Reinventing Butterfly: Contesting Colonial Discourse in David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly and Shirley Lim’s Joss and Gold

Man Yin Chiu

doi:10.21049/ccs.2010.20..211

Cross-Cultural Studies

2010, 20(), pp.211-224
DOI : 10.21049/ccs.2010.20..211
Publisher : Center for Cross Culture Studies
Research Area : Literature

Man Yin Chiu ¹

¹University of Macau

ABSTRACT

In David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly and Shirley Lim’s Joss and Gold, two Asian-American texts exploring the relationship between America and Asia, the classic Orientalist motif of the infinitely submissive oriental female is reworked to articulate an Asian response to American hegemony. Both works mobilize the Asian female as a figure of contestation to destabilize and reconceptualize the patriarchal and Orientalist strategies of Western cultural and political domination. This paper explores the tactically different though strategically similar counter-discursive moves adopted in the two works to suggest a broader cultural realignment in Asian-American relations.
KEYWORDS

David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly, Shirley Lim, Joss and Gold, Puccini, postcolonial counter-discourse, Asian-American female, Madame Butterfly
REFERENCES (13)

[book] Ansen, David / 1993 / Much Stranger Than Fiction / Newsweek Inc.

[book] Barthes, Roland / 1993 / Mythologies / Vintage

[book] Hardt, Michael / 2000 / Empire / Harvard University Press

[book] Hwang, David Henry / 1989 / M. Butterfly / Plume

[book] Kabbani, Rana / 2008 / Imperial Fictions : Europe’s Myths of Orient / Saqi

[book] Kerr, Douglas / 1991 / David Henry Hwang and the Revenge of Madame Butterfly, in : Asian Voices in English / University of Hong Kong Press : 119~130

[book] Lim,Shirley Geok-lin / 2001 / Joss and Gold / Feminist Press

[book] Loomba, Ania / 1998 / Colonialism/Postcolonialism / Routledge

[journal] Nemoto, Kumiko / 2006 / Intimacy, Desire, and the Construction of Self in Relationships between Asian American Women and White American Men / Journal of Asian American Studies 9(1) : 27~54

[book] Said, Edward / 1995 / Orientalism / Penguin

[journal] Tay, Eddie / 2005 / Hegemony, National Allegory, Exile: The poetry of Shirley Lim / Textual Practice 19(3) : 289~308

[book] Terdiman, Richard / 1985 / Discourse/Counter-Discourse: The Theory and Practice of Symbolic Resistance in Nineteenth-Century France / Cornell University Press

[book] Tiffin, Helen / 1995 / Post-colonial Literatures and Counter-discourse, in : The Post-colonial Studies Reader / Routledge : 95~98
KCI Citation (0)

KJC Korea
Journal Central

Statistics

Tools