The establishment of imperialism can be condensed into the divide between Self and Other. We can only believe that he has the right to want the destiny of others by supposing that there is an essential devaluation of this human being, in other words an Otherness. Likewise, this legitimization of tyranny through the use of essentialism is the basis of the oppression of many social categories: race, gender, class and their intersectionalities. This dichotomy proves very problematic because the different discourses on knowledge, whether cinema, literature or academic writings, can only provide a subjective point of view from one side of the divide. In most cases, race and gender both play a very important role in determining which side acts as Self and which is the Other. Women and racial minorities are largely othered because they are alien and antithetical to the idea of ​​a subjective self that a white male audience believes in. Postcolonial critiques like David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly and Wilibrordus Rendra's The Struggle of the Naga Tribe deconstruct and invert Western notions of an antithetical Eastern Other. In Hwang's play, a French diplomat named René Gallimard leads a twenty-year affair with the feminine and enigmatic Song Liling, a Peking Opera actress. At first glance, their love story mirrors the plot of the opera Madame Butterfly, in which Pinkerton, the American lieutenant, marries a young Japanese woman named Butterfly. The oriental woman's love for the foreign devil endures faithfully despite his cruelty. However, in Hwang's work, Gallimard discovers that Song is actually a communist spy and a man. Song never liked Gallimard and always exploited him as an unknowing informant. On the other hand, Rendra's play takes a much more moralistic approach in recounting Abisavam's struggle to protect his tribe's homeland and copper reserves against the kingdom's queen Sri Ratu and her foreign imperialist servant, the Big Boss. Abisavam is aided in his fight by Carlos, a Westerner who devotes himself to writing about the Naga tribe and bringing international attention to the issue. Eventually, thanks to Carlos' activism, the queen spares the village from the Naga tribe. However, Carlos' visa has been revoked and the Naga tribe bids a tearful farewell while realizing that this struggle is not over. Many voices from various postcolonial critics decry the disconcerting cultural imperialism that still prevails in today's discourse because marginalized races and genders are forced to objectify and otherize themselves. Hwang and Rendra deconstruct and subvert the racial and sexual otherness of oppressed groups by superimposing the empowerment of the Self onto their characters. The transformation of Song and Abisavam from othered individuals into autonomous selves and their ability to be masters of their own destiny allows the respective playwrights to demystify the superficial orientalist archetype of the Orient. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The widespread orientalist concept that the Orient is the feminine antithesis of the West metaphysically establishes imperialism as a violent gesture and phallic. In his founding speech on Orientalism, Edward Said believes that the basis of this hypothesis is Western exceptionalism and its supposed superiority over the Eastern world. The latter is “apart” in her “eccentricity, her delay, her silent indifference, her feminine penetrability. ...that is why all writers on the Orient...saw the Orient as a place in need of Western attention, reconstruction, evenredemption” (Said, 206). This widespread epistemological feminization of the Orient justifies overt Western attempts to annex and even occupy regions they considered “uncivilized” (207). Furthermore, the aggressive nature of Western expansion and the position of these countries as the masculine, autonomous West exerts its power by violating the powerless femininity of the East. Said's depiction of imperialism and his use of sexual diction confirm the interrelated otherness between race and sexuality—a metaphor that each author intricately depicts in M. Butterfly and The Struggle of the Naga Tribe. Contemporary postcolonial critiques also deconstruct the established archetype of the Naga tribe. feminine freeing itself from the chains of colonialism. In his play, Hwang visualizes the power struggle between East and West through René and Song's sexual relationship. It depicts Song as the stereotypical exotic oriental woman, a beautiful and educated Peking Opera singer who, despite her composure, is still weak and dependent on a Western man to "protect her, take her home and pampering until she smiles” (Hwang, 16). In his claim, Song also contributes to Gallimard's construction of this oriental fantasy through his description of the "delicate oriental woman" whom Song compares to a "fine lotus flower" (22). notion of oriental exceptionalism. Despite their emotional intimacy, Song refuses to appear naked in front of Gallimard. Gallimard speculates that because of her sexual modesty and adherence to tradition, she often feels inferior compared to Western women (31). female submission and self-control have constructed the fantasy of the feminized Oriental Other; an idea that Gallimard swallows without question. Gallimard's relationship with Song is quite indicative of his power and domination over his situation. Before they met, he suffered from various insecurities due to his unattractive appearance, modesty and unremarkable behavior at the embassy. After meeting Song, he achieves masculine dominance over Song's emotions, embodied in his metaphor of piercing a butterfly with a needle (32), and subsequently, political ascendancy when he is promoted to vice-consul. Gallimard admits that he finds a strange sort of pleasure in not responding to Song's letters and heartlessly ignoring him. Hwang eloquently depicts Gallimard's new masculinity when he muses that his divine blessings are a gift from "God who creates Eve to serve Adam, who