack woman" in Women,"Race,"and in theEarlyModernPeriod,Margo Hendricksand PatriciaParker,eds. (London and New Writing York:Routledge,1994), 35-54, esp. 35-40; see alsoJohn Gillies,Shakespeare and thegeography of difference (Cambridge:CambridgeUP, 1994), forthe claim thatearlymodernothernesswasbased on geographyrather than on the anachronisticcategoryof race (25). Nonetheless,in lago's capacityto make Othello's blacknessthe primarysignifierof his otherness-as Boose observes, "once his Ensignhas raised the flaginscribingOthello withinthe difference of skincolor,all the presumablymeaningfuldifferencesOthello has constructedbetween himselfand the infidel come collapse" (38) -the textinsistson thevisibledifferenceof skincolor thatwillincreasingly to define race, perhaps because, unlike religion,it (proverbially)cannot be changed. For a discussion of the significanceof visible differencein early modern England, see Kim Hall, "Reading What Isn't There: 'Black' Studies in Early Modern England," StanfordHumanities Review3 (1993): 23-33, esp. 25-27; in her account "science merelytakesup alreadypre-existing termsof difference, such as skincolor and features,thathave [previously]been combined with physicaland mental characteristics"(25). 126 SSHAESPEARE QUARTERLY searchingfora metaphorto conveyhis sense of the soil attachingboth to his name and to Desdemona's body,Othello can come up withno termof comparison other than his own face ("My name, thatwas as fresh/ As Dian's visage,is now begrim'd,and black/ As mine own face" [3.3.392-94]).3 Othelassociated lo's "discovering"thathis blacknessis a stain-a stainspecifically withhis sexuality-and "discovering"thatstain on Desdemona are virtually of Dian's visage simultaneousforhim; hence the metaphorictransformation into his own begrimedface. IfDesdemona becomes a "black weed" (4.2.69)4 for Othello, her "blackening" is a kind of shorthandfor his sense thathis blacknesshas in factcontaminatedher; as manyhave argued,his quicknessto contaminatedis in parta functionof his horrified believe her always-already recoil fromhis suspicion thathe is the contaminatingagent.5 throughwhat In otherwords,in the classroomI usuallyread race in Othello I take to be the play's representationof Othello's experience of race as it comes to dominate his sense of himselfas polluted and polluting,undeservBut although ing of Desdemona and hence quick to believe her unfaithful. the play locates Othello in a deeply racist society,the sense of pollution attachingto blacknesscomes firstof all (forthe audience ifnot forOthello) fromlago; thoughlago needed Brabantioto convince Othello of Desdemona's tendencyto deception and the "disproportion"of Othello as her marriage choice, lago legitimizesand intensifiesBrabantio's racismthroughhis initialsexualizingand racializinginvocationof Othello.And ifthe playoffers us a rich representationof the effectsof racism on Othello, it offersus an equally rich-and in some ways more disturbing-representationof the functionof Othello's race forIago. I offerthe followingreading of thatrep3 Ridleyfollowsthe Folio readingof line 392, since thisline occurs in a passage not found in QI; Q2 (1630) famouslyreads "Her name" in place of F's "My name," perhaps to rationalize I Othello's peculiar association of his name withthe fairnessof a figurefor female virginity. dynamicsthatunderlie Othello's prefer"My name," partlybecause it suggeststhe identificatory love for Desdemona; but either reading points toward Othello's association of the stain on Desdemona's virginbody withthe blacknessof his own face. I Desdemona becomes a "blackweed" onlyin the quartos; F omitsthe adjective. 5 This positionwas powerfully-and variously-articulatedin threeclassicessayspublishedin 1979-80: EdwardA. Snow's "Sexual Anxietyand the Male Order of Things in Othello,"English Literary Renaissance10 (1980): 384-412; StanleyCavell's "Othello and the Stake of the Other" (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987), 125-42 in DisowningKnowledge in Six Plays ofShakespeare (originallypublished in 1979 in TheClaimofReason[Oxford:OxfordUP]); and Stephen GreenFromMore to Shakespeare blatt's "The Improvisationof Power" in RenaissanceSelf-Fashioning: (Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1980), 222-54, esp. 232-52. For the association of Othello's blacknessspecificallywithsexual contamination,and Othello's internalizationof this association,see especiallySnow, 400-402; and Cavell, 136-37. For a fullerreading of the association between blackness and monstroussexualityin early modern English culture and in and the monsee especiallyKaren Newman," 'And wash the Ethiop white': femininity Othello, Jean E. Howard and The textin history and ideology, strousin Othello"in Shakespeare Reproduced: Marion F. O'Connor, eds. (New Yorkand London: Methuen,1987), 143-62, esp. 148-53; fora fullerreading of the waysin whichOthello internalizesthe Venetian constructionof his black1500-1900 30 (1990): ness,see EdwardBerry,"Othello's Alienation,"StudiesinEnglishLiterature 315-33. The "blackening" of Desdemona has become a criticalcommonplace:see, forexample, Quarterly and theHideous in Othello,"Shakespeare Michael Neill, "Unproper Beds: Race, Adultery, 40 (1989): 383-412, esp. 410; Berry, 328; Ania Loomba, Gender,race, Renaissancedrama (Manchesterand New York:ManchesterUP, 1989), 59; Parker,"Fantasies of 'Race' and 'Gender': Africa,Othelloand bringingto light" in Hendricksand Parker,eds., 84-100, esp. 95; and especiallyNewman,151-52, forwhom the blackeningof Desdemona indicatesthe convergence of woman and black in the categoryof monstroussexuality. RACE AS PROJECTION IN OTHELLO 127 resentationas a thought-experiment withtwo aims: first,to testout the applicabilityof psychoanalytictheory-especially Kleinian theory-to problems of race, an arena in which its applicabilityis often questioned; and, second, to identifysome of the waysin whichracismis the psychicproperty (and rightlythe concern) of the racist,not simplyof his victim. lago erupts out of the night (this play, like Hamlet,begins in palpable darkness),as thoughhe were a condensationof itsproperties.Markinghimselfas opposite to lightthroughhis demonic "I am not whatI am," lago calls fortha world,I willargue,in whichhe can see his own darknesslocalized and reflectedin Othello's blackness,or ratherin what he makes-and teaches Othello to make-of Othello's blackness. lago's voice inductsus intothe play:long beforeOthello has a name,much less a voice,of his own,lago has a distinctive"I." The matterof Othello,and satisfaction oftheaudience's urgentcuriosity about whatexactlyRoderigohas just learned, are deferreduntilafterwe have heard lago's catalogue of injuries to that "I" ("I know myprice, I am worthno worse a place" [1.1.11]; "And I, of whomhis eyeshad seen the proof,... mustbe lee'd, and calm'd" [11.28-30]; "And I, God bless the mark,hisworship'sancient" [1.33]). lago's "I" beats throughthe dialogue withobsessiveinsistence,claimingboth selfsufficiency ("I followbut myself"[1.58]) and self-division, definingitselfby what it is not ("Were I the Moor, I would not be lago" [1. 57]), in fact simultaneouslyproclaimingitsexistenceand nonexistence:"I am not whatI am" (1. 65). I, I, I: lago's name unfoldsfromthe Italian io,Latin ego;and the injured "I" is his signature,the ground of his being and the ground,I will argue, of the play. For lago calls up the action of the play as though in response to thissense of injury:"Call up her father,.. . poison his delight" (11.67-68), he says,like a stage manager, or like a magician calling forth spiritsto performhis will;and withhis words,the action begins. The structureof the firstscene models lago's relationto the worldthathe calls up, forthe playproperseems to arise out of lago's injured "I": it is not onlyset in motion by lago's "I" but becomes in effecta projectionof it, as lago successfully attemptsto rid himselfof interiorpain by replicatingit in Othello. Othello-and particularly in relationto Desdemona-becomes Iago's primarytargetin partbecause Othello has the presence,the fullnessof being, that lago lacks.6 Othello is everywhereassociated with the kind of 6 See W. H. Auden's relatedaccount ofJagoas practicaljoker: "The practicaljokerdespiseshis victims,but at the same time he envies them because theirdesires,howeverchildishand mistaken,are real to them,whereashe has no desiTewhichhe can call his own.... Ifthewordmotive is givenitsnormalmeaningof a positivepurpose of the selflike sex, money,glory,etc.,thenthe practicaljoker is withoutmotive.Yet the professionalpracticaljoker is certainlydriven,.. . but the driveis negative,a fearof lackinga concreteself,of being nobody.In anypracticaljoker to whom playingsuchjokes is a passion, thereis alwaysan element of malice, a projectionof his self-hatredonto others,and in the ultimatecase of the absolutepracticaljoker, thisis projected onto all created things" (The Dyer'sHand and otheressays[New York: Random House, 1962], 256-57). The emptinessof Auden's practicaljoker is sometimesassociatedby later criticswith lago's facility in role-playing;see, e.g., ShelleyOrgel,whose lago gains a temporarysense of self byplayingtheroles