The Colonized (the Other) and the Colonizer's Response to the Colonial Desire of 'Becoming Almost the Same But Not Quite the Same' in M. Butterfly

Abstract

Based on Homi K. Bhabha's postcolonial theory, the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized is the mutual relationship in which the identities of the colonizer and the colonized (the Other) are mutually constructed. In Bhabha's sense, neither the colonizer nor the colonized has the absolute power over the other in the Third Space and both parties desire to become almost the same as the other but not quite the same. This paper tries to investigate how Song and Gallimard—the ostensibly Oriental colonized and the Western colonizer—respond to this colonial desire throughout the play. This paper also studies the colonizer's Oriental suicide and the reason that the colonial relationship is terminated, in the light of Bhabha's idea of the satisfaction of the colonial desire.