blesses Solomon with his harem but ties Jezebel to a burning bed – that God is a man." And he understands! (38). Gallimard reacts to his first taste of empowerment by cruelly abusing Song's affections, thus symbolically winning the power struggle between East and West. However, in an unexpected twist, the Orient becomes empowered when Song reveals that she is a man. In this twist, Hwang demystifies the Eastern ideal of female vulnerability. Gallimard's dominance suddenly becomes meaningless when he discovers that Song has sabotaged his political power through his espionage activities and when he realizes that their love affair was a mere pretext. In his testimony, Song – in the style of Edward Said – deconstructs his armchair political theory on how the West dominates the East and how he exploited this fault to trap Gallimard. Song describes how “the West has a kind of international rape mentality towards the East. … “His mouth says no, but his eyes say yes.” The West sees itself as masculine – big caliber, big industry, big capital – so the East is feminine. …The West believes that the East, deep down, wants to be dominated – because a woman cannot think for herself” (83).In this speech, Song deconstructs the very notion of Orientalism as defined by Said, rejecting the presupposed femininity of the Orient and its need to be dominated and redeemed from barbarism. Because she is actually a man, Song knows exactly how to transform herself into the male fantasy of a perfect woman that a man like Gallimard would adore. Hwang's visualization of Song's empowerment by masculinizing him is further developed in the penultimate scene. Song's boldness is a sharp departure from his distinguished charm in the first half of the play, when the audience perceived him as a woman. As a man, Song becomes the dominant sexual aggressor in the relationship as he emotionally abuses Gallimard and strips naked to show his genitals, despite the Frenchman's constant pleas for him to return to his identity as "Papillon" . In his final monologue, Gallimard acknowledges his orientalist fantasies – “A vision of the Orient. … Of thin women in chong sams and kimonos who die for the love of unworthy foreign devils. …Women ready to sacrifice themselves for the love of a man. Even a man whose love is totally worthless” (91). He realizes that his orientalist perspective is flawed and fantastical and that he is the only hopeless romantic in his situation. He declares that his "name is René Gallimard – also known as Madame Butterfly" and ultimately commits suicide at the hands of a foreign devil, a Chinese man named Song Liling. Overall, through the precision of the parallel between M. Butterfly and Orientalism, we can observe Hwang's deliberate deconstruction of the rigid dichotomy between Self and Other in traditional colonial discourse. The relationship between The Struggle of the Naga Tribe and Orientalism is much less pronounced, providing a fascinating example of how a playwright separated from Said by time and space can arrive at such a similar observation about bodies oriental others. Rendra creates the binary opposition between the Naga tribal leader Abisavam and the Astinamese queen Sri Ratu by inverting essentialist notions of masculinity and femininity.2 Rendra portrays Abisavam as masculine, empowered and powerful but untainted by the typical virile hamartia aggression and domination. He remains a charismatic leader who firmly defends the cultural integrity and copper reserves of the Naga tribe, despite the doubts of his sister Supaka and daughter-in-law Setyawati. However, Abisavam's love for peace does not prevent him from confronting the Speaker of Parliament over the nation's "progress" agenda.3 Abisavam frankly proclaims his dislike for the President and Parliament and goes on to assert that the rights of voters take precedence over the rights of Parliament. agenda. When the government representative accuses him of being subversive4, Abisavam courageously exclaims: “I want justice – not a change of government” (Rendra, 65). Ultimately, although the Naga tribe remained intact, the government exiled Carlos, a friend of the tribe who wrote about their struggle in international media. Abisavam rises above this defeat by facing the audience and asking, "Why must you be afraid to defend the balance?" Defending life brings serenity” (71). Despite his valor, Abisavam is not a dominant character and possesses certain "feminine" oriental qualities as defined by orientalism. His leadership and culture within the Naga tribe is very inward-looking and may at first glance point to orientalist assumptions of eccentricity, backwardness and irrationality. The Nagas' proximity to the land and their position as guardians of nature are exotic and serenely indifferent, especially when viewedcompares to the cosmopolitan civil servants of the Astinampuram government. Abisavam himself is very introspective and constantly emphasizes that “Every farmer must own the land. …that land belonging to a person must be used by that person. …Farmers must protect their land” (20) in order to prevent the economic domination of a particular group in society. The Astinamite queen Sri Ratu is the opposite of Abisavam. He is a character constantly influenced by the various inexperienced opinions of his ministers and the enigmatic Big Boss. The dalang5 describes it as having “the character of a clothesline, nothing other than what hangs on it” (26). Likewise, Sri Ratu is flippant, rude and graceless despite her status as a queen. For example, she does not recognize the dalang, who is a highly respected figure in Javanese society. She has the otherness of a woman, but none of her mythic charisma and so it is difficult for the audience to sympathize with her. She displays a masculine desire for domination, but none of the empowerment that comes with it. In The Struggle of the Naga Tribe, land ownership coupled with the cultural and natural integrity of the tribe is important in establishing imperialism as an act of phallic