thatothersprojectonto him ("lago," American Imago25 [1968]: 258-73, esp. 272). Greenblatt'slago "has the role-player'sabilityto imaginehis nonexistenceso thathe can existfora momentin anotherand as another"; but forGreenblatt,lago's imaginedemptinessis less an ontological state than a cover for his emptyingout of his victim(235 and 236). More recentlylago's emptinesshas reminded criticsof a Derridean absence of selfor meaning; see, 128 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY interiorsolidityand wholeness that stands as a reproach to lago's interior emptinessand fragmentation:iflago takesJanusas his patronsaint (1.2.33) and repeatedlyannounces his affiliation withnothingness("I am not whatI am"; "I am nothing,ifnot critical" [2.1.119]), Othello is initially"all in all sufficient"(4.1.261), a "fullsoldier" (2.1.36), whose "solid virtue" (4.1.262) and "perfectsoul" (1.2.31) allow him to achieve the "full fortune" (1.1.66) of possessingDesdemona. "Tell me whatyou need to spoil and I willtellyou whatyou want," saysAdam Phillips:7the extentto which Othello's fullness and solidityare the object oflago's envycan be gauged bythe extentto which he worksto replicatehis own self-divisionin Othello. Splithimself,lago is a masterat splittingothers: his seduction of Othello worksby inscribingin Othello the sense of dangerous interiorspaces-thoughts that cannot be known,monstersin themind-which Othello seemsto lack,introducinghim to the world of self-alienationthatlago inhabits;8by the end, Othello is so self-dividedthat he can take arms against himself,Christianagainst Turk, literalizingself-divisionby splittinghimselfgraphicallydown the middle.9 Though lago is not thereto see hisvictory, we mightimaginehim as invisible selfcommentator,sayingin effect,"Look, he is not all-in-all sufficient, sustainingand full;he is as self-dividedas I am."''0 oftheArkansasPhilological Assoe.g., Bonnie Melchior, "Jago as Deconstructionist,"Publications ciation16 (1990): 63-81, esp. 79; or Karl F. Zender, "The Humiliationof Jago," SEL 34 (1994): 323-39, esp. 327-28. In Alessandro Serpieri'sbrilliantsemioticreading,Jagosuffersfroman "envy of being" thatis the deconstructionist's equivalentof the stateAuden describes:"Jago and is thus condemned to deconstruct cannot identifywith any situationor sign or Mnonci, theminto simulacra.Othello is throughhis own ononciations the inoncisof others,transforming preciselythe lord of the inonci" (Serpieri,"Reading the signs: towardsa semioticsof ShakeShakespeares, John Drakakis,ed. [London and spearean drama," trans.Keir Elam, in Alternative New York:Methuen, 1985], 119-43, esp. 139). In itsemphasison envyand projection,Auden's and Serpieri'swork is closest to my own; but see also David Pollard's powerfulBaudelairian reading of lago's emptinessand the sadisticprojectionsthroughwhich he attemptsto fillit eds. ("lago's Wound" in Othello: NewPerspectives, VirginiaMason Vaughan and KentCartwright, [Rutherford,Madison, and Teaneck, NJ:FairleighDickinsonUP; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses,1991], 89-96). 7Adam Phillips, "Foreword" in Harold N. Boris, Envy (Northvale,NJ,and London: Jason Aronson, 1994), vii-xi, esp. ix. 8 For some, Othello is splitlong beforeJagobegins his work.In Berry'saccount,forexample, Othello is divided fromthe beginningby the two contradictoryself-imageshe absorbs from Venice; his failure to escape this limitingframeworkand hence to "achieve a true sense of personal identity"is a powerfulsource of tragicfeelingin the play (323 and 330). But forcritics who read Othello as an earlyinstance of a colonized subject,this "failure" is not personal but systemic:both Loomba (32, 48, and 54) and JyotsnaSingh ("Othello's Identity,Postcolonial Theory,and ContemporaryAfricanRewriting'of Othello"in Hendricksand Parker,eds., 28799, esp. 288) position Othello specificallyin opposition to what Singh calls "the dominant, Westernfantasyof a singular,unifiedidentity"(288). But lago at least insiststhat he is the divided one, and Othello initiallyclaims thathis soul is "perfect" or undivided;whateverthe stateto whichOthello is reduced, Othello-like TheTempest-seemsto me to encode the fantasy thatthe exotic otherpossessesa primitiveunitaryidentitybeforehis inductioninto a Westernstylesplitself. 9 I firstread thispaper to a veryhelpfuland responsiveaudience at NotreDame in November 1994, on which occasion Richard Dutton called my attentionto the way in which Othello's self-divisionis literallyplayed out on the stage. 10 As lago's self-alienationpasses to Othello, so does his habitof soliloquizing.Soliloquies are usuallyin Shakespearean tragedythe discourseof self-division:only those whose selves are in enough interiorvoicesto carry pieces need to explain themselvesto themselvesand have distinctout thejob for our benefit.Initiallylago's soliloquies formallymarkhim as fracturedin comparison withOthello's wholeness;by the end, Othello is the soliloquizer. RACE AS PROJECTION IN OTHELLO 129 To shatterthe illusionof Othello's fullnessand presence is also to shatter the illusion of his erotic power; his divisionfromhimselfis firstof all his divisionfromDesdemona and fromthe fairportion of himselfinvestedin her. If Cassio is any indication,thaterotic power is heavilyidealized by the Italians: GreatJove,Othelloguard, Andswellhissailwiththineownpowerful breath, Thathe mayblessthisbaywithhistallship, Makelove'squickpantsin Desdemona'sarms Giverenew'dfireto ourextincted spirits.... (2.1.77-81)11 But forlago it is intolerable:whatbegins as a means to an end (lago creates Othello's suspicionsabout Desdemona to discreditCassio in orderto replace him as lieutenant) increasinglybecomes an end in itself,as lago drivesOthello towarda murderousreenactmentof sexual union on the marriagebed, even thoughthatreenactmentwillmake Othello incapable of bestowingthe positionlago initiallyseeks. The thrustof his plot towardthe marriagebed, even at the cost of his own ambition,suggeststhatwhatlago needs to spoil is on that bed: the fullnessand presence signifiedby Othello's possession of Desdemona, the sexual union thatremindshim of his own extinctedspirits. For lago's own eroticlife takes place onlyin his head; though he seems to imaginea seriesof eroticobjects-Desdemona (11.286-89), Cassio (3.3.41932), and Othello himself(in the coded language-"the lustfulMoor / Hath leap'd into myseat" [2.1.290-91]-that makescuckoldryan anal invasionof lago's own body)-he imaginesthemless as realizable eroticobjects than as mental countersin his revengeplot, and he imagines them only in sexual unions (Othello withDesdemona, Othello withEmilia, Cassio withDesdemona, Cassio withEmilia) thateverywhere exclude and diminishhim.And in response,he effectively neutralizestheeroticpotencythatmockshis ownlack. His primarytool in thisneutralizationis the creationof Othello as "black": and in factit is Othello as progenitorthatfirstexciteslago's racializingrage. His firstuse of the language ofblack and whiteis in his call to Brabantio:"An old black ram / Is tuppingyourwhiteewe." If Cassio needs to make Othello into an exoticsuper-phallus,capable of restoringItalian potency,lago needs to make him into a black monster,invadingthe citadel of whiteness.(The idealizationand the debasementare of course twosides of the same coin, and theyare equallydamagingto Othello: both use him onlyas the containerfor whitefantasies,whetherof desireor fear.) Yourwhiteewe/you: lago's half-pun invokesthewhitenessofhis auditorsyia theimage of Othello's contaminating miscegenation;'2true to formin racistdiscourse,"whiteness"emergesas a " I here departfromRidleyin followingF's versionofline 80; Ridleyand QI (1622) give"And swiftly come to Desdemona's arms." RidleyhimselffindsQI's versionof line 80 "pallid" and thinksShakespeareprobablyrevisedit forF; thathe nonethelessrejectsthe Folio versionon the grounds thatit is inconsistentwithCassio's charactersuggestshis resistanceto seeingjust how eroticizedCassio's idealizing of Othello is (xxix-xxx and 52n). In the contextof lovemaking, spiritsis not a neutral term;for its specificallysexual senses, see Stephen Booth, Shakespeare's Sonnets(New Haven, CT, and London: Yale UP, 1977), 441-43. 