ThoughtGallery.org > Kimberly Anne Coles: Elizabeth Cary’s Tragedy of Mariam and the Color of Blood

Kimberly Anne Coles: Elizabeth Cary’s Tragedy of Mariam and the Color of Blood

Any feminist inquiry must assume that the gravity of political power bears upon the sexed subject, irrespective of other considerations of subject position. Years ago, Dympna Callaghan wrote brilliantly and provocatively about how Elizabeth Carey “deploys and manipulates the concept [of race] as a vital aspect of her construction and interrogation of femininity” in her drama The Tragedy of Mariam. I revisit this question because I believe that a different concept of race needs to be applied to Carey’s interrogation than any modern apprehension of the term affords. Recent scholarship has opened up the question of the continuities and discontinuities between early modern and modern rationalizations of human difference, and Cary’s drama usefully throws both into sharp relief. But perhaps more productively, a contemporary (early modern) application of the concept reveals the extent to which sex is weighted among the competing claims on subjectivity explored in the play.











When: Thu., Nov. 16, 2017 at 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
Where: Graduate Center, CUNY
365 Fifth Ave.
212-817-7000
Price: Free
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Any feminist inquiry must assume that the gravity of political power bears upon the sexed subject, irrespective of other considerations of subject position. Years ago, Dympna Callaghan wrote brilliantly and provocatively about how Elizabeth Carey “deploys and manipulates the concept [of race] as a vital aspect of her construction and interrogation of femininity” in her drama The Tragedy of Mariam. I revisit this question because I believe that a different concept of race needs to be applied to Carey’s interrogation than any modern apprehension of the term affords. Recent scholarship has opened up the question of the continuities and discontinuities between early modern and modern rationalizations of human difference, and Cary’s drama usefully throws both into sharp relief. But perhaps more productively, a contemporary (early modern) application of the concept reveals the extent to which sex is weighted among the competing claims on subjectivity explored in the play.

Buy tickets/get more info now