CrashingTheDiscourse

From UoWiki

There are questions which it would be a mistake to answer: the classic example being 'And are you still beating your wife?' The journalist Gary Younge summed this up in an article a while back:

Sometimes... questions can be so pregnant with assumptions that they are, arguably, better left unanswered. Not because they do not relate to important issues, but because they are so loaded with prejudice and crippled by ignorance, thoughtless in tone and reckless in content, that the manner in which they are put renders them incapable of addressing important issues. To engage with them would be to legitimise their bias.

To demonstrate the point, he suggests we 'flip the script' - pose to white Britons the questions they pose to "others":

Do you think of yourself as white or British or both? Does it worry you that you got your job just because of your race? Where are you from? No, but really? Since this is where you live, don't you think you should try and integrate with other races more? Is your first loyalty to your God, or to your country? Is it true what they say about white guys? Given the genocide, slavery and colonialism unleashed in the name of Christianity over the last two centuries, do you feel your religion is compatible with democracy? Mr Grant, do you think of yourself as a white actor or an actor who happens to be white? (...) Shouldn't the police be doing more to tackle white-on-white crime? Given the objectification of women in your culture and the rise in teenage pregnancies, don't you think it's time to ban young girls wearing make up? (...) Why do you people have such a chip on your shoulder? Don't get offended, I was only asking.

A theologian who'll remain nameless until details are confirmed was taking questions at the end of a public lecture. A woman asked him, "Mr X, what would you say to someone who wanted to take on board your ethical thinking, but without the religion?" After a few moments pause, he looked up and said, "I'd say: fuck you, lady, I'm only trying to save your soul!"

The cursing theologian may be harder to get your head round than Younge's pointed inversion of the language of white Britain - but something similar is going on. A question is asked which requires that the answerer subscribes to the assumptions of the questioner - that one can abstract ethics from their particular belief system, for example. This is a hidden invitation to take part in a particular 'rationality' - to answer it 'reasonably' is to legitimate that discourse.

Now compare that to a famous Bill Hicks routine:

By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself. No, no, no it's just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they'll take root - I don't know. You try, you do what you can. Kill yourself. Seriously though, if you are, do. Aaah, no really, there's no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan's little helpers, Okay - kill yourself - seriously. (...)
I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, "Oh, you know what Bill's doing, he's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart." Oh man, I am not doing that. You fucking evil scumbags! (...)
"Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market, Bill's very bright to do that." God, I'm just caught in a fucking web! "Ooh the trapped dollar, big dollar, huge dollar. Good market - look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar..." How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don't you?"

This is the perfect description of the effect of a powerful discourse - 'I'm just caught in a fucking web!' And the questions above are spider's questions, invitations to trap yourself in such a web. But it's not easy being a fly - how do you avoid the web, when (as Hicks finds) every attempt can be reincorporated, your rebellion sold back to you - or (as in the case of terrorism) incorporated as the negative opposite to the discourse's positive terms? (It's not that terrorism should be reappraised positively, but that as a political practice it's useless because it fits so comfortably into the established power discourse.)

This is the territory where Derridean deconstruction began - as a practice of naming assumptions, struggling to uncover what they hide without simply replacing them with new versions of the same. But - as practised in academia - deconstruction can be a soul-destroying business, a one way ticket to nihilism. (The problem may be academia's as much as Derrida's...?) As activists (cultural and spiritual, as well as political) we refuse the self-indulgence of nihilism. (Though the doubts that may lead others there should challenge us to question our own motivations, to name our self-deceptions, without accepting that they are the whole story...)

So what comes beyond deconstruction, beyond simply identifying the assumptions of the discourse? Recognising the power of discourse may suggest different forms of action from those previously seen as most effective. At the same time, it is likely to shape the kind of alternatives we propose - alerted to the penultimate nature of anything we can say

One consequence of seeing our struggle in terms of discourse may be to rehumanise those on the other side - the enemy is something quite other to the individuals representing it. In fact, the most 'powerful' of those individuals are the most trapped. Our job is to liberate them! A highly charged text from the early Christian church says some of this:

...our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. (Ephesians, 6.12)

That verse has been (ab)used to justify the most appalling abuses of power. (Think of the 'exorcism' scene in Jeanette Winterson's 'Oranges are not the only fruit'.) But what it describes applies to our struggle. Consider the powerlessness of the CEO of Dow Chemical - when the Yes Men spectacularly hoaxed the BBC into broadcasting an interview with a 'Dow' representative announcing proper compensation for the people of Bhopal, the company's stock fell 4.24% in 23 minutes on the Frankfurt stock exchange. The fall was swiftly corrected when the company quashed the story, but had CEO Andrew Liveris been rash enough to actually offer decent compensation, he'd have been out of a job quicker than you can say 'invisible hand of the market'. The discourse of 'economism' has an agency of its own - the system functions in such a way that...

(to be continued...)