No Dogs And Chinamen By Gayatri Spivak Essay - 2387 Words

Like Marc who encourages Gallimard to indulge in the racist male chauvinism, Song, Gallimard s Oriental other, also instigates Gallimard s white male supremacy by inferiorizing Asians, or Chinese to be specific, in terms of race, gender and culture. Although at first teasing Gallimard as an adventurous imperialist (21), Song also tries to cater to Gallimard s Orientalist binarism of the primitive and backward East vs. the civilized and progressive West: France. France is a country living in the modern era. Perhaps even ahead of it. China is a nation whose soul is firmly rooted two thousand years in the past (29-30). Song s other strategy is to separate the delicate Asian woman from the barbarous Asian man: True, there were signs reading No dogs and Chinamen. But a woman, especially a delicate Oriental woman--we always go where we please (22). Furthermore, as Gayatri Spivak analyzes, Song incites the Western imperialism s image as the establisher of the good society which is marked by the espousal of the woman as object of protection from her own kind (Can the Subaltern Speak? 94). In other words, Song appeals to Gallimard s imperialist sentiment of white men saving brown women from brown men (Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak? 93) by emphasizing the fact that the Chinese men are the victimizers of the Chinese women even in Communist China: SONG: The Chinese men--they keep us down. GALLIMARD: Even in the New Society? SONG: In the