SAM:
I was just thinking about Jacques Derrida…
STELLA:
Oh god here we go.
SAM:
What?
STELLA:
Must we talk about Derrida right now?
SAM:
He’s the father of poststructural philosophy! Yes!
STELLA:
Ok fine. What?
SAM:
I was just thinking about deconstruction, his idea that you must first reverse a binary, or specifically a violent hierarchy, before attempting to dismantle it.
STELLA:
Ok remind me about this whole violence hierarchy thing?
SAM:
Violent hierarchies are oppositional binaries–or dichotomies, if that’s an easier word. The hierarchy comes in because one element of the binary is seen as primary, superior, original–the other element is therefore secondary, inferior, unauthentic.
STELLA:
This sounds like something I learned in an anthropology class.
SAM:
Well it was the structural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss who first saw that these binaries dictate the very foundation of our cultural thought.
STELLA:
What? How do you figure?
SAM:
Everything we think can be reduced to a binary and nothing else. Everything is good or bad, superior or inferior, etc. etc. etc.
STELLA:
Like what?
SAM:
Oh, you can apply this to just about everything in our culture. Male-female, rich-poor, young-old, straight-queer, healthy-sick, beautiful-ugly, extravert-introvert, graceful-awkward…
STELLA:
Or like, in a police dispute?
SAM:
What?
STELLA:
When someone goes to the cops with some issue with someone else, it is almost always the first person who goes, with their story, that wins the dispute–regardless of the facts of the case.
SAM:
Oh, wow, is that really true?
STELLA:
Yeah, I read it somewhere.
SAM:
That is a great example of a binary. You see how insidious they are?!
STELLA:
But I can think outside of that. I can see gray areas, or nuances, or context, outside of a binary.
SAM:
But the very act of thinking like that is a reaction to a pre-existing binary that is always-already there. It’s the way our cultural ideology is set up–yes, you as an individual can technically think “outside” of a binary, but that is not the default. To think outside of a binary is outside of the norm–there’s another binary; see what I mean?
STELLA:
You mean normal versus abnormal? Default versus deviant?
SAM:
Yes, plus the binary of thinking outside a binary versus thinking within one.
STELLA (eyes widen): How meta.
SAM (shivers with excitement): I know.
(Pause for intellectual masturbation.)
STELLA:
Anyway. Deconstruction.
SAM:
Deconstruction. Right. Through deconstruction, Derrida gives us a way to actually obliterate the binary and the hierarchy. You first flip the binary so the inferior becomes superior. Then we can move away from the binary. But if we don’t first expose it through reversal, we run the risk of leaving the original binary unquestioned.
STELLA:
You mean we can say, this binary is bullshit, but unless we reveal it first as a truly ludicrous and arbitrary lie, see it from a totally different angle, there will still be a part of us that thinks it’s true?
SAM:
Exactly. Enculturation is a powerful force, and nothing but rigorous dismantling will get us out of our default, reactive states (if that).
STELLA:
Like how sometimes really dedicated anti-establishment-type people will sometimes slip up and say or do totally establishment things.
SAM:
Exactly! They may be very socially conscious and critical but these slip-ups or inconsistencies or even hypocrisies are there because they are still underneath, default–still essentially unquestioned.
STELLA:
Like Black Spot shoes.
SAM:
What?
STELLA:
Black Spot shoes. Adbusters is selling this line of shoes specifically as an alternative to Nike. In fact their first shoes were called the Unswoosher. Upon first glance they are reversing a binary–
SAM:
Nike versus not-Nike?
STELLA:
Yeah basically–in their words, “megacorporation” versus independent business. And maybe that is a good binary to flip. But it doesn’t have to end there. They say they want to “change the way the world does business”–but they’re still doing business. (Not to mention how expensive the shoes are.) They’re not even identifying that binary, let alone doing anything constructive with it.
SAM:
What binary?
STELLA:
Business versus…
SAM:
Consumerism versus…
STELLA:
Capitalism versus…
SAM:
Hell, economy versus…
STELLA:
What’s the other end of the binary?
SAM (to audience):
You tell me.
STELLA:
It’s so inferior it is unnameable.
SAM:
Whoa.
STELLA:
This whole flipping thing reminds me of Friedrich Nietzsche…
SAM:
Oh god, must we talk about Nietzsche right now?
STELLA:
The controversial philosopher whose ideas were totally unfairly co-opted by the Nazis?! Yes! In “Beyond Good And Evil”, he says you can flip good and evil, but evil just becomes good and good just becomes evil, but it’s really all about power.
SAM:
Ooh! Like Michel Foucault!
STELLA:
Oh no, not him.
SAM:
The postmodern philosopher, sociologist, and historian, who was so very clearly influenced by your beloved Nietzsche?! Yes! Foucault says that there is no place where power not has already been, because it acts upon actions rather than being one immutable entity.
STELLA:
What?
SAM:
Power is relational; it is everywhere, it comes from everywhere. There is no such thing as being “outside” of power.
STELLA:
That’s a very defeatist attitude. You mean we should just give up trying to make the world a better place?
SAM:
Oh no, he’s not saying that at all. He just says we should always remember what he dubs “the omnipresence of power” if you are involved in a political struggle. In fact, he says that there is always a resistance to power, just that this resistance is never outside of power.
STELLA:
So how do you fight power within power? Isn’t that a little hypocritical? Like all those people who supposedly fight the system from within the system, who just turn into reform junkies?
SAM:
I’m not even touching that one. Foucault’s idea for that is “reserve” discourse–rather than try to critique some issue from some hypothetical place outside the issue, use the power structures that are already there.
STELLA:
Like drag!
SAM:
What?
STELLA:
Drag queens. Or kings. Exaggerated expressions of gender as a way to question the idea of gender as biologically ingrained, and why we assume aspects of gender–behavior, gesture, clothes–belong to one gender or another. It supports Judith Butler’s idea that all gender expression is performance and not inherently representative of biological sex.
SAM:
Judith Butler?
STELLA:
A philosopher of your beloved poststructuralism and early proponent of queer theory? Is there a problem?
SAM:
No no, it’s good, I like it. I bet Foucault loved drag.
STELLA:
In more ways than one.