domination. Abisavam's lack of tendency toward obsessive male domination is illustrated by his controlled attitude in managing the land. Rather, he accuses Sri Ratu’s decision of “disregarding our spirit and violating nature, in the name of commerce” (69). While Hwang reverses the gender of his characters to visualize empowerment, Rendra does so by using essentialist notions of gender as a common starting point with the audience and plays with these assumptions in order to distinguish those who are empowered and those who are thirsty. of power. In general, both playwrights show their defiance of the imperialist establishment by using Said's method of displacing archetypal knowledge that proclaims the East as a negative inversion of the West. As a result of this misconception, the Orient suffers from a “sense of estrangement felt by Orientalists when they encountered or lived in a culture so profoundly different from their own” (Said, 260). In Orientalism, Said uses the Foucaultian method on disciplining the body and considers the example of Islamic Orientalism, doomed to be forever scrutinized from a Western Judeo-Christian perspective that threatens its religious primacy and ownership of the Holy Land. Muslims are haunted by “a cultural effrontery, naturally compounded by the fear that Islamic civilization, originally (and at the time), would somehow continue to oppose the West Christian” (260). The forms of knowledge that various academic works, novels, plays and other literature disseminate in the East constantly alter them. These discourses in themselves are tools of Western servitude to discipline Eastern bodies; establishing specific norms that an individual must obey in order to access the intelligibility of the rest of their identity (Foucault, 155). This trend is also the origin of Said's grievance that the Orient has been reduced to a stereotype of the feminine, backward and fragile Orient. The two playwrights reverse this tendency to “other” by inviting the audience to consider the oriental character as a Self endowed with power. Hwang highlights Song's revelation as a man and his testimony as the overthrow of Eastern mysticism and his establishment as the empowered Self. When Gallimard finds Song in Paris, he avoids her embrace and begins talking with the audience. This moment is one of the first instances where Song converses intimately with the audience during the play. She also defies the pleas ofGallimard so that she does not leave, takes him off stage and tells the audience that she is going to “change”. The way she controls the stage is proof of Song's newly acquired power, previously reserved for Gallimard (Hwang, 79). When Song testifies before the French courthouse, she exposes the audience to her intersubjectivity. She tells the story of her affair with Gallimard from the point of view of the Orient. The audience, accustomed to observing the world of the play through Gallimard's gaze, now occupies a different phenomenological space that allows them to view Gallimard through Song's perspective. Song leaves the position of the Other when her character sheds the Eastern feminine mystique and builds an intimate relationship with the audience. However, while Hwang elevates Song's position to the subjectivity of the self, Rendra does the exact opposite and relegates the stereotypical self to the position of the Other. Rendra introduces the Western characters in the play – the ambassadors and the government officials of Astinampuram – using the archetypal and satirical methods normally reserved for other oriental characters. During the ambassador's entry, Rendra uses comical stereotypes to portray the representatives of various countries guilty of neocolonization in Indonesia. For example, Japanese Ambassador Horomoto obsessively repeats the onomatopoeia "ah-so", which is not a real Japanese word but an Indonesian joke about their perception of the Japanese language. Much to the amusement of the audience, he is unable to pronounce the letter "l" and says "Harro, harro!" » instead of “Hello”. The German ambassador, who histrionically introduces himself as "Herrrr Schmits Schmerrrr", is another comical representation of how Indonesians perceive the German language – with over-emphasized "err" and "itt". The Dalang ridicules the German as "intelligent" and comments that "the fly shit isn't too bad either" (Rendra, 8). Rendra characterizes the Astinampuram scene with satirical and comic motifs that both alter and highlight their crimes against the country. Sri Ratu repeatedly attributes his stress to his high blood pressure. His many ministers also suffer from various illnesses, ridiculously admitting to taking up to seventeen tablets a day. Their ailments lead them to constantly insist on the need to build “the most modern hospital in Southeast Asia” in Astinam (27). On the other, the realistic characters of the Naga tribe; Abisavam, Abivara and Carlos are more authentic and relatable human beings, allowing the audience to express their sympathies and observe themselves through the prism of the Naga tribe. Here we are witnessing a paradigm shift where oriental and somewhat “exotic” characters are presented as the Self and not as the Other. These two playwrights, dealing with postcolonial issues, use subjectivity and otherness indifferently to complicate relational dynamics. between the “colonizers” and the “colonized”. In his seminal work that exposed the specter of orientalism in modern discourse, Said argues that the most powerful tool for reversing this trend is the distribution of knowledge. He believes that writers, playwrights, and academics must abandon the habit of using marginalized genders and races to other themselves. In these two pieces, Hwang and Rendra begin by reaffirming and using stereotypes of racial and sexual otherness, then invert them to represent the othered characters using appropriate subjectivity. Let us hope that this epistemological empowerment is a step towards bridging the gap between East and West and will allow us.: 26-30.