Postructuralism/Deconstruction

Differance: Meaning is an endless chain of difference. 
Deconstruction: The meaning depends on the materials used to express it and the materials are always already contradictory.
Words are full of contradictions.

Alright, so I read Geek Love for my Theories of Fiction class and had to present on it. That being said, I delved into the world of Deconstruction, headfirst, and tore that book apart. It was the perfect example of what deconstruction is. Deconstruction is the idea that a text has more than one meaning, that a text conveys complex binaries and oppositions where the narration and story works to break down these contradictions. In Geek Love, Katherine Dunns, breaks down the absurdity of what we as a people consider to be normal and freakish. One of the major binaries in this novel is normal vs freak, born vs made. The characters cling strongly to the fact that they are different, that they are freaks and that they are born that way. What they fail to realize is that they were deliberately constructed; they were created with the help of methamphetamines, radiation and a number of other drugs. They were both born and made, normal and freak. Also, they are neither normal nor freak and neither born nor made. "Deconstruction isn't about identifying the binaries themselves, it's about what's in-between."

          Why am I summarizing this story? Think about it; deconstruction is the notion that everything is what it isn’t and what it is. Nothing is everything and everything nothing. YOU, the reader, the individual, make it what you want it to be; your mind creates what it wants.

          The characters in the book live within the real world. But, they are apart from the world at the same time. Their traveling circus, Fabulon, is a world within a world. They live within this world that they have constructed and have set themselves apart from the rest of it. The normal people always walk into their world to see the newest show but it works because the people know that these people are there for the purpose entertainment and awe. However, if the family of freaks walks into the real world, which they do, they get shot at because people can’t handle anything that doesn’t make sense to them.

          That being said, this goes hand in hand with simulacra; the imitation is the truth. What is there to say that this world does not exist? Why does it have to be one or the other? Why can’t there be both the normal world, the one that we have been programmed to understand and accept, and the world of freaks, of people, ideas and things that go beyond everything we know. If the imitation of something is true, then the imitation of life is true as well.

Word Count: 466
Works Cited: 
Mark Fullmer. "Jacques Derrida in 1 Minute". 5 July 2010. YouTube. 19 April 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQbWOXxag-0&feature=player_embedded