“Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore! Be sure of it; give me the ocular proof...”[1]
In this second reading of Shakespeare, Cavell narrows his examination to a particular kind of skepticism and its consequences as Othello fails to acknowledge the separateness of Desdemona. To avoid repetition as we yet again examine acknowledgement versus knowing, this paper will draw upon an older, more archetypal story which interestingly mimics all the elements that Cavell and Othello explore. The Hebrew Story of the Destruction of Sodom[2] highlights the archaicness- and transcendency of the Consequences of demanding knowledge rather than acknowledgment. Where previously this acknowledgment was explored through love, this time it is faith. Othello and the Sodom story explore Faith through Faithfulness, and this particular faithfulness thought various illustrations of intimacy to represent acknowledgement of the Other in contrast to knowing.
The Genesis account of the Destruction of Sodom begins with a depiction of acknowledgement as a faithful intimacy. The two-part story begins with the visitation of strangers- the Other (the unknown)- visiting Abraham. There is debate as to whether the three strangers were the Trinitarian God, or God with two angels.[3] Either way, like Desdemona, it is a depiction of purity, so what is in question is not the Stranger, but rather Abraham’s acknowledgement of them. Abraham thus exemplifies true faithfulness in God through acknowledgment as he welcomes the strangers in a display of hospitality.[4] The story is also a narrative of true Faithfulness in intimacy. Firstly, Abraham bargains with the strangers to spare the lives of Sodom but doing so in a display of deep humility.[5] True acknowledgement, especially in intimacy is a bargain because one only bargain with those of whom we understand a separateness to, and there is vulnerability in humility. This depiction of Faithfulness saves the lives of Lot and his daughters as faith expanded out in mercy and forgiveness. Second, the Strangers promise Sarah a child: “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.”[6] She laughs- a display of disbelief and doubt, but this clearly does not impact the promise made, as though to show that this faith -true faithfulness- allows room for doubt, but also that faithfulness in the intimacy of relationships outgrows into the creation of new life in family.
But the Sodom Story continues, revealing the tragedy of Othello. And it is this: Desdemona cannot be known. Carnes describes this finitude to our knowledge of her as something “that we must accept,” but which Othello does not.[7] His skewed view of Desdemona is evidenced in the beginning in his confession of undoubting assurance of her love. “Send for the lady to the Sagittary And let her speak of me before her father.”[8] Othello tells the men to fetch Desdemona as a witness of their love. He is, at this point secure of her love- in an undoubted “knowledge.”[9] Othello lives the skeptics dream of assuming that their love for each other interprets to complete knowledge of the other. He knows she will confess her love just as he has. Moreover, As Cavell notes, Othello’s life and soul are bound to his visual proof or knowledge of an unacknowledged Desdemona.[10] As Iago identifies, “His soul so enfettered to her love/ that she may make, unmake, do what she list, even as her appetite shall play the God, with his weak function.”[11] For Othello their Faith is built on the binary of her proof, and on that proof he has pitted his life- and also unfortunately hers: “My life upon her faith, honest Iago...”[12]
But this is not acknowledgment. Desdemona is the pure Stranger. Brabantio knows this saying, “Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see she has deceived her father and may thee.”[13] Regardless of what Othello believes, From the outset, we know that Desdemona is capable of deception because she is human.[14] The potential of the possibility is there, and told to Othello, and left as unanswered as the condition of the consummated marriage. To Othello then, her faithfulness is bound up in a dualistic “she loves me, or she doesn’t, and I believe she does because she hasn’t proven otherwise.” rather than the reality that is, “she loves me because she chooses the love me and I have faith in her choice.”
Othello’s faith isn’t faith at all; rather, it is assumed ownership. It is not coincidence that this belief in her completeness and identity in him is followed by a call for her to join him for what remains of the night.[15] This is a play about faith as faithfulness in the marriage act. Intimacy can be a cruel and cold Knowing, or it can be an intimate acknowledgement. It can be a lustful exchange or faithful revelation. So while Othello demands proof, the play is determined to give none. We are left purposely in the dark because it is a play on our own faithfulness as well- our trust in her choice to love only Othello. Othello’s Skepticism is “a conversion (an act of rejection) of the human experience” into something declared unknown. [16] While in the last paper, we explored how the demand of acknowledgment is threatening to those that wish to remain hidden, the threat of knowledge is far more dangerous because it is the demand to claim another. This is a threat, and as we will see, in a physically intimate setting it is a violent and destructive one.
The Sodom Story demonstrates this violence, with the strangers departing from Abraham’s house and journeying on to the city of Sodom.[17] While welcomed by Lot, they are not welcomed by the city. At night, the Men of the city demand that these strangers be brought out “So that we may know them.”[18] We see the panicle depiction of a failure to acknowledge in the form of a violent demand to know-the crime of attempted rape. Later, a second depiction of faithlessness or failure to acknowledge in intimacy is demonstrated by Lot’s daughters who intoxicate their father to have sex with him without his knowledge.[19] They know him, and he not them: a second broken bond. Sex without intimacy; Knowledge without acknowledgement. Both Lot’s daughters and the men of Sodom demand to Know someone. Who else demands intimate knowledge of another? Othello. The handkerchief is the ocular proof because it is that which can be known. It is the model of virginity and in extension intimacy that is entirely binary: there is blood or there isn’t. Desdemona has her handkerchief, or she doesn’t. Othello is obsessed with this model, as he exclaims “O, blood, blood, blood!”[20] a triple repetition in the same act as his equal repetition of “the Handkerchief”[21] which cuts off Desdemona’s attempts to defend -reveal- herself. Further, when Iago claims that the handkerchief is hers, and “She may [...] bestow it on any man.”[22] Othello disagrees, attaching her honor to the proof of the handkerchief.
