Writing Strategies In M. Butterfly:A Deconstructionist Approach

David Henry Hwang,once hailed by Time magazine as “having the potential to become the first important dramatist of American public life since Arthur Miller”,has established himself as a pivotal status in the field of Anglo-American drama with his outstanding drama skills,unique Chinese American identity and profound insights into the Western and Eastern cultures.M.Butterfly,as his most representative classic play,probes major era issues such as gender and politics,nationality and state,status and identity with its elastic plotting and subtle character portraying.This masterpiece also contributes to Hwang’s great success in getting the “Tony Award for Best Playwriting”.When discussing the postcolonial theme of M.Butterfly,the academy constructs researches such as homosexuality,the desire-oriented Oriental image and inverted power relations.However,the underlying writing strategies for the play are rarely systematically discussed,which constitutes the origin of this research.David Henry Hwang is not the only one who intends to reconstruct the paradigm of Western civilization.The modern and contemporary French philosopher,Jacques Derrida,as a representative of deconstructionism,proclaimed the decline of structuralism at its height.In “Structure,Sign,and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.”,Derrida acutely points out that “the whole history of the concept of the structure must be thought of as a series of substitutions of center for center,as a linked chain of determinations of the center”(Derrida 916),which bolts the lingering ideological shackles for Western civilization.For the purpose of decentering,he applies Heidegger’s concept of “destruction”,thus completing the theoretical deduction of“deconstruction” of structure,which serves as one of the most essential terms in contemporary philosophy.In this sense,European culture bears the brunt of being“dislocated,driven from its locus,and forced to stop considering itself as the culture of reference”(Derrida 918).Its deconstructive ideology is in line with the “decentering”writing strategy of the M.Butterfly,thus providing a solid theoretical foundation and logical association to this thesis.In addition to the Introduction and Conclusion,this thesis comprises three chapters.The first chapter opens with the use of the Madame Butterfly image as an example to discuss the Western construction of the Orient.The author realizes the irony of the West by reproducing the construction of stereotypes.Furthermore,Hwang breaks the traditional power relations between the Orient and the West through a “decentering”way.Therefore,a relatively neutral and objective writing strategy in the play is established.Chapter two mainly focuses on the beautification writing strategy.The beautiful Madam Butterfly image is secretly transferred and projected onto Rene Gallimard,the representative of the West.Moreover,an upgrade is casted on Gallimard to achieve the beautification of him,eventually,to meet the playwright’s vision of the good expectations of Western civilization.The third chapter mainly explores the derogation writing strategy in the play.While revealing the Oriental demonization strategy,it points out that although Hwang tries to deconstruct the binary opposition form between the weak Orient and the strong West,he reconstructs a new binary opposition writing method.The study finds that the usage of paradoxical deconstruction strategy is closely related to the author’s ambiguous cultural identity.The“yellow-white” identity promotes him to break the Western prejudices against the ancestral land,but also caters to the mainstream ideology driven by the conventional Western culture norms.Eventually,the deconstruction of authority leads to the reconstruction of authority.