Sycorax and the Notion of Nature: a Reading of A Tempest by Aimé Césaire in the Age of Anthropocene

Abstract

We analyze the theater work of the Antillean writer Aimé Césaire: Une tempête, taking into account the readings of thinkers critical of colonialism and of authors who reflect on the current stage of depredation of "Nature" (inherited notion of modernity that will be problematized throughout the work [Latour, 2017]). For this we will stop in the dialogues and in the relationship and disputes that are established between the characters of Prospero, Calibán and Sycorax, and how from those characters (Caliban and Sycorax) can be established figures that project a critic to the "colonial matrix of power" (Quijano, Mignolo). We present a rereading of Une tempête fifty years after its premiere and in relation to a stage that some authors like Bruno Latour (2017), define as “the era of the Anthropocene". We propose, then, to analyze as a starting point the relationship between Caliban and Sycorax as a figure and alternative to the colonial power exercised by Prospero, which translates into civilizational narratives or "narratives of development" (Svampa, Antonelli, 2009), which seeks to exercise power over subaltern subjects and dispose of "Nature" for exploitation.