Caliban Friday: Sublimating Labour in Colonial Books and Bodies

Abstract

The stories of Prospero and Crusoe bear many resemblances, yet Caliban and Friday appear to embody distinct imaginative strategies for representing the colonised subject. For one, Caliban praises language only because it allows him to curse. For Prospero, Caliban is a ‘dull thing’, which suggests that Prospero does not qualify Caliban’s cursing as proper speech. If cursing ties language to bodily energies and drives, it desublimates language, provided that cursing is recognised as articulate. This invites the question of the articulation of the bodily in colonial writing, as when the bodily expression is censored or misinterpreted (as in the case of Caliban’s deformed body). Friday, a Black Carib and a cannibal, on the other hand, is according to Crusoe a ‘handsome Fellow, perfectly well-made’ and a ‘faithful, loving, sincere Servant’ who ‘worked very willingly’ without any cursing. If there are some signs of aggression in Friday, Crusoe helps him to sublimate his aggressive instincts (and his cannibalism) into activities more useful than idle cursing. Nevertheless, it is actually Friday who is ‘dull’ in J. M. Coetzee’s retelling of the story, which raises a number of questions with respect to Caliban/Friday, including those concerning muteness and mutilation, labour and discipline, as well as censorship and sublimation.