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Binary opposition
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==Deconstruction of binaries== The political (rather than analytic or conceptual) critique of binary oppositions is an important part of [[third wave feminism]], [[post-colonialism]], [[post-anarchism]], and [[critical race theory]], which argue that the perceived binary dichotomy between man/woman, civilized/uncivilised, and white/black have perpetuated and legitimized societal power structures favoring a specific majority. In the last fifteen years it has become routine for many social and/or historical analyses to address the variables of gender, class, sexuality, race and ethnicity.<ref name="Dunk">Dunk, T 1997, 'White guys: studies in post-modern domination and difference', Labour, vol. 40, p. 306, (online Infotrac).</ref> Within each of these categories there is usually an unequal binary opposition: bourgeoisie/working class man; men/women; heterosexual/homosexual.<ref name="Dunk"/> In critical race theory, the paradigm is known as the [[black–white binary]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Perea |first1=Juan |title=The Black/White Binary Paradigm of Race: The "Normal Science" of American Racial Thought |journal=California Law Review, la Raza Journal |date=1997 |volume=85 |issue=5 |pages=1213–1258 |doi=10.2307/3481059 |jstor=3481059 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3481059|url-access=subscription }}</ref> [[Post-structuralism|Post-structural]] criticism of binary oppositions is not simply the reversal of the opposition, but its [[deconstruction]], which is described as apolitical—that is, not intrinsically favoring one arm of a binary opposition over the other. Deconstruction is the "event" or "moment" at which a binary opposition is thought to contradict itself, and undermine its own authority.<ref>"One sometimes gets the impression that deconstruction is a kind of game that anyone can play. One could, for example, invent a deconstruction of deconstructionism as follows: In the hierarchical opposition, deconstruction/logocentrism (phono-phallo-logocentrism), the privileged term "deconstruction" is in fact subordinate to the devalued term "logocentrism," for, in order to establish the hierarchical superiority of deconstruction, the deconstructionist is forced to attempt to represent its superiority, its axiological primacy, by argument and persuasion, by appealing to the logocentric values they try to devalue. But their efforts to do this are doomed to failure because of the internal inconsistency in the concept of deconstructionism itself, because of its very self-referential dependence on the authority of a prior logic. By an [[aporetical]] [[Aufhebung]], deconstruction deconstructs itself." Searle, ibid.</ref> Deconstruction assumes that all binary oppositions need to be analyzed and criticized in all their manifestations; the function of both logical and [[axiological]] oppositions must be studied in all [[discourse]]s that provide meaning and values. But deconstruction does not only expose how oppositions work and how meaning and values are produced in a [[Nihilism|nihilistic]] or [[Cynicism (philosophy)|cynic]] position, "thereby preventing any means of intervening in the field effectively". To be effective, and simply as its mode of practice, deconstruction creates new notions or concepts, not to synthesize the terms in opposition but to mark their difference, undecidability, and eternal interplay.<ref>Cf., Jacques Derrida, "Positions" (The University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 41–43</ref>
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