Lecture by Emily Raymundo '10--Equal in Love and Death: Revising M. Butterfly's Multiculturalism in Trump's America

In 2017, David Henry Hwang’s now-canonical M. Butterfly returned to Broadway in a revival headlined by Clive Owen and directed by Broadway auteur Julie Taymor with a newly revised script. This talk considers both the original and revised versions of the play in the context of the height of multiculturalism, in 1988, and the emergence of a post-multicultural racial regime in 2016, following Donald Trump’s election. Tracing how the play’s representations of whiteness, multicultural Asian Americanness, and queer desire have transformed, Dr. Raymundo argues that post-multiculturalism demands a reconsideration of multiculturalism’s once hegemonic ethics, particularly in regards to representing and consuming minority subjects and culture.