12 See Neill's powerfulaccount of the ways in which the audience is implicatedin lago's invocationof the horrorsof miscegenation,the impropersexual mixturethatmedievaltheologians called adultery(395-99 and 407-9). For ArthurL. LittleJr.the whole of the play constitutes "the primal scene of racism," a forbiddensexual sight/sitefromwhich the audience 130 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY categoryonlywhen it is imagined as threatenedby its opposite. lago's language here worksthroughseparation,worksby placing "blackness" outside of "whiteness"even as it provokesterrorat the thoughtof theirmixture.But the playhas alreadyaffiliated lago himselfwithdarknessand thedemonic;the threatof a contaminatingblacknessis alreadythere,alreadypresentinside the "whiteness" he would invoke. lago creates Othello as "black"-and thereforehimselfas "white"-when he constructshim as monstrousprogenitor; and he uses that racialized blackness to destroywhat he cannot tolerate.But the trope throughwhichlago imaginesthatdestructionmakes lago himselfintothe monstrousprogenitor,filledwitha darkconceptionthat onlydarknesscan bringforth:"I ha't, itis engender'd," he tellsus; "Hell and night/ Must bring this monstrousbirthto the world's light" (1.3.401-2). This trope makes the blackness lago would attributeto Othello-like his monstrousgenerativity-somethingalreadyinside lago himself,something thathe mustproject out into the world:as thoughlago were pregnantwith the monsterhe makes of Othello.'3 If the structureof the firstscene predictsthe process throughwhichlago becomes the progenitorof Othello's racialized blackness,the trope of the monstrousbirthin the firstact's finallines perfectlyanticipatesthe mechanism of projectionthroughwhichlago willcome to use Othello's black skin as the container for his own interiorblackness.Cassio uses Othello as the locus for fantasiesof inseminatingsexual renewal;Jagouses him as the reand his self-disgust. For lago needs positoryforhis own bodilyinsufficiency the blacknessof others:even the "whiteewe" Desdemona is blackenedin his imaginationas he turns "her virtueinto pitch" (2.3.351). How are we to understand lago's impulse to blacken, the impulse for which Othello becomes the perfectvehicle?Whatdoes it mean to take anotherperson's body as the receptacle for one's own contents?The textgivesus, I think,a very of lago's proexact account of whatI've come to call the psycho-physiology jection: that is, not simplyan account of the psychologicalprocesses themselves but also an account of the fantasizedbodily processes that underlie them. "Projection" is in its own waycomfortingly abstract;by invokingthe body behind the abstraction,Othelloin effectrubs our noses in it.'4 "constructsthe significanceofrace" (" 'An essence that'snot seen': The PrimalScene ofRacism in Othello,"SQ 44 [1993]: 304-24, esp. 305-6). 13 The familiarassociationsof blacknesswithmonstrosity (see, e.g., Newman,148; and James R. Aubrey,"Race and the Spectacle of the Monstrousin Othello,"Clio 22 [1993]: 221-38) and specifically withmonstrousbirths(see Neill, 409- 10; and Aubrey,222- 27) would probablyhave made the subterraneanconnectionbetweenOthello and lago's monstrousbirthmore available to Shakespeare's audiences than it is to a modern audience. 14 Projectionhas classicallybeen invokedas a mechanismin Othello, but usuallyin the other direction,fromOthello to Jago;see, e.g.,J.I.M. Stewart,Character and Motivein Shakespeare: Some Recent AppraisalsExamined([London, NewYork,and Toronto: Longmans,Green and Company, 1949], 102-5), though Stewartultimatelyabandons a naturalisticreading of the play through projectionfora symbolicreadingof lago and Othello as partsof a singlewhole. For somewhat laterversionsof lago as Othello's projection,see, e.g., HenryL. Warnken,"lago as a Projection of Othello" in ShakespeareEncomium 1564-1964, Anne Paolucci,ed. (NewYork:The CityCollege, 1964), 1-15; and Orgel, 258-73. In theseaccountsprojectionis looselyused to indicatethatlago expressesunacknowledgeddoubtsor desiresin Othello's mind (or, in Orgel's reading,Othello's unacknowledgedneed fora punitivesuperego); theygenerallydo not explore the mechanismof projectionor considerthe degree to whichthe structureof the playpositslago-not Othelloas its psychicstartingpoint. For Auden, who reads the play throughlago as practicaljoker, projectionbegins withlago, not Othello (see n. 6, above); see also Leslie Y. Rabkinand Jeffrey RACE AS PROJECTION IN OTHELLO 131 Let me begin, then,by thinkingabout the waylago thinksabout bodies, especiallyabout the insidesofbodies. For Jagois the play'sspokesmanforthe idea of the inside,the hidden away.At the beginning of his seduction of Othello,he defendsthe privacyofhis thoughtbyasking"where's thatpalace, whereintofoul things/ Sometimesintrudenot?" (3.3.141-42); no palace is impregnable,no insideuncontaminated.Characteristically, Othello takesthis itin hislateranatomyofDesdemona image and makesithis own,reinscribing as "a cistern,forfoultoads / To knotand genderin" (4.2.62-63). But merely byinsistingon the hidden inwardnessof thought,lago has alreadysucceeded in causing Othello to conflate the hiddenwith the hideous,as though that whichis inside,invisible,mustinevitablybe monstrous("he echoes me, / As if there were some monsterin his thought,/ Too hideous to be shown" [3.3.110-12]).15 Accordingto thislogic, the case againstDesdemona is complete as soon as lago can insinuatethatshe, too, has-psychically and anatomically-an inside, unknowable and monstrousbecause it is inside, unseen. If lago succeeds in transferring his own sense of hidden contaminationto Desdemona, localizingit in her body,the sense of the hideous thingwithin monstrousbirthor foul intruder-begins withhim. Seen fromthisvantage point,his initialalarum to Brabantio ("Look to yourhouse, yourdaughter, and your bags.... Are all doors lock'd?" [1.1.80, 85]) looks less like a descriptionof danger to Brabantio or Desdemona than like a descriptionof dangerto lago himself.For lago finds-or creates-in Brabantio'shouse the to intrusion,and he can perfectanalogue forhis own sense of vulnerability make of Othello the perfectanalogue forthe intrusive"foul thing,"the old black ram who is tupping your white ewe/you-or, as we later find out, tuppinglago himselfin lago's fantasy,and leavingbehind a poisonous residue ("I do suspectthe lustfulMoor / Hath leap'd into myseat, the thought whereof/ Doth like a poisonous mineralgnaw myinwards" [2.1.290-92]). But even the image of the body as a breached and contaminated"palace" suggestsrathermore interiorstructurethan mostof lago's otherimagesfor the body.Again and again lago imaginesthe body filledwithliquid putrefaction,withcontentsthatcan and should be vomitedout or excreted.The three Brown,who read Jagoas a Horneyansadist,assuaginghis pain by projectinghis self-contempt and hopelessnessonto others("Some Monsterin His Thought:Sadism and Tragedyin Othello," Literature and Psychology 23 [1973]: 59-67, esp. 59-60); and Pollard,who reads Jagoas Baudelairian sadist,fillingthe worldwithsadisticprojectionswithwhich he then identifiesto fillhis inner emptiness(92-95). Serpierisees Jagoas the "artificerof a destructive projection"; in his semiotic analysis, litotes-Jago's characteristicnay-sayingfigure-becomes the linguistic in the 'other' all equivalent of projection, "a figureof persuasion which,by denying,affirms that- the diabolical,the lustful,the alien -which it refutesor censuresin the 'self' " (134 and 142). Attentionto the statusof "others" has made contemporarycriticismparticularly sensitive to Othello as the site of lago's projectionsratherthan as the originatorof projection;see, e.g., Parkeron "the violence of projection" (100). My account differsfromthose cited here largely in givingprojectiona body and in specifying the mechanismsof projectiveidentification at work in the play. 15 AlthoughNeill emphasizes the hidden/hideousnessof the bed ratherthan of bodilyinteriors (394-95), myformulationhere is verymuch indebted to his. In the course of her enormouslysuggestiveaccount of the culturalresonancesof the hidden/privatein Othello and Hamlet, Parkercommentsextensivelyon the associationof the hidden withthe woman's privateparts, partlyvia gynecologicaldiscourse; see Parker,"Othelloand Hamlet:Dilation, Spying,and the 'Secret Place' of Woman," Representations 44 (1993): 60-95, esp. 64-69. 132 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY fingers Cassio kisses in show of courtesy to Desdemona should be "clysterpipes" for his sake (1. 176), lago says; through the bizarre reworking of lago's fantasy,Cassio's fingersare transformed into enema tubes, an imagistic transformation that violently brings together not only lips and faeces, mouth, vagina, and anus, but also digital, phallic, and emetic penetration of a bodyDesdemona's? Cassio's?-imagined only as a container for faeces. Early in the play, poor Roderigo is a "sick fool.. . Whom love has turn'd almost the wrong side outward" (2.3.47-48); by the end, he is a "quat" rubbed almost to the sense (5.1.11), that is, a pus-filled pimple about to break. The congruence of these images suggests that Roderigo becomes a "quat" for lago because he can't keep his insides from running out: the love that has almost turned him inside out is here refigured as pus that threatens to break through the surface of his body. In lago's fantasy of the body, what is inside does not need to be contaminated by a foul intruder because it is already pus or faeces; in fact, anything brought into this interior will be contaminated by it. lago cannot imagine ordinary eating, in which matter is taken in for the body's nourishment; any good object taken in will be violently transformed and violently expelled. When he is done with her, lago tells us, Othello will excrete Desdemona ("The food that to him now is as luscious as locusts, shall be to him shortly as acerb as the coloquintida," an emetic or purgative [1.3.349-50]); when Desdemona is "sated" with Othello's body (1. 