摘自

劉雪珍. 「Writing Back to the Empire: From M. Butterfly to Madame Butterfly.」〈從《蝴蝶君》到《蝴蝶夫人》: 逆寫帝國後殖民理論〉Re-imagining Language and Literature for the 21st Century.  Eds. Suthira Duangsamosorn, et al. Amsterdam/ New York: Rodopi, 2005.  331-44. [***With permission from author.]

I. 以「後殖民閱讀」抵制帝國霸權論述

II. 解構經典名著

III. 拒絕沉默、選擇發聲

IV. M. Butterfly 的後殖民書寫

V. 介入：建構後殖民主體的能動性

VI. 根莖：想像權力位置的流動

Works Cited

M. Butterfly is a text appropriate for post-colonial speculation in that it is written with post-colonial strategies. As mentioned before, Hwang writes his deconstructivist play by 「breaking the back of the story.」 It turns out he writes a parody against Madame Butterfly, successfully subverting a western canon. Indeed, he is practicing re-placing theory advocated in the influential book The Empire Writes Back. In explaining post-colonialism as reading strategy, Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin start by pointing out that the subversion of a canon involves not only replacement of other texts, but more importantly, a conscious alternative reading (The Empire Writes Back 189).

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解構經典名著

While commenting on the post-colonial readings of canonical works such as Shakespeare's The Tempest, they write, 「more important than the simple reading of the text itself by critics or in productions has been widespread employment of the characters and structure of The Tempest as a general metaphor for imperial-margin relations, or, more widely, to characterize some specific aspect of post-colonial reality」 (Ashcroft, The Empire Writes Back 190). Re-reading or re-writing The Tempest has become a paradigm for post-colonial literature.

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拒絕沉默、選擇發聲

Moreover, there exists a tendency to make the silent characters speak for themselves. For example, Jean Rhys' strategies of writing back to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre in Wide Sargasso Sea are to centralize the marginal character—the madwoman in the attic—and to interrogate those ordinary tropes of invasion and colonization, such as the system of slavery. 「From a post-colonial reading perspective such unspoken subjects may well become the crucial announcements of the text」 (Ashcroft, The Empire Writes Back 193).

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M. Butterfly 的後殖民書寫

介入：建構後殖民主體的能動性

根莖：想像權力位置的流動

. . . Ashcroft is aware what Edward Said has warned about the 「inequitable exchange」 between the west and the east, the aufhenbung and the subaltern (The Empire Writes Back 179). The ambivalent, precarious, almost unpredictable relationship between the dominator and the dominated is another uncontrollable variable to prevent one from conforming to Ashcroft's solution. To settle down the confusing colonizer-colonized relationship, Ashcroft appropriates a rhizome model. He further explicates:

A better model of the ambivalent, fluid, chaotic relationships within the colonial exchanges and indeed of social reality itself is perhaps provided by a concept that I want to appropriate from Deleuze and Guattari: that of the rhizome. The rhizome describes a root system which spreads out laterally rather than vertically, as in bamboo, which has no central root but which propagates itself in a fragmented, discontinuous, multi-directional way…. But this notion is just as constructed as that of center and margin, just as much in the interests of perpetuating power as the Manichean binaries of self and other, coloniser and colonised. The imperial power represents itself as a central root, but in fact the operation of power, like the operation of social relations themselves is both processual and discontinuous and propagates laterally and spatially like the rhizome. This metaphor provides a complicated and less easily representable model of colonial relations, but it does accommodate the various subject positions an individual may occupy within the colonial discourse. The colonised subject may also be the colonising subject depending on its location in the rhizome. (「Interpolation」 183-84)

The rhizome model seems convincing especially when it is applied to describe the subverted power or gender relations in M. Butterfly. Song indeed overpowers Gallimard at the end of the play. Yet, what about the day after? The subversion does not mean total negation or replacement. The western hegemony may stay in power even when Gallimard ceases to be. Likewise, Madame Butterfly will continue to be sung, appreciated, or depreciated, even parodied, or maybe assimilated by different people in different positionality and to different degree. To me, the rhizome seems a preferred map to visualize the post-colonial situation. Of course there are other considerations to discuss about Hwang's play. But most importantly, Ashcroft's post-colonial theories of interpolation and rhizome have answered the questions for Hwang. Must one re-inscribe stereotypes in order to subvert them? The answer is yes. According to Ashcroft, it is a worthy risk. Although it may not completely resist or overthrow the hegemony, it does not necessarily become contaminated in it. In fact it is not possible to maintain cultural purity or isolation. As for the question of the nature of power and gender, the rhizome gives a vivid depiction. The power is indeed a matter of positionality and interaction for it is always in the fluid destabilization, so is gender. Gallimard, Song, and even Comrade Chin can be male, female and androgynous, depending on the situation. . . .

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Works Cited

Ashcroft, Bill. 1994. 「Interpolation and Post-colonial Agency.」 New Literature Review 28/29 (1994-1995): 176-89.

---, Gareth Griffiths, & Helen Tiffin. 1989. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures. London: Routledge.

Hwang, David Henry. 1988. M. Butterfly. New York: Penguin.

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