Beyond Asian America: Resisting modernity in the plays of David Henry Hwang

This dissertation examines the major plays of David Henry Hwang, asserting that his work displays an ongoing concern with issues of modernity. In his earliest work Hwang demonstrates an interest in the subjectivity of the Asian American citizen, but this interest is quite different from the claiming of America carried out by two of his mentors, Frank Chin and Maxine Hong Kingston. Hwang problematizes the claustrophobic assimilationist subjectivity of middle class Asian American in his first two major plays, FOB and Family Devotions.;The dissertation examines Hwang's plays using Walter Benjamin's treatment of the baroque German mourning play, The Origin of German Tragic Drama . Benjamin's analysis of the elements of modernity apparent in these plays is used to identify similar elements in Hwang's plays. Benjamin's project to overcome an anthropomorphic subjectivity is compared to Hwang's consistent attempt to get beyond the confines of the Western ego. Alice Jardines's theories of feminism and modernity are also used to explore Hwang's attempt to delimit subjectivity in his two plays set in Japan and in his best-known play, M. Butterfly.;The project elucidates the intersection of minority literature and issues of modernity. It traces the early fascination of Frederic Jameson with Benjamin's trope of allegory as a tool of modernity, and explores the development of this element of Jameson's thought into his infamous essay on Third World Literature.;Hwang's interest in Japanese literature is explored and his dramatization of Kawabata's House of the Sleeping Beauties is examined in relation to Benjamin's theory of the shock of modernity. The women from The House of Sleeping Beauties and The Sound of a Voice are described as precursors of the character of Song in M. Butterfly . This similarity is used to temper some of the more polemical criticism of that famous play. Hwang is seen as a truly diasporic writer.