351), she will "heave the gorge" (2.1.231-32). (Poor Emilia has obviously learned from her husband: in her view men "are all but stomachs, and we all but food; / They eat us hungerly, and when they are full, / They belch us" [3.4.101-3].) Given this image of the body's interior as a mass of undifferentiated and contaminated matter, it's no wonder that lago propounds the ideal of selfcontrol to Roderigo in the garden metaphor that insists both on the rigid demarcation and differentiationof the body's interior and on its malleability to the exercise of will: ... 'tisin ourselves,thatwe are thus,or thus:our bodies are gardens,to thewhich our willsare gardeners,so thatifwe willplant nettles,or sow lettuce,set hyssop, and weed up thyme;supplyit withone gender of herbs,or distractit withmany; eitherto have it sterilewithidleness,or manur'd withindustry, why,the power, and corrigibleauthorityof this,lies in our wills. (1.3.319-26) This is not, presumably, his experience of his own body's interior or of his management of it; it seems rather a defensive fantasy of an orderly pseudoEden, in which man is wholly in control both of the inner processes of his body/garden and of the troublesome business of gender, and woman is wholly absent.'6 His only explicit representation of his body's interior belies this defense: the mere "thought" that Othello has leaped into his seat (even though he "know[s] not if't be true" [1. 386]) "Doth like a poisonous mineral gnaw [his] inwards." No reassuring gardener with his tidy-or even his untidy-rows here: lago's "inwards" are hideously vulnerable, subject to a poisonous penetration. Through an imagistic transformation,Othello as penetrator becomes conflated with the "thought" that tortures lago inwardly; 16 Gender can of course mean "kind"; but, as Ridleynotes, "Shakespeare normallyuses it of differenceof sex" (40n). RACE AS PROJECTION IN OTHELLO 133 Othello thusbecomes a toxicobject lodged inside him. (The garden passage simultaneously expressesand defendsagainstthehomoeroticdesirethathere makes Othello a poisonous inner object, insofaras it voices a fantasyof "supply[ing]" the body withone gender ratherthan "distract[ing]" it with many.17) What I have earliercalled lago's injured "I"-his sense thathe is chronicallyslightedand betrayed,his sense of self-division-produces (or perhaps is produced by) fantasiesof his body as penetratedand contaminated,especiallybyOthello. In fact,anytraffic betweeninnerand outeris dangerousfor lago, who needs to keep an absolute barrierbetween them by makinghis outsideopaque, a false"sign" (1.1.156 and 157) ofhis inside;to do lesswould be to riskbeing (Roderigo-like) turnedalmost the wrongside outward,to "wear [his] heartupon [his] sleeve,/ For dawes to peck at" (11.64-65).18 To allowhimselfto be seen or knownis tantamountto being stabbed,eaten alive: pecked at fromthe outside unless he manages to keep the barrierbetween innerand outerperfectlyintact,gnawedfromthe inside ifhe letsanyonein. Jago's need for sadisticcontrolof others ("Pleasure, and action, make the hours seem short" [2.3.369], he says, aftermanaging Cassio's cashiering) vividsense ofvulnerability: unable to goes in tandemwithhis extraordinarily be gardener to himself,he will sadisticallymanage everyoneelse, simultaneously demonstratinghis superiorityto those quats whose insides are so sloppilyprone to burstingout,and hidingthe contaminationand chaos ofhis own insides. Roderigo plays a pivotalrole in thisprocess.As the embodimentof what lago would avoid, Roderigo existslargelyto give lago repeated occasions on whichto displayhis masteryoverboth selfand other:in effect,lago can load his contaminatedinsides into Roderigo and then rub him to the sense in order to demonstratethe differencebetween them and, hence, the impermeabilityof Iago's own insides.Moreover,in managingRoderigo,Iago can continuallyreplenishhimselfwiththe fantasyof new objectsto be takeninto the self:objects over which-unlike the thoughtof Othello, whichgnawsat his inwards-he can exert full control. Obsessively-six times in fourteen lines-Iago tellsRoderigo to "Put moneyin thypurse ... fillthypurse with money" (1.3.340, 348). We know thatIago has receivedenough jewels and gold fromRoderigo to have half-corrupteda votarist(4.2.189), but we never see Iago takingthe miser'sor even the spendthrift's ordinarydelightin this treasure;detached fromanyordinaryhuman motivation,the moneyaccrues almostpurelypsychicmeaning,becoming the sign not of any palpable economic advantagebut of Jago'spleasure in being able to emptyRoderigoout, and to fillhimselfat will. "Put moneyin thypurse," he repeats insistently, then adds, "Thus do I evermake myfool mypurse" (1.3.381), as thoughthe emptied-outRoderigobecomes thecontainerthatholds the illusionof Iago's fullness.For his repetitionsignals a compulsive need to fill himselfwith objectsin order to compensateforthe contaminationand chaos inside: hard shinyobjectsthatmightbe keptsafeand mightkeep the selfsafe,objectsthat could magicallyrepair the sense of what the selfis made of and filledwith. 17 Ridleynotes that "supply= satisfy"(40n); for a specifically sexualized use, see Measurefor Measure,5.1.210. 18 "Doves" is the reading in Ridley and QI; I here depart fromit in givingF's and Q2's "dawes." 134 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY Iago's hoarding,his sadism,his referencesto purgativesand clyster-pipes can be read throughthelanguage ofclassicalpsychoanalysis as evidence ofan anal fixation;in thatlanguage the equation of moneywithfaeces is familiar enough, as is the associationof sadisticcontrolwiththe anal phase.'9 Iago's obsessivesuspicionthatOthello has leaped intohis seat,along withhis heavily eroticizedaccount of Cassio's dream,similarlylend themselvesto a classically psychoanalytic reading of Iago as repressedhomosexual.20While these readings are not "wrong" withintheirown terms,theynonethelessseem to me limited,and not only insofaras theycan be said to assume a historically inaccurate concept of the subject or of "the homosexual":2' limited even withinthe termsof psychoanalysisinsofaras theydo not get at either the qualityof Iago's emotional relationships(his inabilityto form any kind of libidinalbond, his tendencyto treatothersas poisonous innerobjects) or the terrifying theatricalseductivenessof the processes of projectionthatwe witness throughhim. I want consequentlyto move fromthe considerationof libidinalzones and conflictedobject choices characteristic of classicalpsychoanalysisto the areas opened up by the work of Melanie Klein; a Kleinian reading of Iago will,I think,help us to understandthe waysin which Iago's imaginationof his own interiorshapes his object relationsas he projectsthis interioronto the landscape of the play. 19 On the relationshipbetweenmoneyand faeces,see Sigmund Freud, "Character and Anal Eroticism"in TheStandardEditionoftheComplete Psychological Works ofSigmundFreud,ed. James Strachey,24 vols. (London: Hogarth Press and the Instituteof Psycho-Analysis,1953-74), 9:167-76, esp. 171 and 173-74; ErnestJones,"Anal-EroticCharacterTraits,"JournalofAbnormalPsychology 13 (1918): 261-84, esp. 272-74 and 276-77; KarlAbraham,"Contributionsto the Theory of the Anal Character" in Selected PapersofKarl Abraham(New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1927), 370-92, esp. 383; and Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic TheoryofNeurosis(New York: Norton,1945), 281. On sadismand anality,see Abraham,"The NarcissisticEvaluationof ExcretoryProcessesin Dreams and Neurosis" in Selected Papers,318-22, esp. 319 and 321;Jones,268; and Fenichel, 283. 20 The lociclassiciforthisreading are MartinWangh, "Othello:The Tragedy of Iago," PsychoanalyticQuarterly 19 (1950): 202-12; and Gordon Ross Smith,"Iago the Paranoiac," American Imago 16 (1959): 155-67. Both essaysare based on Freud's account of delusionaljealousy as a defenseagainsthomosexual desirein the Schrebercase. For an extensionand elaborationof this view,withparticularfocuson Iago's hatredof women,see also StanleyEdgar Hyman,lago: Some Approaches to theIllusionofHis Motivation(New York:Atheneum,1970), 101-21. Contemporary criticswho commenton the homoeroticdynamicbetweenIago and Othello tend to locate their readings not in this model but in the complex of metaphors that makes Iago's seduction of Othello into an aural penetrationand insemination,witha resultingmonstrous(and miscegenistic)conception;see, e.g., Coppelia Kahn, Man's Estate:MasculineIdentity in Shakespeare (Berkeley,Los Angeles,and London: U of CaliforniaP, 1981), 144-45; and Parkerin Hendricksand Parker,eds., 99-100. Parkernotes thatthe imaginedpenetrationis anal as wellas aural (99); see also, e.g., Graham Hammill's briefdiscussionof Iago's anal eroticism,"The Epistemologyof Expurgation:Bacon and TheMasculineBirthofTime"in Queering theRenaissance, JonathanGoldberg,ed. (Durham, NC, and London: Duke UP, 1994), 236-52, esp. 251n. 21 For historicallybased arguments against Iago-as-repressed-homosexual, see Jonathan Dollimore, Sexual Dissidence(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 157-62; and Bruce R. Smith, Homosexual Desirein Shakespeare's England:A CulturalPoetics(Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1991), 61-63 and 75. Both Dollimore and Smith stressthe