In Ethics after Idealism, Rey Chow explores once again the issue of cultural otherness that has been central to her work since the publication of Woman and Chinese Modernity. At a time when cultural identity has become irreversibly imbricated with the manners in which we read our many Òothers,Ó Chow argues, what demands to be examined critically is no longer identity politics per se but, more precisely, the idealismÑespecially in the sense of idealizing othernessÑthat lies at the heart of identity politics. Recognizing the necessity for a critique of idealismÑthe necessity to see how idealism is constructed, consolidated and perpetuated, and mobilized with disturbing consequencesÑconstitutes for Chow an ethics in the postcolonial, postmodern age. In particular, she uses ÒethicsÓ to refer to the act of taking decisionsÑin this context, decisions of readingÑthat may not immediately conform with prevalent social mores of idealizing our others but that, nonetheless, would enable such others to emerge in their full, albeit irrational, complexities.From theorists Slavoj Zizek and Gayatri Spivak to Frantz Fanon, from songwriter Luo Dayou to poet Leung Ping-kwan, and from the film ÒM. ButterflyÓ to the films The Joy Luck Club, To Live, and Rouge, Chow discusses a collection of source materials whose affinities are as surprising as their appearances are diverse. The readings she offers involve multiple cultural formsÑincluding fiction, film, popular music, poetry, and critical essaysÑas well as a range of cultural topicsÑincluding pedagogy, multiculturalism, fascism, sexuality, miscegenation, community, fantasy, governance, nostalgia, and postcoloniality. Methodologically situated in the contentious spaces between critical theory and cultural studies, and always attentive to the implications of ethnicity in contemporary cultural politics, ChowÕs work should be of interest to readers from many scholarly disciplines.