In Kenneth Burke's "Rhetoric of Hitler's Battle," Derrida's theme of differance presents itself time and time again. We are first presented with differance in Hitler's text on page 196, where Burke describes the process of creating a scapegoat. Burke writes that "the 'bad' features can be allocated to the 'devil,' and one can 'respect himself' by a distinction between 'good' and 'bad' capitalism" (196). In this process, then, by declaring one factor 'good' the other necessarily becomes 'bad', and vice versa. By ascribing difference onto two groups of people, two types of capitalism, etc, we necessarily ascribe a hierarchical relationship onto them.
Differance crops up again on page 202, where Burke notes that the "secularized revision of Christian theology thus puts the sense of dignity upon a fighting basis, requiring the conquest of 'inferior races'" (202). Burke calls this a 'projection device,' a "curative process that comes with the ability to hand over one's ills to a scapegoat, thereby getting purification by dissociation" (202). This reminded me of the map example we talked about in class yesterday, where by moving the border of one state you take away land from the state next to it (or conversely give land to that state). In Burke's example, the land is dignity- when you give dignity to one group (i.e. Aryans) you take it away from another (Jews).
Reading this article helped me to understand differance a bit better by putting it into action. Our next step is to deconstruct differance even more- as Burke writes, "May we not replace the 'either-or' with a 'both-and'?" (211)
Obviously the concept of differance could be used to create disenfranchising propaganda against any minority group. Specifically, I am thinking about the stereotype of homosexual sexuality.
ReplyDeleteOne misconceptions of homosexuality that reinforces heteronormativity is the image of homosexuals as overly-sexually-aggressive. This and other 'other-ing' techniques serve the grand purpose of reinforcing the 'right'-ness of heterosexuality. By ascribing deviance to homosexuality, we claim correctness for heterosexuality; by declaring homosexuality evil, we declare heterosexuality good.
Maybe this is an obvious dimension of oppression, but thinking of gender oppression in terms of differance makes it a bit clearer to me how it operates so successfully.