social functionsof the male homosocial bond ratherthan the dynamicsof homoeroticfeelingpartlyon the groundsthatthe homosexual subject is an anachronismin the earlymodern period. But Shakespeare does not need to have the categoryof the "homosexual subject" available to him in order to represent Iago as actingout of desiresinadmissibleto him,includingsodomiticaldesires;and criticswho insistthatwe do awaywith"the homosexual" as a categorysometimesthrowout the babywith the bathwater.In "Homosexualityand the Signsof Male Friendshipin ElizabethanEngland" (in Goldberg, ed., 40-61) Alan Bray demonstratesthe cultural (nonsexual) uses to which the RACE AS PROJECTION IN OTHELLO 135 In Klein's account the primitiveself is composed in part of remnantsof internalizedobjects (people, or bitsand pieces of people, taken into the self as partof the self'scontinualnegotiationwithwhatan outsideobserverwould call theworld) and theworldis composed in partof projectedbitsand pieces of the self.Ideally,"the good breastis taken in and becomes partof the ego, and the infantwho was firstinside the mothernow has the motherinside himself."22Internalizationof the good object "is the basis fortrustin one's own goodness";23"fullidentification witha good object goes witha feelingof the self possessinggoodness of its own" and hence enables the returnof goodness to the world: "Through processes of projectionand introjection, an enrichmentand deepthroughinnerwealthgivenout and re-introjected, ening of the ego comes about.... Inner wealthderivesfromhaving assimilated thegood object so thattheindividualbecomes able to shareitsgiftswith others."24And the corollaryis clear: if the infantcannot take in the experience of the good breast (eitherbecause of his/herown constitutionalconditionsor because the experienceis not thereto be had in a consistentway), the bad breastmaybe introjected,withaccompanyingfeelingsof one's own internalbadness, poverty,poisonousness,one's own inabilityto give back anythinggood to the world. But,in thewordsof Harold Boris,a contemporarypost-Kleiniananalystof envy,"the infantwho cannot, sooner or later,feed the hand fromwhich it feeds ... is the childwho willthen attemptto bite it."25The infantstuckwith a depleted or contaminatedinnerworldwill,Klein suggests,existin a peculiar relationto the good breast:even if it is there and apparentlyavailable,the infantmaynot be able to use it. For if the infantcannot tolerateeitherthe discrepancybetween its own badness and the goodness outside itselfor the sense of dependencyon thisexternalsource of goodness,the good breastwill not be availablefortheinfant'suse: itsgoodnesswillin effectbe spoiled bythe infant'sown envious rage. The prototypefor Kleinian envy is the hungry baby,experiencingitselfas helplesslydependent, empty,or filledonlywith badness,confrontedwiththe imaginedfullnessof a source of goodness outside itself:"the firstobject to be envied is the feedingbreast,forthe infant feelsthatit possesseseverything he desiresand thatit has an unlimitedflow "bedfellow"could be put;but in orderforSmith,forexample,to invokeIago's reportof Cassio's "bedfellow"dream to make the argumentthatIago is a self-consciousmale-bonder ratherthan a repressedhomosexual, he has to ignore the explicitsexiness of the dream (the hard kisses plucked up by the roots,the leg over the thigh). The dream clearlycrossesthe line-between male friendshipand sodomy- thatBraydelineates,more strikingly because Iago need not have included all that sexiness to convey his "information"to Othello; and whetheror not the reporteddream proclaimsIago a "repressedhomosexual," itseffecton Othello clearlydepends as much on itscrossingof thatline as on the informationthatCassio dreamsabout Desdemona. As forsubjectivity: whetheror not the Renaissancesharedour sense of the bourgeoissubject-in any case, emphaticallynot the subjectas it is construedbypsychoanalysis- Othellois obsessively about whatis hidden awaywithinthe person,the inner,private,and unknowableselfthatmight harborinaccessibledesires.For a good summaryof these controversies-and a sensiblemiddle position-see Alan Sinfield,CulturalPolitics-Queer Reading(Philadelphia:U of PennsylvaniaP, 1994), 12-14. 22 Melanie Klein, "Envy and Gratitude" (1957) in Envyand Gratitude and OtherWorks19461963 (London: Hogarth Press and the Instituteof Psycho-Analysis, 1975), 176-235, esp. 179. 23 Klein, 188. 24 Klein, 192 and 189. 25 Boris,xvi. 136 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY of milk,and love which the breastkeeps forits own gratification."26 Klein's insistenceon the priorityof the breastas the firstobject of envyeffectively reversesFreud's concept of penis envy;in Klein's account even penis envy becomes secondary,derivativefromthisearlierprototype.27 But Klein's concept of envyturnson an even more startlinginnovation:formostanalystsof infantiledestructivenessand rage, the source and targetis the frustrating "bad" object-a maternalobject thatdoesn't provide enough, is not at the infant'sbeck and call, providesmilkthatin some wayis feltto be spoiled; but in Klein's readingof envy,the source and targetof rage is not the frustrating or poisonous bad breastbut the good breast,and itis exactlyitsgoodness that provokesthe rage. Hence thepeculiarsensitivity of theenviousto thegoodand the consequentneed not to possessbut to destroyit,or, in Klein's terms, "to put badness,primarily bad excrementand bad partsof the self,into the mother,and firstof all into her breast,in order to spoil and destroyher."28 But the breastso destroyedis of course no longer available to the child as a source of good: "The breast attacked in this way has lost its value, it has become bad bybeing bittenup and poisoned byurine and faeces.''29 Insofar as the infanthas succeeded in destroyingthe good object,he has confirmed its destructionas a source of goodness withinhimself;hence the peculiarly vicious circle of envy,whichdestroysall good both in the worldand in the self,and hence also itspeculiar despair. We do not, of course, need the help of a Kleinian perspectiveto identify Iago as envious. His willingnessto killCassio simplybecause "He has a daily beautyin his life,/ That makes me ugly" (5.1.19-20) marksthe extentto whichhe is drivenbyenvy;in an older theatricaltraditionhe mightwellhave been named Envy.Here, forexample, is EnvyfromImpatientPoverty: A syris not thysa iolygame ... Enuy in faythI am the same ... I hate conscience,peace loue and reste Debate and stryfethatloue I beste Accordyngeto myproperte When a man louethe well hyswyfe I bryngetheymat debate and stryfe.30 This genealogy does not, however, make Iago a Coleridgean motiveless malignity.For in Iago, Shakespeare gives motiveless malignity a body: incorporating this element of the morality tradition, he releases through Iago the range of bodilyfantasiesassociatedwitha specificallyKleinian envy. Klein describesan envyso primal-,and so despairing-that it cannot tol- erate the existence of goodness in the world: its whole delight lies not in possessing what is good but in spoiling it. And that spoiling takes place in fantasy through a special form of object-relating: through the violent projec- Klein, 183. For an earlystatementof thisposition,see Klein, "Early Stages of the Oedipus Conflict" (1928) in Love,Guiltand Reparationand OtherWorks 1921-1945 (London: HogarthPressand the Instituteof Psycho-Analysis, 1975), 186-98, esp. 190-91 and 193-96. 28 Klein, Envyand Gratitude, 181. 29 Klein,Envyand Gratitude, 186. 30 Quoted here fromBernardSpivack'sdiscussionof Jagoand the moralitytraditionin Shakespeareand theAllegory ofEvil: TheHistoryofa Metaphorin RelationtoHis Major Villains(New York: Columbia UP, 1958), 184. 26 27 RACE AS PROJECTION IN OTHELLO 137 tion of bitsof the selfand itscontaminatedobjects-often localized as contaminatedbodilyproducts-into the good object. By means of thisprojection,the selfsucceeds in replicatingitsown innerworld"out there" and thus in destroying the goodness itcannot tolerate;at the end of theprocess,in the wordsof one Kleiniananalyst,"There is nothingleftto envy.'"'3 Throughthe lens of a Kleinian perspective,we can see traces of thisprocess as Iago fills Othello withthe poison thatfillshim. In Iago's fantasy,as I have suggested,thereis no uncontaminatedinterior space: he can allow no one access to his interiorand has to keep it hidden awaybecause it is more a cesspool than a palace or a garden.And thereare taken in no uncontaminatedinnerobjects:everyintruderis foul; everything turnsto pus or faeces or poison; everything swallowedmustbe vomitedout. This sense of inner contaminationleaves him-as Klein would predictparticularlysubject to the sense of goodness in othersand particularlyambivalenttowardthatgoodness. His goal is to make those around him as ugly to theirbeauty.Even as he is; but thatgoal depends on his unusual sensitivity afterhe has managed to bring out the quarrelsome drunkard and classhim into a man who clearlyenjoys conscious snob in Cassio, transforming sneakingaround to see his general's wife,Iago remainsstruckby the daily beautyin Cassio's life-at a point when thatbeautyhas become largelyindenies the visibleto the audience. To