Sandra Young (photo: Nasief Manie / UCT)
Last week, as part of the University of Cape Town’s Inaugural Lecture Series, Professor Sandra Young delivered a lecture entitled “Exploring the Literary Imagination in Times of Reckoning: What might Shakespeare have to do with social justice today?”
Young (who, as former Head of English Literary Studies at UCT, is also former vice-president of the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa and co-convenor of the Society’s congresses in 2019 and 2023) began her talk by presenting an overview of her research in the fields of Shakespeare studies, South African literary and cultural studies, and heritage/memory studies over the past two decades. Her scholarship pursues questions of social justice in works both imaginative and historical. Young’s 2019 book, Shakespeare in the Global South: Stories of Oceans Crossed in Contemporary Adaptation, examines how theatre practitioners reimagine Shakespeare’s works to tell new stories of dispossession, struggle and survival. The Early Modern Global South in Print (2015) traces the emergence of a racialised ‘South’ in early modern maps, geographies, and natural histories. Her current book project (which began during her fellowship earlier this year at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC) is a performance history of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, reflecting on the spectre of slavery within public culture, from 1660 until today.
Prof Young and colleagues before the event (photo: Nasief Manie / UCT)
It was thus apt that her lecture focused on The Tempest in offering answers to the question, “How do works of the imagination help us to reckon with difficult histories, in a world that continues to feel the impact of centuries of unjust social structures?” Here Young took her cue from Saidiya Hartman who, addressing the ethics and practice of writing about the lives of the enslaved, has asked: “What are the stories one tells in dark times?” This has implications for the writing of history, as well as creative practice, and indeed literary studies - which some regard as an elitist pursuit. But the discipline, Young argued, is also well placed to analyse how cultural practices can secure the interests of the powerful, or challenge them.
The Tempest, as a play that gives pointed attention to slavery and colonisation, offers a rewarding case study. Given the play’s wildly different interpretations historically, archival research tells a fascinating story: before abolition, Shakespeare’s version was almost never performed but was replaced by adaptations that shifted the emphasis away from the figure of Caliban. The enslaved character was thus not treated as human, as one whose plight deserves attention. Later, the treatment of Caliban in the nineteenth century ranged from Coleridge’s “sympathetic imagination” to early eugenics. At the turn of the twentieth century, The Tempest was used to celebrate immigration in the United States; more recently, the figure of Sycorax has been incorporated into memorials to those who died in the Middle Passage. The play thus gestures towards an “underwater archive”. Contemporary artists like Madeline Sayet (Where We Belong) continue to reimagine the play to address the concerns of a new generation.
The lecture can be watched on YouTube. In this video, the event is opened by UCT Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Prof Jeff Murugan. Young is introduced by Dean of the Humanities, Prof Shose Kessi. Prof Chris Thurman of Wits University gives a response and expression of thanks in closing.