A bit of cultural theory
Last week I promised that a concrete and worthwhile return-on-investment awaited us after our harrowing crawl through the linguistic and cultural theories of Derrida. This week I aim to deliver on that promise.
We’ll take Derrida’s key idea of undecidability out for a test drive. In plain and simple terms, I’ll explain some useful methods of deconstruction as a tool for cultural analysis. Then we’ll put those investigative strategies to use on a familiar and celebrated concept in Western societies: the Hero.
First, however, a word of encouragement from Derrida himself. Near the end of his provocative 1966 conference paper, “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” he tries to soothe his audience of shocked and dismayed Structuralists by urging them not to mourn the loss of fixed meaning—the loss of the center—but rather to embrace the event as a:
...Nietzschean affirmation, that is the joyous affirmation of the play of the world and of the innocence of becoming, the affirmation of a world of signs without fault, without truth, and without origin which is offered to an active interpretation. This affirmation then determines the noncenter otherwise than as loss of the center. And it plays without security.
In other words, rather than panicking about Platonic Truth no longer being dictated to and imposed upon us, take part in the free and adventurous play of interpreting language—and the world language creates—for ourselves.
It’s a message I’ve always found most undergraduate students more than willing and, perhaps surprisingly, quite able to try out. Provided with the tools, young minds generally aren’t afraid to lift the hood of social order to tinker around.
With this spirit of intellectual adventure in mind, here are a few basic ideas and techniques of deconstruction that I supply to students in order to help them pursue their own active interpretation.
1) Always remember that deconstruction is a strategic device—not a set doctrine designed to lead you to any predetermined conclusions about anything. The purpose of applying this device is to raise questions and doubts about whatever it is you’re examining. To open up the text—that is, whatever it is you’re studying—to multiple ways of interpreting it.
2) Think of deconstruction as a form of textual guerrilla warfare. Think of the text as a colonizer attempting to invade and take over the reader’s mind, that is, to fill it with a single and unshakable way to read the text (Truth) that can’t be challenged. As a renegade deconstructor, your mission is to locate the faux-center at the heart of the text and find ways to sabotage it. As a close and critical reader, your job is to disrupt the supply lines and blow up the ammo depots, as it were, of the invading textual forces.
3) The signature move of the guerrilla deconstructor is to identify the controlling binary oppositions that govern the text—e.g. good/evil, true/false, justice/injustice. Next, recognize how these binaries create the Transcendental Signifieds of the text—e.g. Good, True, Justice. That is, how these binaries construct a center and Platonic Truth for the text that purports to be absolute, timeless, and universal. Finally, work to reverse and erase the key binary oppositions in order to demonstrate their false privileging at work—thereby showing how the Signifieds being asserted as Transcendent and Otherworldly are, in fact, just regular old Signs subject to différance, freeplay, and slippage like any other Sign.
4) Any textual “Truth” can be de-centered in order to demonstrate that no one “Truth” is possible. Along with problematizing binary oppositions, you can often find what might be called gaps in a text. Places where things just don’t add up, where the controlling narrative doesn’t quite hold water, where the storyline might even actively contradict itself. As with binaries, such gaps are places where supplementation occurs—that is to say, where by thinking deeper about the text, additional context and layers of complexity can be brought to the story being told. Often, what’s NOT being said in a text—what’s been left out—is as important as what IS being said in the text. So keep an eye out for the unsaid. Such gaps can be exploited as opportunities to pull apart the spurious “Truth” being fabricated. The goal of deconstruction is to make the text collapse via its own flaws and incongruities and ambiguities.
5) To reiterate point #1, remember that the outcome of deconstruction is undecidability—that is, a practical demonstration of how no one interpretation of a text can be imposed as The Only interpretation of that text. Other viewpoints inevitably are available. In this way, critical horizons are expanded. Argumentation and debate are encouraged. Contextual relativity guides the discussion—not a mandate-from-above that hinders if not prohibits an active interpretation.
Note Well: You may find that, in the end, you favor the dominant (that is, the former “universal”) interpretation of any given text. What the text is trying to feed you tastes pretty good. And that’s just fine. Embrace that reading of the text. But you won’t have arrived at that reading because you had to; you got there because you decided to.
Applying this bit of cultural theory
The motto of my Substack is: Inspecting most what we think about least.
I can’t think of a better thing-we-don’t-think-much-about to inspect than the concept of the Hero. As a proving ground for the strategies of deconstruction—which is all about rethinking the obvious—the Hero makes perfect sense. The Hero unites us as a group. The Hero embodies the best qualities of Good Us. Who in her right mind would dare question Our Hero?
And here we go...
The hero we’ll question comes from the Old English epic poem Beowulf. I selected this work not only because it’s a prototypical hero-story (there’s a bit of an old saying in the literary business that all stories are basically a retelling of Beowulf), but also because it’s such a charmingly quirky and convoluted text. Quite extraordinary, really.