Roderigo,Iago alwayscontemptuously goodness of Othello and Desdemona (he is an erringbarbarian and she a supersubtleVenetian); but in soliloquy he specificallyaffirmstheir goodness-and affirms it in order to imaginespoilingit. Othello's "freeand open nature" he willremakeas the stupidityof an ass who can be led by the nose (1.3.397-400). He will not onlyuse Desdemona's virtue;he will turnit into pitch,in a near-perfectreplicationof the projectionof faeces into the good breastthatKlein posits. For Iago the desire to spoil alwaystakes precedence over the desire to in their possess;one need onlycontrasthimwithOthello to see thedifference relationto good objects.32Othello's anguishover the loss of the good object givesthe playmuch of itsemotionalresonance.He imagineshimselfas safely enclosed in itsgarnery,nourishedand protectedbyit,and thencastout: "But there,whereI have garner'dup myheart,/ Where eitherI mustlive,or bear no life,/ The fountain,fromthe whichmycurrentruns,/ Or else dries up, to be discardedthence" (4.2.58-61). When he is made to imaginethatobject as spoiled-"a cistern,forfoul toads / To knot and gender in"-its loss is whollyintolerable to him; even at the end, as he kills Desdemona, he is workingveryhard to restoresome remnantof the good object in her. Although he approaches Desdemona's bed planning to bloody it ("Thy bed, lust-stain'd,shallwithlust'sblood be spotted" [5.1.36]), his deepest desireis 31 BettyJoseph, "Envyin everydaylife" in Psychic Equilibrium and PsychicChange:Selected Papers ofBetty Joseph, ed. Michael Feldman and Elizabeth Bott Spillius (London and New York: Tavistock/Routledge,1989), 181-91, esp. 185. 32 In Kleinianterms, Othello has reached thedepressiveposition,characterizedbythecapacity to mourn for the damaged object and to make reparationsto it (see especiallyKlein, "A Contributionto the Psychogenesisof Manic-DepressiveStates" [1935] and "Mourning and its Relation to Manic-DepressiveStates" [1940], both in Love,Guiltand Reparation, 262-89 and 34469); Iago functionsfromwithinthe more primitiveparanoid-schizoidposition,withits characteristicmechanismsof splittingand projection/introjection(see especiallyKlein, "Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms" in Envyand Gratitude, 1-24). 138 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY not to stain but to restorethe purityof the good object, rescuingit from contamination,even the contaminationhe himselfhas visitedupon it.Bythe time he reaches her bed, he has decided not to shed her blood (5.2.3). Instead he attemptsto recreateher unviolatedwholeness ("that whiterskin of hers than snow,/ And smooth,as monumentalalabaster" [11.4-5]) in a death thathe imaginesas a revirgination;33 in fantasyhe cleanses "the slime/ That stickson filthy deeds," remakingher unmarredand unpenetrated,"one entireand perfectchrysolite"(11.149-50, 146). But Iago's onlyjoy comes in spoilinggood objects: Othello mournsbeing cast out fromthe garnery/fountain thathas nourishedhim; Iago mocksthe meat he feedson (3.3.170-71). His descriptionof thegreen-eyedmonsterhe cautionsOthello againstmarkstheworkingsof a veryKleinianenvyin him:34 like the emptyinfantwho cannot toleratethe fullnessof the breast,he will mock the objectsthatmightnourishand sustainhim,spoilingthembymeans of his corrosivewit.35(Or perhaps-in good Kleinianfashion-by tearingat themwithhis teeth:especiallyin conjunctionwiththe image of feedingon meat, "mock" maycarrytracesof mammock,36 to tear into pieces, suggesting the oral aggressionbehind Jago'sbitingmockeryand hence the talion logic in his fantasyof being pecked at.) Mockery-especially of the meat he might feed on-is Iago's signature:different as theyare, Othello, Cassio, and Roderigosharean almostreligiousawe towardDesdemona; Jagoinsiststhat"the wine she drinksis made of grapes" (2.1.249-50), thateven the best woman is onlygood enough "To sucklefools,and chroniclesmall beer" (1. 160). If 33As many have argued: see especiallyCavell, 134; and Snow, 392. See also my Suffocating Mothers: FantasiesofMaternalOriginin Shakespeare, Hamlet toThe Tempest (New York and London: Routledge, 1992), 69-70. 34 Iago's words here, like Emilia's at 3.4.157-60, referexplicitlyto jealousybut nonetheless define the self-referential qualities of envy.Althoughthe two termsare sometimespopularly confused,theyare distinctin psychoanalytic thought:jealousy occurs in a three-bodyrelationship,derivedfromthe oedipus complex,in whichthe loss of a good object to a rivalis at stake; envyoccurs in a pre-oedipal two-bodyrelationship,in whichthe "good" qualitiesof the object are feltto be intolerable.Jealousyseeks to preservethe good object,ifnecessarybykillingit;envy seeks to spoil the good object. (For thesedistinctions, see Klein,Envyand Gratitude, 196-99; and Joseph in Feldman and Spillius,eds., 182.) Jealousyis a derivativeof envybut is more easily recognizedand more sociallyacceptable (Klein,Envyand Gratitude, 198;Josephin Feldman and Spillius,eds., 182); partlyas a consequence, it can sometimesserve as "an importantdefence againstenvy" (Klein,Envyand Gratitude, 198). This defensivestructureseems to me at workboth in Iago and in the play at large: in Iago, who repeatedlycomes up withnarrativesofjealousy as though to justifyhis intolerableenvyto himself(tellingly,he uses the traditionallanguage of envy-Spenser's Envy "inwardly... chawed his owne maw" in TheFaerieQueene[I.iv.30]-to registerthe gnawingeffectsofjealousy on him); and in Othello itself,insofaras itsown narratives ofjealousy are farmore legible and recognizably"human" than the envyrepresentedthrough Iago and dismissedin him as unrecognizable,inhuman,or demonic. 35 "Mock" has puzzled commentatorsforyears,occasioningfivepages of commentaryin the New Variorum edition of Othello(ed. Horace Howard Furness [Philadelphia:J. B. Lippincott, 1886]). WilliamWarburton(1747) glosses "mocke" (in termsstrikingly close to my own) as "loaths thatwhichnourishesand sustainsit" (176). Withverylittleplausibility but some interest formyargument,AndrewBecket (1815) transforms "mocke" to "muck,"glossingitas to "bedaub or makefoul"; two other commentators-Zachariah Jackson and Lord John Chedworthapprovedof thisemendationenough to come up withcandidatesforthe monstrousanimal that befoulsitsfood, mouse and dragon-fly,respectively(179). 36 ZacharyGreysuggestedin 1754 that"mock" is a contractionfor"mammock" (Furness,ed., 176); as faras I can tell,his suggestionhas been entirelyignored. RACE AS PROJECTION IN OTHELLO 139 "the firstobject to be envied is the feeding breast," Iago's devaluation of maternalnurturancehere is just whatwe mightexpect. But envydoes not stop there. As Klein suggests,"Excessive envy of the breastis likelyto extend to all feminineattributes,in particularto the woman's capacityto bear children.... The capacityto give and to preservelifeis feltas the greatestgiftand thereforecreativenessbecomes the deepest cause forenvy."37If Othello's potencyand fullnessmake him the immediatetarget has been of Iago's envious rage, the destructionof Desdemona's generativity Iago's ultimategoal fromthe beginning:"poison his delight,"he says;"And thoughhe in a fertileclimatedwell,/ Plague himwithflies" (1.1.70-71). The image half-echoes Hamlet's linkingof conception and breeding with the stirringof maggotsin dead flesh,38for the "fertileclimate" that Iago will transforminto a breeding ground for plague is Desdemona's generative body.Hence, I think,theurgencywithwhichIago propelstheplot towardthe marriagebed ("Do it not withpoison, strangleher in her bed, even the bed she hath contaminated" [4.1.203-4]): the ultimategame is to make father destroymotheron thatbed in a parodyof the life-givinginseminationthat mighthave taken place there.39 And hence the subterraneanlogic of Iago's favoritemetaphor for that destruction,his monstrousbirth.For ifIago enviouslydevaluesDesdemona's generativity(she can onlysuckle,and onlysuckle fools; her body willbreed only flies), he also appropriatesit, and appropriatesit specificallythrough imitation.Here both sensesof mock-as devaluationand derisiveimitationcome together,as Boris'sworkon envypredicts:"The urge to take charge of the envied object has severalcomponentsto it. First,of course,is the denuding (an idea) and disparagement(an emotion) of the inherentvalue of the original.This makes possible whatfollows,namelythe idea thatthe 'knockoff' (the 'as-if') is in everywaythe equal of the real thing."40In conceiving of his monstrousbirth,thatis, Iago not onlymocksbut also displaces Desdeby takingon its powersfor himself,denyingthe differmona's generativity and his barrenness,betweenher fullnessand ence-between her fruitfulness in factproceeds by Iago's substitution tolerate. his emptiness-that he cannot stages. When he firstinvokesthe metaphor of pregnancy,he is merelythe "There are manyeventsin thewombof time,whichwillbe midwife/observer: lines laterdelivered" (1.3.369-70). But his triumphant"I ha't" onlythirty birthto monstrous this bring Must / night and Hell "I ha't, it is engender'd; the world's light"-replaces time's womb with his own: as I have already argued,his is the bodyin whichthe monstrousbirthis engendered,and hell and nighthave become the midwives. 