Freedom as Praxis: Migdalia Cruz’s Fur and the Emancipation of Caliban’s Woman

This essay analyses the play Fur by the Nuyorican playwright Migdalia Cruz in relation to William Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Aimé Césaire’s A Tempest in order to trace colonialism’s imprint on racial formations and ideations of freedom. Following theories by Sylvia Wynter and Anthony Bogues, this analysis demonstrates how minoritarian subjects, through their embodiment of race and freedom, can redesign the narratives of resistance that have oriented our understanding of modern drama. Casting Fur’s depiction of sociality against a genealogy of colonialism, I offer new ways to understand how practices of freedom may emancipate slaves into full-fledged human beings.