포스트모던 제국의 우울증: 데이빗 헨리 황의 『엠. 버터플라이』
David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly: Postmodern Other, (Post-)Imperialist Melancholy and Western Masculinity in Crisis
0
조회
0
다운로드
6
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
This article discusses David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly as a suggestive text for examining Western masculinity in crisis in the post-imperialist age, in which territorial imperialism is no longer valid. Previous scholarship on M. Butterfly has centered around the interlocking dynamics of imperialism, racism and sexism. Such critical attentions focus on how Hwang deconstructs racialized significations of the East and the West. In these discussions, the issue of gender is often addressed merely as a trope to represent the power relations between the East and the West. As such, gender as well as sexuality is highlighted as the very source of subversion of the power relations. My discussion departs from a critique of the gendered trope of the East and the West, highlighting a postmodern agent, the allegedly feminized character Song Lining: a Chinese actor who passes for a woman for political purposes in postcolonial China. Remaining an “inappropriate/d other” in the gendered imperialist discourse, Song becomes an emergent subject, who is capable of playing gender ambiguity for reclaiming a devalued identity, that of homosexual Asian man. Discussing how the central character Rene Gallimard’s masculine identity is constructed in a cross-cultural space and how it evolves, I also argue that Gallimard’s melancholic death signifies a historical unsustainability of imperialist masculinity in the postmodern/postcolonial age since World War II.
Abstract
This article discusses David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly as a suggestive text for examining Western masculinity in crisis in the post-imperialist age, in which territorial imperialism is no longer valid. Previous scholarship on M. Butterfly has centered around the interlocking dynamics of imperialism, racism and sexism. Such critical attentions focus on how Hwang deconstructs racialized significations of the East and the West. In these discussions, the issue of gender is often addressed merely as a trope to represent the power relations between the East and the West. As such, gender as well as sexuality is highlighted as the very source of subversion of the power relations. My discussion departs from a critique of the gendered trope of the East and the West, highlighting a postmodern agent, the allegedly feminized character Song Lining: a Chinese actor who passes for a woman for political purposes in postcolonial China. Remaining an “inappropriate/d other” in the gendered imperialist discourse, Song becomes an emergent subject, who is capable of playing gender ambiguity for reclaiming a devalued identity, that of homosexual Asian man. Discussing how the central character Rene Gallimard’s masculine identity is constructed in a cross-cultural space and how it evolves, I also argue that Gallimard’s melancholic death signifies a historical unsustainability of imperialist masculinity in the postmodern/postcolonial age since World War II.
참고문헌 (22)
- 강태경, "누가 나비부인을 두려워하랴?: 브로드웨이의 엠. 나비 수용연구", 영어영문학, 48(1), pp.25~52 (2002)
- 강형민, "Unmasking the Colonial Politics of Violence: David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly", 현대영미드라마, 18(1), pp.23~46 (2005)
- 이기한, "Asian American Literature and the Crisis of Identity", 영미문화, 4(1), pp.185~212 (2004)
- 최성희, "다문화주의의 허와 실: 아시아계 미국 드라마에 나타난 양상을 중심으로", 영어영문학, 52(1), pp.3~30 (2006)
- 최영주, "식민주의 담론과 대항 담론 만들기 -- 『나비부인』,『미스 사이공』,『엠. 나비』에 재현된 동양여성과 문화", 영미문학페미니즘, 7(1), pp.87~113 (1999), 한국영미문학페미니즘학회
- Butler,Judith, "The Psychic Life of Power" (1997), Stanford UP
- Racial Assimilation.Multiculturalism and Representation: Selected Essays, "Race and Fantasy in Modern America: Subjective Dissimulation", pp.1996, Cheng, Anne Alin
- Chow, Rey, "The Dream of a Butterfly. Human, All Too Human: Essays from the English Institute", pp.61~92 (1996), Routledge
- DiGaetani, John Lois, "M. Butterfly: An Interview with David Henry Hwang", Drama Review, 33(3), pp.141~53 (1989)
- Eng, David, "Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America" (2001), Duke UP
- Garber, Majorie, "The Occidental Tourist: M. Butterfly and the Scandal of Transvestism. Nationalisms and Sexualities", pp.121~46 (1992), Routledge
- Garber,Majorie, "Vested Interests:Cross-dressing and Cultural Anxiety" (1992), Routledge
- Grist, Leighton, "It’s Only a Piece of Meat: Gender Ambiguity, Sexuality, and Politics in The Crying Game and M. Butterfly", Cinema Journal, 42(4), pp.3~28 (2003)
- Hwang,David Henry.M, "Butterfly" (1989), Plume
- Khede, Suzanne, "Engendering the Imperial Subject: The (De)Construction of (Western) Masculinity in David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly and Graham Green’s The Quiet American. Fictions of Masculinity: Crossing Cultures, Crossing Sexualities. Ed. Peter F. Mur", ~
- Kondo, Dorienne K, "M. Butterfly: Orientalism, Gender, and a Critique of Essentialist Identity", Cultural Critique, 16, pp.5~29 (1990)
- Lye, Colleen, "M. Butterfly and the Rhetoric of Antiessentialism: Minority Discourse in an International Frame", pp.241~59 (1995), U of Minnesota P
- Pao, Angela, "The Critic and the Butterfly: Social Contexts and the Reception of David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly", Amerasia Journal, 18(3), pp.1~16 (1992)
- Rossini, Jon D, "From M. Butterfly to Bondage: David Henry Hwang’s Fantasies of Sexuality, Ethnicity, and Gender", The Journal of American Drama and Theatre, 18(3), pp.54~76 (2006)
- Shin, Andrew, "Projected Bodies in David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly and Golden Gate", MELUS, 27(1), pp.177~97 (2002)
- Trinh T. Minh-ha, "Woman,Native,Other" (1989), Indiana UP
- Woolf, Virginia, "A Room of One’s Own. The Longman Anthology of Women’s Literature", pp.14~72 (2001), Longman