Chapter 1 - Somatic Similarity

Summary

“Somatic Similarity: The White Other in Titus Andronicus,” uses Shakespeare’s first tragedy to expose the presence of the intraracial color-line. My book begins with this tragedy because it is the Shakespeare play that most efficiently showcases the white/white other binary produced by the intraracial color-line. This particular iteration of the color-line aligns and separates the play’s white characters along spiritual and moral lines. I use Titus pedagogically to guide the reader’s understanding of my book’s driving theoretical apparatus—the intraracial color-line—so they can then apply that concept in subsequent chapters and beyond the plays analyzed in my book. Shakespeare’s oeuvre is replete with appearances of the white other, as I suggest in the Introduction and at other moments. This gateway chapter challenges the easy assumption that one needs somatic Blackness in order to discuss race, or in order for race to be happening.