Cristina Leon Alfar: "Isabella's Feminist Ethics in Measure for Measure"

In Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, Isabella occupies an ethical space in Vienna's culture of female exploitation, a practice she critiques throughout the play. As a parrhesiast, in Foucault's terms, she exercises a rhetorical expression of the truth, a right to speak to truth to power, and especially, the right of the citizen to correct the sovereign. Measure for Measure stages a parrhesiatic form of citizenship performed by Isabella who emerges as an active citizen speaking from a dramatic and political ethical center which, Christina Alfar in this talk argues, is feminist.

Please note this talk contains information about rape which may be triggering to some survivors.