201- 2. Klein,Envyand Gratitude, See Hamlet,2.2.181-82. 39 This destructionalso has the effectof separating the two figureswhose conjunction has haunted Iago's imagination.Klein hypothesizesthe combined parentfigureas a special targetof envy ("the suspicion thatthe parentsare alwaysgettingsexual gratificationfromone another 198]); Iago in reinforcesthe phantasy ... thattheyare alwayscombined" [Envyand Gratitude, in his initialdescriptionof Othello and Desdemona as fused,a factevokessuch a fantasy-figure "beast withtwo backs" (1.1.116), alwaysin the process of achieving the "incorporate conclusion" (2.1.258-59) thatis alwaysdenied him. 40 Boris,36. 37 38 140 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY Through thismetaphor,Iago's mental productionbecomes his substitute birth,in whichhe replaces the worldoutside himself4"-the worldof time's womb,or of Desdemona's-with the projectionof his own interiormonstrosity;thus conceived,his plot manages simultaneouslyto destroythe generativity thathe cannot tolerateand to proclaimthe superiorefficacy of his own product.Emilia's descriptionof thejealousy Iago createsin Othello-it is "a monster,/ Begot upon itself,born on itself" (3.4.159-60) -is not accurate about Othello,but itsuggestively tracksIago's own envyto itspsychicsources. If Jagoimagineshimselfenactinga substitutebirth,makingthe world conformto the shape of his envybyundoing the contoursof the already-existing generativeworld,Emilia expressesthewishbehind his metaphor:thewishto bebegotupon oneself,born on oneself,no longersubjectto-dependent on, vulnerableto-the generativefullnessoutside the selfand the unendurable envyit provokes.42Unable to achieve thatend, he willemptyhimselfout on the weddingbed, substituting his own monstrousconceptionforthe generain the processthe envied good tivefullnessthattormentshim,and destroying object in Desdemona. And it isjust here, in thisfantasy,thatOthello's blacknessbecomes such a powerfulvehicleforIago. I have alreadysuggestedthatIago's capacityto spoil good objects restson his capacityto blacken them, and to blacken them througha bodilyprocess of projection.His monstrousbirthis fromthe first associatedwiththe darknessof hell and night;and when,in his conversation withDesdemona, he imagineshis inventionas his baby,thatbabyis associated withthe extrusionof a dark and stickysubstance: specifically myinvention Comes frommypate as birdlimedoes fromfrieze, It plucks out brain and all: but myMuse labours, And thusshe is deliver'd.... (2.1.125-28)43 41 Myformulation here is partlyindebtedtoJanineChausseguet-Smirgel'sworkon perversion, especiallyanal perversion,which she sees as an attemptto dissolve generationaland gender differencesin order to defend againstacknowledgmentof the pervert'sown puniness and vulnerability;thoughshe does not drawspecifically on Klein's concept of envy,her worksometimes intersectsusefullywithKlein's. In Chausseguet-Smirgel'sreading,Sade's intention,forexample, is "to reduce the universeto faeces,or ratherto annihilatethe universeof differences"("Perversion and the UniversalLaw" in Chausseguet-Smirgel,Creativity and Perversion [New York: W. W. Norton,1984], 4). Insofaras perversionattemptsto replace God's differentiated universe withits own undifferentiation, it is "the equivalentof Devil religion" (9); the undifferentiated anal universe"constitutesan imitationor parody of the genital universeof the father" (11). While thisformulationis suggestiveforIago, f thinkthatChausseguet-Smirgelis hampered by her Lacanian milieu,withitsovervaluationof the phallus and the father'slaw; Iago is at least as intenton imitatingand ultimately replacingthe mother'sgenerativefunctionas the father'slaw. 42 With the kind of psychologicalintuitionthateverywhere animateshis portrayalof Satan, MiltonreworksEmilia's comment:unable to stand the "debt immenseof endless gratitude"to the God who has created him (ParadiseLost,Bk. 4, 1. 52), Satan proclaimshimself"self-begot, self-rais'd/ By our own quick'ningpower" (Bk. 5, 11.860-61). Klein citesMilton'sSatan as an instance of "the spoilingof creativity implied in envy" (Envy and Gratitude, 202). 43 Accordingto the Oxford EnglishDictionary, birdlimeis a stickysubstancemade out ofthebark of the hollytreeand smearedon branchesto entrapbirds;"WiththebarkesofHolme theymake Bird-lyme,"cited fromHenryLyte's 1578 Nieweherballorhistorie ofplantes(Oxford EnglishDictionary,prep. J. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner, 2d ed., 20 vols. [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989], 2:216). Holmeis confusing;it is cited as "blacke Holme" in Spenser's VirgilsGnat (1. 215), but thereapparentlyrefersto the oak, not the holly.In anycase, despite the echo of lime,birdlime seems to have been dark,not white. RACE AS PROJECTION IN OTHELLO 141 PresumablyIago means that his inventionis as slow-as laborious-as the process of removingbirdlimefromrough cloth (frieze),in whichthe nap of the cloth is removedalong withthe soilingagent (hence "plucks out brain rationalmeaningis treacherous:the and all"). But the route to thisrelatively syntaxfirst presentsus withbirdlimeoozingfromhishead ("invention/ Comes frommypate as birdlimedoes"), takes us on an apparent detour through the soilingofcloth (the birdlimestuckto thefrieze),and ends withthe image of his head emptied out altogether("plucks out brain and all"), as though in a dangerous evacuation.Then, througha buried pun on conception,the concealed intermediaryterm,the evacuationbecomes a pregnancyand delivery,displaced fromhis own body to that of the Muse, who labors and is delivered. Invention,in otherwords,becomes the male equivalentof pregnancy,the productionof a stickydark baby.Whatwe have here, I suggest,is the vindictivefantasyof a faecal pregnancyand deliverythatcan project Iago's inner and darknessinto the world:44initiallydisplaced upward to the monstrosity evacuatedpate, thisfaecalbabyis thenreturnedto itssource as his monstrous birth,the baby he has conceived in response to Desdemona's request for labor) thathe praise (2.1.124) and the easygenerativity (his own is a difficult envies in her. This baby'semergencehere marks,I think,both the source of his envyand the exchange thatenvywilldemand: he willattemptin effectto replicatehis dark stickybaby in her, soilingher generativebody by turning her virtueinto pitch,45spoiling the object whose fullnessand goodness he cannot toleratebymakingit the receptacleforhis own bodilycontents.And he counts on the contagion of thiscontaminatedobject: he willturnDesdemona into pitch not only because pitch is black and sticky-hence entraphis scheme depends on using ping-but because it is notoriouslydefiling;46 Desdemona as a kind of tar baby,countingon her defilement-her blackening- to make Othello "black." In fantasy,that is, Iago uses Desdemona and Othello to contaminateeach other; theybecome for him one defiled object as he imagines them on that wedding bed. But at the same time, Othello plays a special role forIago: in Othello's black skin Iago can finda fortuitousexternalsign for the entire process, or, more accurately,a containerforthe internalblacknessthathe would projectoutward,the darkbaby thathell and nightmustbringto theworld'slight;emptyinghimselfout,Iago can project his faecal baby into Othello, blackeninghim withhis own inner waste. Iago plainlyneeds an Othello who can carrythe burden of his own contamination;and to some extentthe playmakesus complicitin the process,as 44 The equation of faeces withbaby is familiarto psychoanalysis; see, e.g., Freud, "On the Sexual Theories of Children," on the cloacal theoryof birth("If babies are born throughthe anus, then a man can give birthjust as well as a woman" [9:205-26, esp. 219-20]); Jones, 274-75; and Susan Isaacs, "Penis-Feces-Child," InternationalJournal ofPsycho-analysis 8 (1927): 74-76. For fantasiesthat overvaluethe power of faecal creation "to create or destroyevery object," see Abraham, "The NarcissisticEvaluationof ExcretoryProcesses," 322; about one of his patientshe reports,"That nighthe dreamed thathe had to expel the universeout of his anus" (320). 45 Oddly,RidleyassociatesthepitchintowhichIago willturnDesdemona's virtuewithbirdlime withoutnotingits source in Iago's earliermetaphor (88n). 46 For Shakespeare'sreworkings of the proverbially defilingpropertiesofpitch,see, e.g., Love's Labor'sLost,4.3.3; 1 HenryIV, 2.4.394-96; and MuchAdoAboutNothing, 3.3.53. 