Racial identity alone marked Othello as a monster regardless of his actions

Evidence

Othello’s race identifies him as a monster. Even though he tries to act human, he meets an inescapable fate. Like Edward Scissorhands returning to the house on the hill, Othello cannot escape what he is—a monster. He ultimately proves, “abluis Aethiopem, quid frustra”—“You wash the Ethiopian, Why the labor in vain.” Othello is and will always be a monster, “demonic hellfire, burnt by hellfire and cursed by God.” The text is quite clear on Othello’s nature, calling him “horrible and grim.” Othello’s identity is suggested when he discloses his intimate knowledge of monstrous races, at one point telling Desdemona about “[t] he Anthropophagi, and men whose heads, Do grow beneath their shoulders,” creatures he has obviously seen in person. He knows about the cannibals and Blemmyae because he had lived among them. According to the medieval and Renaissance episteme, Muslims had an intimate knowledge of the domain of monsters. Members of Shakespeare’s audience viewed Africa as a land of horrors, with flames that reached as high as the moon and cannibalistic Anthropophagi, creatures without heads, satyrs, and Troglodytes who lived in caves. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 319

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s core thesis: the fear-without-object pattern where race itself, not behavior, instantiates monstrousness — parallels the manufactured image of the Muslim monster preceding any real contact.
• QUESTION: The claim that Othello ‘had lived among’ Anthropophagi ties monster knowledge to lived proximity to Africa — worth tracing whether Shakespeare’s source material (Leo Africanus?) explicitly linked Islam to monster-domain knowledge.