Monty Python, Garter Snakes, and Edward Said

Last night my dad and I rented and watched Monty Python's "The Life of Brian." Irreverent and bordering sacrilege, the film's parody of Jerusalem at the time of Christ made us shake our heads in disapproval while launching us into knee-slapping laughter. Perhaps the characters most relevant to Said's study of Orientalism are the members of the Jewish Liberation Front, a Hebrew terrorist organization incapacitated by indecision that eventually hails Brian as a martyr instead of rescuing him from crucifixion.

After last night's amusement, my dad tuned into NPR's "Car Talk" this morning. One of the callers told the hosts how his son had brought a garter snake into the car as a prank, and now the snake eluded capture by slithering from the back seat to the dashboard. This snake managed to make appearances at the most inopportune moments, making excursions up the driver's pants while waiting in traffic. The hosts jokingly suggested that the caller procure an oboe and attempt to charm the snake out of its hiding place.

These experiences illustrate the easy dissemenation of stereotypes in today's "electronic, postmodern world" that influences Westerners' views of Asians, particularly Middle Easterners. The Monty Python episode generates particular interest. Major events that have unfolded in the past eight years-- the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq-- have both exposed the Middle Eastern terrorist to the American consciousness and continued to spread general distrust and stereotypes about Arabs. I think that these perceptions and attitudes could not have had the same potency without the influence of the media-- namely television, newspapers, and the Internet. Obviously, our political interests in the Middle East have skyrocketed, and this has not failed to interact with our culture's constructs.

I think most of us would scoff at those who would lament the supposed political incorrectness of the snake charmer comment. After all, we've seen videos on YouTube of this performance and can vouch for its authenticity, right? However, I think that we associate this innocuous image with a general perception of the Middle East as someplace exotic, dangerous, and even seductive. We connect the snake charmer's music with veiled belly dancers and harems . . . and the list goes on. Although these ideas may have some distant basis in truth, they are nevertheless exaggerations that manage to infiltrate our thinking as Westerners.

Edward Said also mentions the fact that the West has used these images as justification for imperialism. I easily accept this statement, especially in light of 19th century English literature and the swelling of the British Empire that occurred under Queen Victoria. However, I would have to do some honest soul-searching before I could admit that the United States has continued to use these images to defend recent policy. While the images have changed but have also persisted since Victorian England, I would have to disagree with those who say that our (perhaps failed?) occupation of Iraq was motivated out of racist ideologies. Nobody's arguing that the war wasn't somehow political, though, and I can admit that the invasion was motivated by national superiority, if we define that as liberty, confidence in democracy, and a desire to prevent terrorist attacks. I could continue to analyze this further, but I'd be here for the next week.

In any case, Said's text definitely opened my eyes to the connections between literature's portrayal of characters and situations and the justification of political and economic interests in the Middle East and other colonized countries, both past and present.

Pandora's Box: Gender and De[con]struction

I found Judith Butler's "Gender Trouble" difficult to read for several reasons.

First, her tone, diction, and style made her language extremely esoteric. When I read passages of her text to my mother, she responded that Butler could have said the same thing in fewer, more accessible words. I tend to agree with her. I understood Butler's meanings, but I feel that she has put on the verbal trappings of an elite academic, and while this may appear to give her authority, it in fact contradicts the fundamentals of her message that repeat "performances" create hegemony and authority. Nevertheless, she intended this work to be political, and although it would not reach the average voter, her thoughts about gender construction have seeped down through the academic hierarchy to popular culture. The effects of this filtering have caused unhealthy societal turmoil-- and dare I say human pain and destruction-- since she first published this text.

As I completed this excerpt, I couldn't help but consider the frightening implications of her logic. Her text obviously descended from Derridean thinking and terminology, as I saw evidence of deconstruction throughout her work. On the surface, I find deconstruction fascinating and even plausible, but I oppose the idea that deconstruction proves the nonexistence of metaphysics, primarily because of my relationship with God. This issue of metaphysics and Butler's justification of "alternative lifestyles" scares me not because I hate homosexuals or because of her work's density but because the heart of her argument could justify any number of behaviors. What's to keep rapists, murderers, and slave traders from applying Butler's deconstruction of Otherness to their own situations? Since she supposedly has exposed regulations as fictions, there remains no distinction by which to judge ethical behavior.

Derrida's House of Mirrors

I must admit that I am exceedingly proud of myself for having finished this excerpt from "Of Grammatology." At the same time, I must confess that I had first attempted to read Lacan-- unsuccessfully. So I suppose this qualifies my triumph. Ha.

In any case, I found Derrida challenging but also fascinating. I had an elementary understanding of deconstruction, and it proved helpful as I navigated his text. His theory tears apart the concept of "logocentrism," which includes not only words but also reason and central truths. I found his arguments and illustrations clever, and I thought his wordplay was entertaining, to say the least.

However, from my perspective, portions of his text-- especially his justifications-- seemed linked together with non sequitors. I simply couldn't understand in some cases how the beginning of the paragraph was linked to Derrida's conclusion at its end. It's very possible that I didn't entirely understand his description, but it's also possible that his reasons for defending deconstruction are false.

When Derrida goes about his deconstruction, he reveals what he calls "an abyss," a hall of endless mirrors, "an indefinitely multiplied structure." He then states that this scenario demonstrates how the text (and I suppose reality, if he believes in it) reveals the nonexistence of metaphysics, including truth.

I could see from whom postmodernism inherited its dislike of metanarratives and its declaration that truth does not exist.

Now here is my question: How does Derrida distinguish between those "central truths" which he claims do not exist and the truth of what he's explaining on these pages? Have I failed to see an invisible line here? To state that metaphysics have deconstructed-- or that they do not exist-- contradicts one's statement. If one claims that truth does not exist, then he or she is claiming a truth. Honestly, I am curious about the diehard deconstructionists' objection to this.

In addition, I had expected various elements of popular postmodernism to appear somewhere in Derrida's text, and their absence surprised me. I anticipated some kind of overlap between his work and the works of Mikhail Bakhtin. Instead, Derrida focuses on looking into the text to see how it deconstructs its surface meaning. He does not even consider outside voices, and he has little concern for the metaphysics of multiple social voices. In other words, no semblances of heteroglossia exist for Derrida.

Perhaps I'm a heretic, but I thought Derrida's exclusive focus on the text, its multiple iterations of substitions, and its ability to undermine metaphysics more closely resembled the Formalists, namely Wimsatt and Beardsley. Derrida does not focus on the author, and he does not focus on the reader. It seems to me that deconstruction is the logical continuation of the Formalists' thought, not necessarily an anti-modernism.