The purpose of my title is to not only distort the context of Antonio's description of Gonzalo (Shakespeare II.i.232), but to call attention to a similarly entitled section of Jonathon Baldo's 1995 essay, "Exporting Oblivion in The Tempest." While his essay is generally concerned, much as I am, with the role of memory in Prospero's colonial discourse, this particular section claims that Caliban "least requires Prospero's lectures on remembrance." Insisting that Caliban retains "an alternative history of the island," Baldo argues that Caliban is able to use his own "need to remember" to challenge Prospero's manipulated history of the island (134). While Baldo sees Caliban's use of memory as a threatening and pre-existing quality of the other, I suggest that Prospero's colonial discourse has manipulated Caliban's memory so that it perpetuates his otherness. Prospero's ability to turn memory into a "weak remembrance," both for himself and for those his colonial discourse grants him power over, allows him to re-author the past so that it justifies the present.

Before I enter into this argument, though, it is necessary to clarify my view on the role of colonial discourse in The Tempest. I do not wish fall into the same trap Deborah Willis identifies in Paul Brown's "This Thing of Darkness I Acknowledge Mine." Claiming that Brown wants to argue that, through The Tempest, Shakespeare attempts to "endorse unequivocally the colonial enterprise," she criticizes Brown's argument for its effect of "engulfing" The Tempest with colonial discourse, allowing the play "little separate identity of its own" (278-279). Indeed, Willis is not the only critic to suggest that attempts to read colonialism into The Tempest have gone too far. Hal Jamison outlines seven challenges to a colonialist critique, including that "Prospero bears more resemblance to a figure from an updated Grecian mythology," and that "Shakespeare pays no attention directly or otherwise to the driving force of overseas occupation and exploitation in his time" (59). Douglas Bruster probably offers the most likely explanation of Shakespeare's motives when he identifies Will Kemp, a celebrated Elizabethan clown, as the source for Caliban. That, coupled with Prospero's parallels to the playwright, lead him to argue that "The Tempest allegorizes Shakespeare's life and work in the theater" (53). Like these critics, I cannot read the play as a deliberate commentary by Shakespeare about colonialism. However, I agree with much of Brown's argument, especially that The Tempest is "a reflection of colonialist practices" (131). The colonial discourse found in The Tempest exists not because of a deliberate "intervention," as Brown claims (131), but because the strategies of colonial discourse mirror the creative process. The allegory of theater, in which Prospero possesses unprecedented authorial power, coupled with the island setting, manifests the unconscious colonialism of the era in such a way that the modern reader cannot help but discover colonial discourse in the play.

The most significant aspect of colonial discourse, at least in The Tempest, is its tendency to, in Brown's words, "require and produce the other" (150). At the core of this tendency is a need to rationally justify the colonialist's violence towards the colonized. Colonial discourse produces the colonized as the other in order to create that justification. In this observation, both Brown and I are indebted to the work of Edward Said in his book, Orientalism. As a "Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient" (3), Orientalism supports itself partly through an intricate "structure of lies and myths" (6) in which this domination appears rational. Colonial discourse relies heavily on the act of "orientalizing" the other, and I will operate under the assumption that Said's Orientalism and colonial discourse are virtually indistinguishable for the remainder of my essay.

I mention this discourse here because it further clarifies why The Tempest lends itself so well to colonial discourse. The discourse of otherness is inherent to the writing process. Shakespeare, in the creation of a protagonist and an antagonist, must develop a "structure of lies and myths" regarding the nature of his characters in order to justify the audience's reaction to them. Thus, Shakespeare has an obligation in The Tempest to present the audience with a fictional account of both Prospero's and Caliban's history. Without the "myths" of Caliban's inhuman heritage and his attempt to rape Miranda, the audience would have little on which to base his antagonism. Similarly, Shakespeare must solicit the sympathy of the audience towards Prospero through the story of his banishment from Milan. This necessary production of the antagonist as other, in my opinion, is the extent of Shakespeare's involvement in the colonial discourse of the play. These "myths" may or may not have anything to do with Shakespeare's prejudices against any real-life "others." They do, on the other hand, create the characters that lead the modern critic to examine the colonialist's discourse of otherness.

Having established the nature of the incidental colonial discourse in The Tempest, and having discovered the similarities between colonial discourse and the writing process, it is now time to return to my original discussion of how Prospero authors the history of the island in order to produce the other. It is widely noted that Prospero acts as playwright throughout the play. The idea that "Prospero consciously 'directs' the island world of The Tempest," for example, is fundamental to Bruster's argument (48). Prospero's directorial power is evident in the fact that, from the very beginning, he instigates almost all action in the play, whether it be the tempest that brings the sailors to the island, or the directing of the Nymphs for Ferdinand and Miranda's viewing pleasure. His control over the island is so complete that it seems, as Bruster has commented, that Prospero "haunts the island world like a playhouse director" (53).