Although often billed as the first great English epic, in its origins Beowulf has nothing to do with England. It comes from Scandinavia, the action likely set on the Danish island of Zealand and the hero himself, Beowulf, likely belonging to a tribe from southern Sweden. The story of this hero is actually a popular folk tale that migrated to England with the prolonged movement of Saxon and eventually Viking warrior tribes that began in the 6th century CE and continued well into the 10th century.
As such, the story comes from the bardic tradition, meaning tales shared by word-of-mouth as songs and poems, long before such tales were written down. Therefore, Beowulf has no author—no single story writer for us to ask (fruitlessly) about “what the authors really means” by this or that. Instead, Beowulf has, in effect, thousands of authors in the form of generations of “scops” (bards) who sang and passed down the tale for hundreds of years. That’s a lot of input from a lot of authors. Anyone who learned and sang the song to others inevitably, in that process, altered the details of the saga anywhere from slightly to significantly.
We have no idea when the tale first made it to English shores to start being told within and influenced by the cultural circumstances of that island.
Cool. But there’s more.
The story is not quite fable but not quite history—but it is quite full of political issues and intrigues involving the bloody feuds among rival Danish and Swedish tribes. Several characters named in the epic are actual folks from Scandinavian history. Also mentioned in the poem is the Battle of Ravenswood that took place in 510 CE. On the other hand, at the core of the story is a superhuman dude doing battle with three fabulous monsters as he seeks glory, riches, and fame. As something of a mini-Thor, Beowulf is straight-up Legendary Hero material.
And there’s more still.
Nobody knows who first set down this story in writing—or exactly when. Scholars argue about an original textual version of the epic being produced sometime between 700-1000 CE (that’s three centuries worth of sometime). Scholars are more certain that the one manuscript of Beowulf that has survived was copied down by two scribes around 1000-1010. These scribes were all but certainly Christians working out of monastery in southern England. During the Anglo-Saxon era, the Catholic Church held nearly exclusive control of the technology of writing.
So, we have a decidedly Pagan oral saga being inked onto vellum by a couple of Christian churchmen. What could possibly ensue?
And just a bit more.
In English literary history, the manuscript of Beowulf isn’t even mentioned until 1563. In the 17th century, it came into the possession of Sir Robert Cotton (1571-1631), a well-known antiquarian and collector of old manuscripts. In 1700, the Cotton family willed their library to the British nation and the manuscript was brought to London for safekeeping. However, in 1731, Beowulf barely survived burning to ashes in a massive archive fire. It’s now safely kept, albeit partially damaged and charred around the edges, in the British Library. A complete English translation of the work didn’t appear until 1833. A general reading public had no access to it until the 20th century, at which point it makes quite a splash. Beowulf has become a standard reading assigned in college literature courses as well as in some high schools. Many talented and prominent people have undertaken translations of the tale—to include J. R. R. Tolkien.
And, yes, Tolkien’s creation of Middle-earth—with its heroes, monsters, and villains—is very, very Beowulf-y.
I’ll end this week’s post with a quick plot summary of the tale:
For 12 years, an old Danish king named Hrothgar has been having a monster problem. A beast of some sort named Grendel (who is never physically described in the work) shows up most nights in Hrothgar’s great hall, called Heorot, to gobble up Danish warriors. These incursions are seriously interrupting the nightly Dane Happy Hour.
A young tough-guy named Beowulf, a Geat from nearby Sweden, hears tell of Hrothgar’s plight and shows up to offer his services as an exterminator. Beowulf fights and kills Grendel. Of course, Hrothgar throws a big party to celebrate. But later that night, after everyone’s blackout drunk, Grendel’s mom shows up to take her revenge. She kills one of Hrothgar’s good buddies. Beowulf must then go find Ms. Grendel (she never gets a name in the story) and kill her, too.
As it turns out, this next exploit is quite a task. Ms. Grendel lives at the bottom of a lake. But the mighty Beowulf finally gets the job done. He’s fêted—and paid handsomely—by the Danes for a second time. What else are they going to do?
Now jump ahead 50 years. Beowulf is an old king of the Geats. A Dragon shows up (the standard flying, fire-breathing model) and starts burning down Geatish villages. It seems that some idiot has snuck into the Dragon’s lair to steal a jeweled cup from the beast. (Dragons back then apparently liked sitting atop great piles of treasure.) This pilfering really pissed off the large, winged reptile. Old coot Beowulf decides the best thing for him to do is go it alone against the Dragon. Not really a great idea. He kills it—but as a result of the tussle, it kills him, too. Brave Hero dies and gets a big funeral. What else are the Geats going to do?
End of Part 1
Readings of improbable interest on Jacques Derrida:
Derrida, Jacques. “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.” Criticism: Major Statements, eds. C. Kaplan and W. Anderson (4th edition, St. Martin’s, 2000, pp. 493-510, first published 1967, see for example: http://www2.csudh.edu/ccauthen/576f13/drrdassp.pdf).