Founded already in 1822, the publishing house is closely associated with ‘Heidelberg Romanticism’. Universitätsverlag WINTER is an academic publisher located in Heidelberg, Germany, who covers the whole field of Humanities with particular interest in literature and language studies. Yet he stops short of questioning compulsory heterosexuality at its base, and thereby fails to use queer desire in order to open up interstices, categories of "thirdness," in this tight homophobic structure. The playwright uses the figure of the transvestite to lay bare the construction and performativity of gender and culture. Playing down the homosexual desire of his two protagonists, he forsakes the play's potential to queer and collapse Western binaries. Against this background, I also discuss Hwang's portrayal of sexuality. The binary structure remains intact after all. Yet, after having caused some gender and cultural trouble, he ties all loose ends neatly up in a perfect role reversal. He tackles the very foundations of Western consciousness and identity by rearranging its binary structure. Choosing an Asian transvestite for the protagonist of the play, Hwang exposes preconceived notions of man and woman, as well as Occident and Orient. Performance and perception are ultimately flip sides of a coin. Moreover, such performance is only effective in cooperation with an audience. Referring to contemporary feminist and post-colonial criticism, the essay demonstrates how gender and cultural identities are negotiated in interaction and are thus always performative. Butterfly, which Hwang examines and reverses by rewriting the Butterfly myth of Puccini's opera. This essay is a discussion of gender and ethnic stereotypes in M.
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