More important to the discourse of otherness is that, Prospero, like Shakespeare, directs the history of the island. It is through he, and he alone, that the audience learns the history of the other characters in the play. In Act I, scene 2, he narrates the history of not only himself and Miranda, but of Antonio, Ariel, and Caliban. Brown says that the power of Prospero's narrative is such that it "demands of its subjects that they should accede to his version of the past" (142). This is especially evident in his conversation with Ariel, where he directly challenges Ariel's memory. Embracing one of Said's four dogmas of Orientalism, Prospero sees Ariel as "incapable of defining [him]self" (Said 300), and thus must constantly remind Ariel of his own history: "I must / Once a month recount what thou hast been, / Which thou forget'st" (Shakespeare I.ii.261-63). When Caliban attempts to interpret his personal history, Prospero immediately erases that interpretation with the sweeping statement, "Thou most lying slave" (344). A few lines later, Caliban offers no challenge to Prospero's narration of the rape attempt; instead he appears to delight in the memory that Prospero has thrust upon him, which, in turn, reinforces his repulsive otherness.

Yet, were either Ariel's or Caliban's original memory to survive Prospero's reconstruction, the audience would find itself instead repulsed by Prospero's injustice. Prospero's narrative has fulfilled the role of colonial discourse. Since his "memory" of events eventually conquers all other memories, he deprives Ariel and Caliban of both their own and the audience's sympathy. Prospero, again orientalizing Ariel through the suggestion that he required redemption (cf. Said 206), restructures Ariel's memory so that he is indebted to Prospero for his "art" that released him from the pine (Shakespeare I.ii.291-93). As for Caliban, Prospero has taught him to recognize his repulsive otherness, and he thus accepts his designation as a slave. Prospero's previously mentioned directorial power over the present derives directly from this ability to control the history, and therefore memory of the other. Says Baldo: "Prospero links his theatrical control over characters and events with a superior memory and an ability to manipulate . . . the memories of others" (133). Because he can control the past, he can control the other's understanding of origin, and therefore the other's sense of identity, direction, and purpose.

Prospero's books become an important factor in his ability to manipulate memory. Baldo says that colonialism often justified its imposition of memory by accusing the colonized of "forgetfulness" (111). This forgetfulness was often attributed to a lack of writing (112). Whereas the colonizer knew he had history because it was chronicled in his history books, the lack of books on the part of the colonized indicated a "static, ahistorical world that made few demands upon memory" (114). Thus, books come to represent power, in that they distinguish the colonialist, who is able to use (and learn) from history, from the other, who apparently has no such voice. Prospero, himself, connects his books to power when he says "I'll to my book, / For yet ere supper-time must I perform / Much business appertaining" (Shakespeare III.i.93-96). Meanwhile, Baldo suggests that the colonized, recognizing the power that the colonizer perceived as residing in the ability to write, regarded writing as "a potent form of magic" (118). This, indeed, is Caliban's perception of Prospero's use of books, insomuch that his attempt to overthrow Prospero concentrates immediately upon his books: "Remember / First to possess his books; for without them / He's but a sot, as I am" (Shakespeare III.ii.91-93). For Caliban, as Mark Taylor notes, "Prospero's books bear significance as physical objects that make his oppression possible" (104). If Caliban can destroy the book, Caliban can destroy Prospero's magic—the ability to write the past—and his power—Prospero's claim to actually know that past.

Eventually, Caliban's efforts to overcome his otherness fail. Naturally, one reason for this is that Prospero simply has more power than Caliban. Said says that Orientalism succeeded as "political doctrine willed over the Orient" simply because "the Orient was weaker than the West" (204). But the question is, in what way is the Orient weaker? Prospero's strength against Caliban in this specific instance comes as a result of a pre-established power structure. Yet, one must inquire into how Prospero, as a single immigrant to an island of "others," managed to establish this power structure. Up to this point, I have focused on colonial discourse in its role of maintaining and perpetuating Prospero's power. Now, I wish to explore how colonial discourse originally invested Prospero with his power.

