Cybrpnk's Rantings

I've been mulling over the recent death of Jacques Derrida, and contemplating why it is that the conservatives I know are so hostile towards the ideas he developed during his lifetime. Some of it certainly is their discomfort with his dismissal of moral absolutism, which they are very open about. Some of it, one suspects, is just envy: Derrida makes them feel stupid. They just don't get what he's on about, and they are very bad at admitting that they don't know everything. And don't take that as an arrogant allusion to my own presumed brilliance. Everything I know about Derrida I have learned from others. I just happen to be fortunate enough to have an academic philosopher in my family. But I digress. I believe that at the real heart of why the American conservatives hate Derrida is that not only is he so on to them he makes them look like half-wits (which they most assuredly are not, except perhaps relative to him), but embracing his teachings provides people with a way out of the linguistic net they have been casting over our society in the course of the last thirty-plus years. In Derrida is the seed of the Conservatives' destruction. No wonder they were eager to bury him years before he died.

The key to using Derrida's ideas to undermine the conservatives is to understand, even at a fairly superficial level, what Deconstruction is really about. George Lakoff likes to talk about the way in which conservatives 'frame' their arguments. He points to examples such as the phrase 'tax relief' which immediately conjures up the impression that taxes are a burden, and thus precludes reasoned discussion about tax policy. Thus, the conservatives are constructing a world in which taxes are a burden, and in which anyone who doesn't want to cut taxes clearly favors burdening regular people. Left out of this frame is the whole gamut of progressive thought in which taxation is part of a social contract, and citizens are participating in the construction of a healthier civic society by paying these taxes. Not to mention the exploration of why progressive taxation makes sense for society. This process of analyzing what sort of frame has been constructed, and thus identifying what is being left out of the debate as long as that frame is in use, is Deconstruction.

This now presents progressives with a clear roadmap for the reclamation of our language, and with it our society. Every time a conservative challenges you on something, or states their position on something, start out by asking yourself whether or not you even accept the term they are using. There's a very good chance that you have already conceded a great deal if you accept their framing of the issue. Remember, the first step in a debate is definition of terms. The conservatives gloss right over this step because they think that we should just accept the definitions they are using. And we progressives have to stop falling for that. When you challenge them on the terms they will try to bring in issues. Don't be fooled. Hold firm. Stop speaking their language. Deconstruct their frames, and show the people what they have been leaving out.