Speaking of Rape & Deconstruction

Jim heartfield jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Sun Feb 6 10:41:35 PST 2000


I had to read a post-modern theologian Don Cupitt's book, After All, for a seminar recently. In it Cupitt advances the deconstructive argument that evil is the excluded other of theology, and that religion ought to embrace evil, too.

In message <v03130306b4bcc1360f9e@[140.254.112.204]>, Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> writes
>I wonder if devotees of deconstruction are comfortale "deconstructing" the
>"binary" between consent and lack of consent and putting the category of
>rape under erasure? No is supplemented by Yes, and vice versa? When a
>woman says, "what part of No don't you understand?" a deconstructive (or
>Freudian) man might say, "well, there is no such thing as a No that is not
>always already deconstructed," and proceed to do the same old work of
>sexism.
>
>Pop deconstructors often make, without any evidence, a totalizing truth
>claim that all "binary" thinking -- true/false, reality/fantasy, etc. -- is
>"metaphysical" and therefore oppressive, predicated upon "violent
>exclusion," but I wonder if they ever think through the consequence of
>their own claim.
>
>Yoshie
>
>

-- Jim heartfield



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