This paper will focus on women whose identities are unclear from the perspectives of gender, sexism, racism, friendship, and post-colonialism. Morrison turns to Emilia, Sa’ran, M. Brabantio, and Soun because these four women reveal many truths that Shakespeare’s Othello did not. Of these, the dialogue between Desdemona and Barbary / Sa’ran is the most intense. Morrison even seems to place Sa’ran at the center of Desdemona. The reason behind this idea is, in my opinion, because she is black.
In her book of criticism, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, Morrison argues that to understand American literature, we must place black people at its center and not literarily marginalize them. By looking at blackness in detail, she tries to examine the true nature of literary whiteness and to give a proper understanding of American literature. Morrison created Desdemona from a post-colonial perspective that fundamentally rethinks the history written by the victors, arguing that the representation of black people has been falsely “reproduced” in the world’s literary works.
In Othello, Morrison criticized that there was no friendship between women (Desdemona and Emilia, Desdemona and Barbary /Sa’ran), and in Vogel’s Desdemona, Emilia claimed saying “there’s no such thing as friendship between women.” However, in Morrison’s Desdemona, female friendships develop between Desdemona and Emilia, Desdemona and Sa’ran, and M. Brabantio and Soun. Morrison revised and ideally reconstructed Othello from the point of view of these enigmatic women. Sellars once explained to Morrison that he found Shakespeare’s Othello “a thin play” with stereotypical principal characters. Morrison convinced Sellars that there was more textual depth to Desdemona than productions had typically extrapolated, but she conceded that even Shakespeare had not allowed Desdemona to tell her full story. Morrison created a unique musical, a sequel to Othello, so to speak, based on his discussions with Sellars.

人類学的記述の目標は、「現実の生の不可量部分」を含む出来事の〈全体〉に迫ることである。こう考えるとき、音楽パフォーマンスの研究ほど挑戦しがいのあるテーマもない。というのも、人類学者のほとんどが、全体的出来事としてのミュージッキング(＝音楽すること)から「音楽」を抽出し客体化するという音楽学的前提を暗黙裡に受け入れてしまっているからである。本稿ではアフォーダンス理論を手掛かりに、この前提から離れた記述を試みる。研究対象となる米国の黒人ペンテコステ／カリスマ派キリスト教会の礼拝儀礼は、音楽の演奏や歌唱だけでなく、「音楽」の枠に入りきらない音や信者たちの振る舞いに満ちている。本稿では、信者らが音に働きかけられる様子、音のなかで信者同士がやりとりする様子を、文字的記述、継時的行動を表した図、映像データから分析し、社会的な音＝身体のアフォーダンスを取り出す。そこから浮かび上がるのは、意識によって必ずしもコントロールされない次元の振る舞いであり、個々人のあいだを流れる運動としての「ノリ(＝グルーヴ)」である。音楽をめぐる客体主義を超えた先に構想される音楽人類学は、調査者がフィールドのミュージッキングに共振しつつ、「音楽以前のミュージッキング」を研究する地平に我々を誘う。