Our two main characters play the East and West. Mirroring the U.S. engagement in the Arab Spring, Gallimard attempts to experience the victimhood of the East by engaging it and attempting to protect it.
Li 03 (The State and Subject of Asian American Criticism: Psychoanalysis, Transnational Discourse, and Democratic Ideals David Leiwei Li, American Literary History 15.3 (2003) 603-624 http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american_literary_history/v015/15.3li.html, Project Muse)
Orientalism is the driving force in the Western understanding of the “Arab Spring”. Approval or opposition to the anti-authoritarian movements is wrapped up in a racialist understanding which presupposes that the West is the rightful leader of the world. Like Gallimard, the West forces domination upon the East and assumes that all governments ought to be like “ours”. This is a dangerous mode of thought that enables imperialism and all of its consequences.
Daily Kos. “Orientalism, Modernity and the 'Arab Spring”. April 7, 2011. Accessed from: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/07/963252/-Orientalism,-Modernitythe-Arab-Spring
Gallimard feels the “absolute power of man.” But, this can only occur within the existence of the dichotomy. Gallimard comes into his identity as a “real man” and feels the masculine power of the West in relation to Song’s perceived modest eastern womanhood.
Kondo 90 (Dorinne K. Kondo, “M.Butterfly: Orientalism, Gender, And a Critique of Essentialist Identity” Cultural Critique, No. 16, Autumn, 1990 Published by: University of Minnesota Press)
Song seduces Gallimard assuming that the relationship between outer appearance and inner truth are transparent. Dear Audience, our poor hero is now prisoner to his own constructed reality.
Kondo 90 (Dorinne K. Kondo, “M.Butterfly: Orientalism, Gender, And a Critique of Essentialist Identity” Cultural Critique, No. 16, Autumn, 1990 Published by: University of Minnesota Press)
And before him is a DICK!
Kondo 90 (Dorinne K. Kondo, “M.Butterfly: Orientalism, Gender, And a Critique of Essentialist Identity” Cultural Critique, No. 16, Autumn, 1990 Published by: University of Minnesota Press)
Song’s dick is 5” too much. Once Gallimard is faced with the deconstruction of his identity he goes insane. He can no longer choose what he sees.
Shimakawa 93 (Karen Shimakawa, "Who's to Say?" or, Making Space for Gender and Ethnicity in "M. Butterfly" Theatre Journal, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Oct., 1993), pp. 349-362
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press)
By connecting “individual” identity and de-essentializing conventional notion of Identity M.Butterfly allows us to reconstitute selves as constantly shifting positions towards global power relations and academia.
Kondo 90 (Dorinne K. Kondo, “M.Butterfly: Orientalism, Gender, And a Critique of Essentialist Identity” Cto global politics ultural Critique, No. 16, Autumn, 1990 Published by: University of Minnesota Press)
It is through this series of representations - and debate is always a series of representations – but as Gayatri Spivak argues, there are multiple ways to (re)present the resolution: either through representation (through plans and policy) or re-presentation (in the realm of art and philosophy)
Spivak ’99 Gayatri Chakravorty, Columbia, A critique of postcolonial reason: toward a history of the vanishing present
By connecting “individual” identity and de-essentializing conventional notion of Identity M.Butterfly allows us to reconstitute selves as constantly shifting positions towards global power relations and academia.
Kondo 90 (Dorinne K. Kondo, “M.Butterfly: Orientalism, Gender, And a Critique of Essentialist Identity” Cto global politics ultural Critique, No. 16, Autumn, 1990 Published by: University of Minnesota Press)
Metaphors, like M. Butterfly, grant us a lens in which we can question the rhetorical politics of politically essentialised binaries. Allowing us to resist power as domination whenever we find it.
Callahan 98 (Visions of Gender and Democracy: Revolutionary Photo Albums in Asia. http://mil.sagepub.com/content/27/4/1031.full.pdf, William A. Callahan)