Prospero's (and Miranda's) position as colonizer becomes unique when considered against the position of contemporary Asian American immigrants. There are remarkable similarities between the two groups. Both groups arrive at their new homeland as a result of misfortune in their old homeland. Prospero and Miranda are forced out of Milan because of rebellion, while the majority of Asian Americans flee Asia because of economic or political turmoil. Furthermore it is clear that in both cases, the newcomers are outnumbered by the native elements of their new land, whether those elements are the native population, in the case of Asian Americans, or the native culture and environment, as is the case of Prospero and Miranda. Both groups react similarly to their sudden displacement—they expect that the new land will somehow redeem them from their troubles. Prospero feels that the island, is obligated to serve his needs through both its magic and its native inhabitants, a sentiment mirrored in Gonzalo's opinion that "all things in common nature should produce / Without sweat or endeavor" (II.i.161). Many Asian Americans entered the "island" of America with the expectation that, to make up for their misfortunes in Asia, the land would yield up its fortunes in gold. Yet despite the similarities, Prospero colonizes his island, while Asian Americans are orientalized and thus conquered by the island of "America."

The reason for this dramatic difference is hinted at in the methods by which the two groups respond to their biggest similarity—a sudden sense of a loss of origin. This loss of origin is especially manifest in the second generation. Miranda voices her inability to recall her origins several times throughout the first act. Her past, twelve years disconnected from the present, becomes more "like a dream than an assurance" (Shakespeare I.ii.45). Her repeated inquiries into that past illustrate the importance of memory in shaping the identity. This same preoccupation with the inability to remember the past is tantamount to modern Asian American writers. In Joy Kogawa's novel, Obasan, the character of Aunt Emily, an Issei, emphasizes the importance of the past when she tells her Nissei niece that "you are your history. . . . don't deny the past. Remember everything" (60). Yet, the poet Li-Young Lee emphasizes the impossibility of remembering in his poem "For a New Citizen of the United States." The narrator is a Chinese immigrant trying to reconstruct his escape from China as a child, reluctantly arriving at the conclusion that the memory of that escape "was only our / life and its forgetting" (42-43). The island scene, it appears, has the capacity to invest its colonizers/immigrants with the same quality as the colonialist reads into the island's other—forgetfulness. The biggest casualty of this forgetfulness, however, is not the past; rather, it is the future. Just as Miranda represents a future that "preserves" Prospero (I.ii.153), the Nissei generation of Asian Americans have the responsibility of preserving their heritage—a responsibility that is even more important in a culture whose identity relies heavily on ancestral worship. In both cases, if the future cannot somehow preserve the past, the immigrants face cultural genocide.

How they react to this forgetfulness distinguishes Prospero and Miranda from Asian America. Both groups sense that forgetfulness must be overcome through the act of retelling history, however Prospero makes memory serve the present and future, whereas Asian America obliges its present and future to the past. To make this distinction clear, I shall first of all examine the strategy of the narrator in Fae Myenne Ng's Bone, Leila. Attaching the typical Asian significance to her family, Leila uses her narrative to discover the meaning of her family, and therefore, of the past: "Family exists only because somebody has a story, and knowing the story connects us to history" (89). Informed by the theory that "remembering the past gives power to the present" (89), she attempts to tell the story of her sister's suicide. Except, she does not tell the story chronologically; instead she tells it backwards—from a distant present to the actual moment of her sister's suicide. In so doing, she emphasizes the importance of painful reconstruction of the past. Each chapter finds its meaning only through the next chapter's deeper exploration of that past. Leila, and Asian America, treats the past as if it is sacred and cannot be reconstructed to any form other than its original one. To do otherwise would rob them of their identity—as Leila says, "All I have are those memories, and I want to remember them all" (61).

Prospero, meanwhile, has no such reverence for the past. Instead, he is the epitome of the "legacy of modern European colonialism," which Baldo describes as "cultural amnesia" (111). In other words, he controls the past by virtue of his willingness to forget it, or at least the parts of it which do not support the present. We have already seen this in his treatment of Ariel and Caliban. However, even with his own daughter, he refuses to give the past the weight it deserves. The fact that Prospero waits to tell Miranda her history until she is fifteen suggests an attitude of apathy towards the past in its role as a defining aspect of her identity. His attitude of impurity towards the past gives him the ability to, as Baldo states, "'go native' in his state of exile, which means to concentrate intensely on the present moment instead of the wider purviews of past and future made possible by his books of magic" (123). Of course, my claim that Prospero abuses the past in order to serve the present and future directly contradicts Baldo's conclusion that Prospero "uses the present to restore a past state of affairs" (135). But such use is the desire of the immigrant, not the colonizer. Prospero has little desire to restore himself to the crown—his efforts concentrate mostly on the fate of his daughter. By bringing the ship to the island, he uses a past he has otherwise ignored to establish his daughter's future. This past has no control over him; he, instead, controls it.

