“Are You My Butterfly?”: Self in Gendered Other in David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly

Following Edward Said's concept of Orientalism and Judith Butler's notion of performative gender, in this essay, I explore the interdependent self/other relationship between a self-denying homosexual French diplomat and cross-dressed homosexual Chinese opera singer in David Henry Hwang's acclaimed M. Butterfly (1988). Throughout this intriguing story of clandestine love and mistaken sexual identity between Rene Gallimard and Song Liling, Hwang calls into question the politico-culturally conceptualized relationship between the West and the East and the stereotyped romantic relationship between a Western man and an Oriental woman. Both Song and Gallimard are ideologically stereotyped in relation to cultural others as a submissive, exotic, erotic Oriental woman and a heterosexual imperial adventurer respectively. In addition, as excluded homosexual figures and differentially gendered others, they are exploitive and manipulable in a politico-cultural context between the West/man and the Orient/woman and a compulsory heterosexual matrix.