142 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY it makes Othello in effectinto Iago's monstrouscreation,carryingout Iago's "conception" as he murdersDesdemona on her wedding bed, enacting a perverseversionof the childbirththatmighthave taken place there.Othello himselfseems to recognizethata birthof sortsis takingplace, thoughhe does not recognize it as Iago's: preparingto kill Desdemona on thatbed, he says thather denials "Cannot remove,nor choke the strongconception,/ That I do groan withal" (5.2.56-57),4 as thoughhe has been impregnatedthrough Iago's monstrousbirth.And in facthe has: partof the peculiar horrorof this playis thatOthello becomes so effective a receptacle for-and enactor ofIago's fantasies.If Iago imagines himselffilled with a gnawingpoisonous mineral through what amounts to Othello's anal insemination of him (2.1.290-92), he turnsthatpoison back on Othello: "I'll pour thispestilence into his ear" (2.3.347). This retaliatoryaural/anal inseminationfillsOthello withIago's own contents,allowingIago to servehis turnon Othello bydoing to Othello whathe imaginesOthello has done to him. ("I followhim to serve myturnupon him" is sexualized in waysnot likelyto be audible to a modern audience [1.1.42]. For turn,see Othello's later "she can turn,and turn,and yetgo on, / And turnagain" [4.1.249-50];48 characteristically, Othello replicatesin Desdemona the "turn" Iago has replicatedin him.) And "The Moor alreadychanges withmypoison," Iago says,adding forour benefit-in case we have not noticed the linksbetweenhis poisonous conceitand Othello's"Dangerous conceitsare in theirnaturespoisons,/ Which... Burn like the mines of sulphur" (3.3.330-34). "The Moor alreadychanges withmypoison": the line markswhat is distinctiveabout projection in this play-and distinctively Kleinian. Before Klein,projectionwas usuallyunderstoodas a relatively uncomplicatedprocess in whichdisownedideas and emotionsweredisplaced onto an externalfigure. Klein insistedboth on the fantasiesof bodily functionaccompanyingthis process and on the extentto whichit is specificallypieces of the selfand its innerobjects thatare thusrelocated,withthe consequence thatpieces of the selfare nowfeltto be "out there,"both controllingthe objectintowhichthey have been projected and subject to dangers from it; Klein renamed this process "projectiveidentification."And her followershave expanded on the concept,stressingthe effectsof these projected contentson the recipientof the projection,the waysin whichthe projectorcan in factcontrolthe recipient. In this version of projectiveidentification,the recipientwill not only experience the bitsof selfprojected into him but also enact the projector's fantasyscenarios, hence relieving the projector of all responsibilityfor I7I here departfromRidleyin following F and Q2; Q1, Ridley'scopytext,gives"conceit." The half-buriedmetaphorof childbirthis, I think,presentin eithercase, both throughthe associationof "groan" -especially in proximity to a bed-with childbirth(see, e.g., All's WellThatEnds Well,1.3.140 and 4.5.10; and Measurefor Measure,2.2.15) and throughthefamilyrelationbetween conceit and Latin conceptus, cited in the OED; the OED also gives"Conception of offspring"as an obsoletemeaningforconceit witha 1589 instance,thoughit notes thatthisusage is "Perhaps only a pun" (3:647-48, esp. 648). 48 See also "the best turni' th' bed" (Antony and Cleopatra, 2.5.59). For serve, see Lear's Oswald, "A serviceable villain,/ As duteous to the vices of thymistress/ As badness would desire" (4.6.248-50); forservemyturn,see Costard's exchangewiththeking (Love'sLabor'sLost,1.1.28182). For follow/fallow, see Parker in Hendricks and Parker,eds., 99, citingHerbert A. Ellis, Shakespeare's LustyPunningin Love'sLabour'sLost (1973). RACE AS PROJECTION IN OTHELLO 143 them.49When lago imaginesRoderigo turnedinside out, his bodyfilledwith pus, he seems to me to be engaging in somethingclose to garden-variety projection:he is attributing to Roderigo portionsof himself,or ideas about himself,thathe would like to disown;and, as faras we know,Roderigo does not come to experience himselfas pus-filledor inside out. But when lago imaginesfillingOthello withhis poison, when he imagines (in Klein's formulation) "the forcefulentryinto the object and control of the object by parts of the self,"50he is much closer to a specificallyKleinian projective identification;and, as Klein's followerswould predict,Othello reallydoes change withlago's poison, as he begins to experience himselfas contaminated and hence to act out lago's scenarios. And the playdepends on preciselythisspecialized kind of projectiveidenin whichlago's fantasiesare replicatedin Othello's actions.When tification, we firstmeet Othello, he is confidentenough about his statusand his color that he wishes to be found; he can confidentlywish "the goodness of the night" (1.2.35) on Cassio and the duke's servantsbecause blacknesshas not yet been poisoned for him. But as lago projects his faecal baby into him, Othello comes more and more to imaginehimselfas the foul thing-the old black ram-intruding into thepalace ofVenetiancivilizationor thepalace of Desdemona's body;as lago succeeds in makingOthello the containerforhis own interiorwaste,Othello himselfincreasinglyaffiliates his blacknesswith soiling (he becomes "collied" or blackened bypassion [2.3.197];51 his name is "begrim'd,and black" as hisface) and withbad interiorobjects. (In "Arise, black vengeance, from thyhollow cell" [3.3.454], he calls on "black vengeance" to arise as thoughfromwithinthe hollowof himself.)52His experience of himself,that is, comes increasinglyto resemblewhat lago has projected into him; and he begins to act in accordance with that projection, replicatingin Desdemona thecontagionofprojectionitself.The Othellowho feels himselfbegrimedbecause he has internalizedlago's foul intruderwill necessarilysee Desdemona as "foul" (5.2.201), as a "begrim'd" Diana or a "black weed," and will evacuate his good object as lago had predicted (1.3.350); bythe end of the play,Emilia can call Othello "the blackerdevil," Desdemona's "most filthy bargain," "As ignorantas dirt" (5.2.132, 158, 165) because he has so perfectlyintrojectedlago's sense of inner filth. 4 This is an oversimplified summaryof a verycomplex developmentin psychoanalytic theory; for a fuller summary,see "Projective Identification"in R. D. Hinshelwood's A Dictionaryof KleinianThought(London: Free AssociationBooks, 1991), 179-208; or ElizabethBott Spillius's "Clinical experiences of projectiveidentification"in ClinicalLectureson Kleinand Bion, Robin Anderson,ed. (London and New York: Tavi~stock/Routledge, 1992), 59-73, esp. 59-64. For Klein's initialdevelopmentof the concept of projectiveidentification, see Envyand Gratitude, 8-11. The developmentof the concept byher followershas had broad ramifications forclinical work; for a particularlylucid account of some of these, see, in addition to Spillius,Joseph, "Projectiveidentification-some clinical aspects" in MelanieKleinToday:Developments in Theory and Practice,Elizabeth Bott Spillius, ed., 2 vols. (London and New York: Routledge, 1988), 1:138-50. 50 Klein,Envyand Gratitude, 11. 51 Colliedis conjecturallyrelated to coalyby the OED, 3:390-91. 52 Folio gives"hell" forQi's "cell." The Folio readingwould allyblackvengeancewithlago's monstrousbirth.In either reading, the apparentlysuperfluoushollownesssuggestsan inner space; as Ridleynotes,it occurs,again redundantly, in the referenceto a "hollow mine" (4.2.81). Shortlyafterhe calls up black vengeance,and again in 5.2, Othello imagineshis revengeswallowingup his victims(3.3.467 and 5.2.76), as thoughreturningthemto the interiorsource of his vengeance. 144 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY Insofaras lago can make Othello experience his own blacknessas a contaminationthatcontaminatesDesdemona, he succeeds in emptyinghimself out into Othello; and insofaras Othello becomes in effectlago's faecal baby, Othello-rather than lago-becomes the bearerof thefantasyof innerfilth. Throughprojectiveidentification, thatis,lago inventsblacknessas a contaminated categorybefore our eyes,enactinghis monstrousbirththroughOthello, and thenallowingtheVenetians(and mostmembersof theaudience) to congratulate themselves-as he does-on their distance from the nowracializedOthello. Throughthisprocess,Othello becomes assimilatedto,and motivatedby,his racial "type"-becomes the monstrousMoor easilymade jealous-and lago escapes our human categoriesaltogether,becoming unknowable,a motivelessmalignity. But thisemptyingout of lago is no more than lago has alreadyperformed on himself:if the projectionof his own inner contaminationinto Othello is lago's relief,it is also his undoing,and in a waythatcorroboratesboth the bodilinessof the fantasyof projectionand itsdangersto the projectoras well as the recipient.Klein notes that excessiveuse of projectiveidentification resultsin the "weakeningand impoverishment of the ego"; in the wordsof BettyJoseph, "at timesthe mind can be ... so evacuated by projectiveidentificationthatthe individualappears empty.'53 If at the end of the playthere is nothingleftto envy,there is also no one leftto experience envy:lago's projectionof himselfinto the racial otherhe constructsas the containerfor his contaminationends not onlybydestroying his (and our) good objectsbut also byleavinghim entirelyevacuated.Having poured the pestilenceof himself into Othello, lago has nothingleftinside him: his antigenerativebirth hollowshim out,leavinghimempty.The closerhe is to hisgoal, theflatterhis language becomes; bythe end, thereis no insideleft,no place to speak from. The playthatbeginswithhisinsistent"I" ends withhis silence:fromthistime forthhe neverwillspeak word. 53 Klein, Envyand Gratitude, 11; Josephin Spillius,ed., MelanieKleinToday,140.
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