But that is the problem. Desdemona cannot produce this evidence. Desdemona is the Strangers, unknown to Abraham/Othello -and therefore the demand for knowledge of her is followed by destruction. It is this reason that the Strangers blind the crowds- they will never be able to acknowledge (see) again.[23] Othello too is blinded in a deliberate act of rejection of Desdemona, thus embodying the tragedy of Cavell’s Skeptic: “Put out the Light, then put out the light.”[24] He wishes to claim her in their marital Knowing, but the thought that she plays any part -thus revealing her separateness- horrifies him.[25] Cavell explains this logic as, “What happened on our wedding night is that I killed her; but she is not dead; therefore, she is not human; therefore, she must die.”[26]
Demand for knowledge in intimacy is an act of ownership and faithlessness. The men of Sodom wished to know the Strangers by overpowering them. Lot’s daughters wished to know their father without him being aware, and Lot’s wife wished to know the fate of her city, despite being warned of the consequences. Likewise, Othello wishes to know his wife -to have this proof of her faithfulness, without allowing her to be revealed and separate in that act.[27] This demand for knowledge reveals a dangerous and dehumanising exchange in Othello’s beliefs: It creates a two-dimensional characteristic of the Other- they are made stone to be made knowable- that they can be claimed. The Sodom account depicts a final simile to Othello:
“Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.[28]
To demand proof of the Other turns not only the other into an object but also the self. Othello tell Desdemona before killing her, “Thou dost stone my heart.”[29] To fail to acknowledge is to dehumanize- turn to stone. We dehumanize ourselves long before we dehumanize others, as an inversion of Cavell’s argument that we must acknowledge the self-first and then the Other. Othello goes on, “Yet I’ll not shed her blood, nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow, and smoother than monumental alabaster.”[30] Like Lot’s wife, the demand for proof have finally (and in finality) turned her to stone. “A statue, stone, is something whose existence is fundamentally open to the ocular proof,” observes Cavell, “What this man lacked was not certainty,” but rather that he found out too much,[31] he sought knowledge and was met with her acknowledgment. His false ideal of faith met her truthful faithfulness and this revealed him. Therefore, both lie dead side by side. She is still unacknowledged, but finally can be known in her petrification. Othello is the skeptics tragedy because he has his knowledge -the blood on the sheets, but it is his own, drowning in a pool of his demanded “ocular proof.”[32]
Othello and The Destruction of Sodom demonstrate Cavell’s understanding of the consequences of a particular type of skepticism: intimate knowing. The Sodom narrative offers a demonstration of when true acknowledgement takes place in an intimate faithful unity. Othello then depicts when this particular skepticism fails, alongside the second half of the genesis narrative. The ocular proof will not be given because it doesn’t exist. We cannot know another, and so we must acknowledge them, especially in the vulnerability that comes with intimacy. We must honor the other’s separateness and trust in their choice to be faithful. If we do not and instead rely on a proof of faith we petrify -we turn to stone- both ourselves and the Other in our dehumanization.
[1] William Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Stanley Wells, Michael Neill, (New York, Oxford University Press, 2006) Act 3. Sc. 3. Line 361-362. [2] Gen. 18-19 New Revised Standard Version [3] Gen. 18: 1-2 NRSV. (In my own tradition, the story has always been told as God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and later were simply described as angels. I just thought that was fascinating.) [4] Gen. 18: 3-8 NRSV. [5] “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty (Gen 18: 27-28 NRSV)?” Later: “May the Lord not be angry but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there (Gen 18: 32 NRSV)?” [6] Gen 18:10 NRSV. [7] Natalie Carnes, “Possession and Dispossession: Wittgenstein, Cavell, and Gregory of Nyssa on Life Amidst Skepticism,” Modern Theology 29:1 (January 2013): 112. [8] Othello, Act 1. Sc. 3. Line 116-117. [9] Stanley Cavell. Disowning Knowledge: in Seven Plays of Shakespeare (New York, Cambridge University Press 1987), 128. [10] Cavell, Disowning Knowledge, 128. [11] Othello, Act 2. Sc. 3. Line 330-132. [12] Othello, Act. 1. Sc. 2 Line 292. [13] Othello, Act 1. Sc. 2 Line 290-291. [14] Cavell, Disowning Knowledge, 136. [15] Othello, Act 1. Sc. 2 Line 193-198. [16] Carnes, “Possession and Dispossession,” 112. [17] Gen. 18:33; 19:1 NRSV. [18] Gen. 19:5 King James Version (the NRSV states “so that we may have sex with them.”) [19] Gen. 19:30-38 NRSV. [20] Othello, Act 3. Sc. 3. Line 451. [21] Othello, Act 3. Sc. 4. Line 89, 91, 93. [22] Othello, Act 4. Sc. 1. Line 12. [23] Gen. 19:11 NRSV. [24] Othello, Act 5. Sc. 2. Line 7. [25] Cavell, Disowning Knowledge, 133. [26] Cavell, Disowning Knowledge, 141. [27] Cavell, Disowning Knowledge, 136. [28] Gen. 19:24-26 NRSV. [29] Othello, Act 5. Sc. 2. Line 65. [30] Othello, Act 5. Sc. 2. Line 3-5. [31] Cavell, Disowning Knowledge, 141. [32] Cavell, Disowning Knowledge, 132.
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