So I feel like I can understand Deconstruction at some points when we are talking about it in class but when I start thinking about trying to apply it myself, I have a much harder time. I’m just going to attempt to talk through it.
I consider myself to be affiliated with the “Pro-Life” group as opposed to the “Pro-Choice” group. I am well aware of the hypocrisies and ideologies found in this political stance, and I’m also well aware that a bunch of you reading this will disagree with some things I say so feel free. Many persons who profess themselves to be Pro-Life speak out loudly about abortion, making it the main focus, but then don’t have a thing to say about capital punishment. I started especially noticing the chasm between abortion and capital punishment after watching the movie “Dead Man Walking” with Sean Penn in high school.
It seems like even though you are dealing with completely helpless infants in one case, and completely guilty (supposedly) adults in other cases, that the stance to respect life should be unconditional for all life—who are we to pick and choose who gets a right to life? This is most likely where their problem comes in, otherwise more people would affiliate themselves with a group that emphasizes the importance of all life (nothing wrong with that); I can’t imagine that anyone considers themselves “Pro-Abortion.” Like J.Lo and her credibility at representing the Bronx—maybe they are just protesting (literally, ha!) too much to make up for some sort of lack. Many “Pro-Lifers” outside the abortion clinics often are not the same people you see protesting at the Capitol against war. But in war, not only are women and men from our own country killed, but what about civilians? I re-found this article by Jack Hunter that I had read kind of recently. A line had stuck out to me: "It's a Child Not a Choice"? How about "It's a Kid Not Collateral Damage"?
In order to deconstruct this we can make a binary opposition. However as I’m trying to write this list, it is getting more complicated because depending on how you feel on the issue, your binary oppositions would look different. So hm maybe this wasn’t the best issue to pick.
One person might say this:
Pro-Life—Not Pro-Life
Life—Death
Natural/God—Artificial
Birth—Death
Save—Kill
Human--Government
Another person might say this:
Pro-Life—Not Pro-Life
Death—Life
Misogynist—Feminist (*I think this one is absurd *)
Conservative—Liberal
Government—Human
Punish—Forgive
Maybe though, as Derrida pointed out when he talked about animals, labeling and categorizing ourselves is a violent act. We like to categorize ourselves constantly: I’m a student/ boy/ Democrat/ conservative/ Catholic…perhaps this is a big part of the problem with our politics not being able to see eye-to-eye. We have already placed too much on the label.
Help would be appreciated here—I’m not sure I got to the actually deconstructing part!
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By looking at the binary oppositions, you can begin to draw some contradictions. The contradictions drawn aren't solely for destroying, but rather, elaborating. For example, one of your binary oppositions is 'Natural/God - Artificial.' But what is natural? In our post-modern condition, what can really be natural? If we are culturally influenced, isn't that unnatural? That is why there is a distinction between nature vs nurture. Also, the very act of using a computer is unnatural; it is a culturally learned thing.
ReplyDeleteI know that the elaboration is getting beyond the point of Pro-Life, but this is a general idea of deconstruction (I think). Look at the binary oppositions, draw contradictions, and elaborate using outside references.
I think you've begun an interesting inquiry, and keep what you've written in mind when you read Jane Juffer's chapter on "Choice" in her book, Single Mother.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to clarify the notion of binary opposition, though, since I think you've mixed that up with political positions. Certainly, the pro-life position and the pro-choice position are opposed, and certainly, as you point out, these positions are much more complicated than many of the pundits angrily represent them. However, when structuralists and postsructuralists say "binary opposition," they are not referring to political positions, because there are always more than two political positions. (It's true that in the United States there always seems to be only two political positions -- pro/con, for/against, democrat/republication, conservative/liberal, etc. -- but that's largely because Americans are bad at math and have trouble counting beyond two.)
In contrast, when Derrida talks about binary oppositions, he's talking not about political positions, but about language itself. So, here's a few binary oppositions:
life -- death
nature -- culture
human -- animal
So, instead of deconstruting political oppositions, let's start by just deconstructing a favorite phrase of the religious right: "culture of life." What do the words culture and the words life mean there? You've already begun to do so when you observe that those who argue for a culture of life don't fully practice what they preach, because they are pro-war, pro-capital punishment, and also are pro-economic exploitation. They use that phrase as a signifier not to include of all living things but to exclude everyone they are opposed to.
But I think we can also start deconstructing that phrase by noticing how the concepts in it are so unstable. Life is natural, it would seem, not cultural, but because the word Life is given a transcendent value, with a capital letter "L", it must be supplemented metaphorically by culture in order for its value to have presence. In other words, certainly individual lives are present in all their individuality and multiplicity. But "Life" as a transcendent "center" is never actually present, and so ends up being supplemented through cultural metaphors that often end up being socially exclusive.
Now, after we've deconstructed the terms of the debate, then we can begin to deconstruct the political binaries. Political groups are much more complicated than words, since they are an assortment of ideological positions tenuously linked together. The metaphorical language games politicians play to link all their different positions together creates the rather unstable structure that we commonly call as "political platform."