Reading Undoing Gender in East–West Comparative Literature

Abstract

This review essay revisits Judith Butler’s Undoing Gender by focusing on two issues that relate queer theory to East–West comparative literature: the relationship between the textual and the social in literary criticism and the tension between universality and cultural specificity when applying West-originated theories to non-Western texts. Drawing on Butler’s discussions, it suggests that literary criticism should be treated as a socially embedded political and ethical critique, and queer knowledge production should be situated in local and transnational contexts to displace and decenter the epistemological hegemony of Euro-American queer theory.