In this, it becomes obvious that Prospero's power over memory derives not out of a superior memory, but out of his ability to organize that memory in a way that submits it to the needs of the present. This greatly contrasts with the Asian American strategy. In his poem "Furious Versions," Li-Young Lee recognizes that his "memory's flaw / isn't in retention but organization." He attempts to solve this by telling "once and for all / how someone lived" (372-76). This, of course, suggests that there is some absolute form to memory, and that this form may or may not serve the purposes of the present. Prospero, on the other hand, is perfectly comfortable with the "insubstantial" nature of the past he authors, an attitude apparent in his monologue after the Nymphs play:

These our actors
(As I foretold you) were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air,
And like the baseless fabric of this vision
. . . shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant faded
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. (IV.i.148-153)

If the past is insubstantial, as Prospero believes, then the only moment of importance is the present. The past can therefore be shaped in the form most pleasing to the vision of the present, and Prospero's past can thus gain the power Brown identifies as lying in "aesthetic ordering" (146) of it.

My intent in discussing Asian American immigration has been to propose that Caliban and Ariel have similar attitudes towards memory, and thus find themselves incapable of challenging Prospero's spontaneous reconstructions of it. Blaming Caliban's failure on an "erroneous estimate of Prospero's vulnerability" (102), Taylor argues that Caliban "does not see how power resides in, or comes out of, books" (105). In Taylor's argument, this power is the ability to learn, but I wish to expand this to the ability to define history. The books, which ideally should represent the permanence of history, in reality come to represent Prospero's re-ordering of it. Caliban unfortunately believes he can destroy the books, and therefore Prospero's power, in the present. Instead, it will require a reversal of history to undue the power Prospero's colonial discourse has created.

Prospero's initial colonial power results out of the inability of the other to employ, or, it seems, even comprehend Prospero's strategy of rebuilding the past. Perhaps the biggest reason for this inability is the necessity of rebuilding one's own past in the rebuilding of the past of the other. Said says "The Orientalist can imitate the Orient without the opposite being true. . . . His power was to have existed among them as native speaker . . . and also secret writer" (160). Prospero's success relies on his ability to forget Milan and speak the language of mysticism and magic that rules the island. He must embrace a "weak remembrance" of his homeland in order to fit into his new home. Once he has gained the respect of the native elements through his "weak remembrance," he can then employ that "weak remembrance" to orientalize the natives by using the authority of his own magic—books—to restructure their memory. Through this process, Prospero produces them as the other, a position to which appear resigned.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the play is that it leaves little hope that the other can ever undue colonial discourse. Even if Caliban ever does learn to write and read, he has already begun to recognize that his only means of attacking colonial discourse is the language that it has taught him: "You taught me language, and my profit on't / Is, I know how to curse" (I.ii.363-364). As Brown observes, "whatever Caliban does with this gift announces his capture by it" (144). His only escape is to become an author of history himself; yet in order to do this, he must embrace a "weak remembrance" of the past he desires to restore. This is the colonialist's ultimate and frightening victory—the conversion of the other to his view of history. In the process of this, the other becomes permanently dispossessed. No matter what the other does, the violence of colonial discourse has permanently corrupted the sanctity of its history, leaving the other with little other choice but to embrace the dispossessed voice of Fae Myenne Ng's Leila: "What I wanted was to forget. . . . I wanted a ritual that forgave. I wanted a ritual to forget" (54).

Works Cited

Baldo, Jonathon. "Exporting Oblivion in The Tempest." Modern Language Quarterly. June, 1995: 111-44.

Brown, Paul. "'This Thing of Darkness I Acknowledge Mine': The Tempest and the Discourse of Colonialism." William Shakespeare's The Tempest. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988. 131-51.

Bruster, Douglas. "Local Tempest: Shakespeare and the work of the early modern playhouse." Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Winter, 1995: 33-53.

Kogawa, Joy. Obasan. New York: Anchor Books, 1994.

Jamison, Hal. "The Tempest and Babouk: Shakespeare and the Colonial Subject." Monthly Review. September, 1993: 58-61.

Lee, Li-Young. "For a New Citizen of These United States." The City in Which I Love You. Rochester, New York: BOA Editions, 1990: 41-42.

- - -. "Furious Versions." The City in Which I Love You. Rochester, New York: BOA Editions, 1990: 13-29.

Ng, Fae Myenne. Bone. New York: HarperPerennial, 1994.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.

Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. The Riverside Shakespeare. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974: 1611-36.

Taylor, Mark. "Prospero's Books and Stephano's Bottle." CLIO. 22:2, 1993: 101-13.

Willis, Deborah. "Shakespeare's Tempest and the Discourse of Colonialism." Studies in English Literature 1500-1900. Spring, 1989: 277-288.