Deconstruction & Mutability
Aug. 17th, 2007 10:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jhameiaI was reading Derrida again last night. Well, not just Derrida. While Sean immersed himself in the world of the Sandman (as well he should, he's overdue), I once again picked up my book on David Bowie, reading the chapter on his commodification. For those who ever followed Mr. Bowie's career, you'd notice how stark his changes in musical directions go, whether or not he's spear-heading a non-mainstream movement, or following his nose on mainstream trends.
It ties in perfectly with Jacques Derrida's idea of decentering. I'm quite sure Mssr. Derrida meant it in a much more abstract way, but seeing as I'm not so high-minded, I'm going to go with what I understand. The idea of de-centering is to take a system that appears solid and totally rip its base to shreds, and building something on top of it. However, the end result will always be both familiar and alien... "you cannot attack the laws of metaphysics without using the language of metaphysics," writes Mssr. Derrida. So when David Bowie sets out to blur the lines between the feminine and the masculine, he is using elements of gender and mixing them up, replacing them with something else that is usually very extreme.
In a sense, Mr. Bowie is recognizing the mutability of whatever he is trying to subvert. There is a beautiful kind of inauthenticity to his music - when you listen to it closely, read its lyrics carefully, you'll find it's so carefully crafted, wonderfully manipulated in order to get the great sounds that he does. It doesn't really pretend to be real - it's all obviously an act. The only reason we think it's real, that it's authentic, is because he puts so much passion and effort into it.
The idea of authenticity holds a lot of idealism - "to thine own self be true," quoth Shakespeare. I think a lot of people really like the concept because the idea of mutability, that everything will eventually change, is frightening. It must be comforting to know that some things just will not change.
But everything does, no matter what we do... we either learn to grow up with it and control the changes, or we let change happen and angst about it. And as Derrida writes... when we are de-centered, we create a new center, but we always use elements from the past center, from before the rupture, because we cannot create a new center from entirely new elements (when you create a whole new language, you're usually influenced by the grammatical / syntactical systems you know from before). Sometimes we bring in new elements because it's for the better, and other times we let go of older elements that do nothing but hold back the new system and cause another rupture too soon or too late, at the incorrect timing it would require in order for a new system to work.
I find this peculiarly attractive - the idea that with enough thought, enough effort, enough strength of will, direction can be changed, centers can be destroyed and re-fitted, for one's own purposes, the way Mr. Bowie did with his music.
It ties in perfectly with Jacques Derrida's idea of decentering. I'm quite sure Mssr. Derrida meant it in a much more abstract way, but seeing as I'm not so high-minded, I'm going to go with what I understand. The idea of de-centering is to take a system that appears solid and totally rip its base to shreds, and building something on top of it. However, the end result will always be both familiar and alien... "you cannot attack the laws of metaphysics without using the language of metaphysics," writes Mssr. Derrida. So when David Bowie sets out to blur the lines between the feminine and the masculine, he is using elements of gender and mixing them up, replacing them with something else that is usually very extreme.
In a sense, Mr. Bowie is recognizing the mutability of whatever he is trying to subvert. There is a beautiful kind of inauthenticity to his music - when you listen to it closely, read its lyrics carefully, you'll find it's so carefully crafted, wonderfully manipulated in order to get the great sounds that he does. It doesn't really pretend to be real - it's all obviously an act. The only reason we think it's real, that it's authentic, is because he puts so much passion and effort into it.
The idea of authenticity holds a lot of idealism - "to thine own self be true," quoth Shakespeare. I think a lot of people really like the concept because the idea of mutability, that everything will eventually change, is frightening. It must be comforting to know that some things just will not change.
But everything does, no matter what we do... we either learn to grow up with it and control the changes, or we let change happen and angst about it. And as Derrida writes... when we are de-centered, we create a new center, but we always use elements from the past center, from before the rupture, because we cannot create a new center from entirely new elements (when you create a whole new language, you're usually influenced by the grammatical / syntactical systems you know from before). Sometimes we bring in new elements because it's for the better, and other times we let go of older elements that do nothing but hold back the new system and cause another rupture too soon or too late, at the incorrect timing it would require in order for a new system to work.
I find this peculiarly attractive - the idea that with enough thought, enough effort, enough strength of will, direction can be changed, centers can be destroyed and re-fitted, for one's own purposes, the way Mr. Bowie did with his music.