HOW GEORGE BUSH SILENCED ANITA HILL: A DERRIDIAN VIEW OF THE THIRD PERSONA IN PUBLIC ARGUMENT.

AuthorTurner, Paaige K.

The silences around the words are as powerful and as numerous in meaning and valence as the words themselves.

(Clair, 1998, p. 23)

The ability of scholars to understand how public argument constitutes or generates identity has grown over the past few years (Crenshaw, 1996; Ishlyama, Launer, Likhachova, Williams, & Young, 1997; McKerrow & Bruner, 1997; Zulick, 1997). This has enhanced theorists', individuals', and social groups' abilities to understand that identities are formed not only in dyadic interactions but also in public arenas. Moreover, when these identities are forged in the public realm they become part of the larger system of meaning and ideology that can then be used to evaluate other identities and arguments. This article contributes to such a project by positioning the evocation of specific personae as an act of public argumentation. Moreover, we ground our understanding of this process in Derrida's (1982) concept of differance. Specifically, we argue that President Bush's discursive choices during the 1991 Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation proceedings allowed him to silence and negate Anita Hill and her supporte rs while avoiding any explicitly negative claims about her.

While theorists have explored the role of personae and public argument in creating identities, they have yet to integrate the influence of our system of language, as a system of differences, upon identity construction. We argue that it is because of this system of differences that identities are often constituted in public discourse as different or alien than other identities, particularly in the third persona. Moreover, in making this assumption, we provide critics another means for conducting argumentation evaluation and for understanding the construction of identity as an argumentative process of differentiation. Accordingly, we first provide a brief overview of the relation of language, identity and Derrida's perspective of language; second, we look at the evocation of personae in public argument as differentiation; and finally we provide a case study of President Bush's discourse during the 1991 Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation proceedings.

LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY AS DIFFERENTIATION

A basic premise in this article is that individual and group identity is a form of subjectivity that is created/sustained through language via signification. Our position, therefore, aligns us with post-structuralist thinking and concerns (cf. Best & Kellner, 1991; Rosenau, 1992; Sarup, 1989; Weedon, 1987). In contrast to modernist or humanist perspectives that grant the individual a metaphysical presence separate from language, we agree with Weedon (1987) that "language is the place where actual possible forms of social organization and their likely social and political consequences are defined and contested. Yet, it is also the place where our sense of ourselves, our subjectivity, is constructed" (p. 21). Subjectivities and identities do not enjoy an a priori existence outside of language but rather are constituted within systems of language (cf. Lacan) or ideologies (cf. Althusser). Thus, a major theoretical concern for this project is analyzing how individuals are constituted as subjects or subject posit ions via personae in public argument.

While many theorists have contributed to the post-structuralist project (e.g., Baudrillard, Foucault, Lyotard), Derrida's work has several features that recommend it as a chain of signification for presencing the use of personae in public argument. Specifically, it presences differentiation as a means of both finding and constructing meanings that trace even when operating under erasure.

Derrida (1982) argues that signs both differ from and defer each other, a condition that he calls differance. "In a language, in the system of language, there are only differences" (p. 11). When one signifier is invoked it differs from all other signifiers. For example, white differs from black, cat, snow, etc. In addition, signifiers temporally defer all other signs. For example, white but not black, cat, snow, etc. at this time. For Derrida, meaning lies in the relationship of signifiers to other signifiers rather than the relationship of signs, interpretants, and objects that was advanced by Charles Sanders Peirce (Peirce, 1931/1985). Meaning is not, therefore, determined by how accurately a sign mirrors the objective world. Rather, meaning arises from a free-floating system of relationships that is both similar and different from Ferdinand de Saussure's (1954/1985).

Far from it being the object that antedates the view point, it would seem that it is the viewpoint that creates the object; besides, nothing tells us in advance that one way of considering the fact in question takes precedence over the others or is in any way superior to them. (de Saussure, 1954/1985, p. 28)

However, where de Saussure focused on signifier/signified or sound image/concept relationships (Sless, 1986), Derrida collapses the distinction between the signifier and signified so that all that remains are chains of signifiers. From this perspective of meaning, in order to change meaning an individual discursively changes the subjective signifier/signifier relationship rather than the objective signifier/object relationship.

Since meaning is possible because signifiers defer and differ from other signifiers, each signifier carries with it a trace of every other term that it differs from and defers. For example, to understand white you must also understand black. White, therefore, carries a trace of black every time it is used. For this reason, Derrida often writes of terms being under erasure--meaning that when a term is used all other terms are under erasure--absent yet still present.

Signifier/signifier relationships trace together weaving chains of signification. For example, white not only traces to black but may also trace to good depending upon the culture. These relationships, however, are always open to the possibility of being rewoven to presence new traces. Thus, white may trace to an infinite number of other signifiers. Since the act of reweaving the chain of signification is a linguistic act, it is not possible merely to comment upon the chain without reweaving it. For example, "the 'early trace' is lost in an invisibility without return, and yet its very loss is sheltered, retained, seen, delayed" (Derrida, 1982, p. 24). That is, one must linguistically reweave the chain of signification or signifier/signifier relationships to lose a trace. This reweaving becomes a new chain of signification. The losing of a trace leaves a trace. Since the losing, or finding, of a trace comments upon the trace and commenting creates new traces, every act is an act of creating and revealing. It is not possible to talk about finding or creating meanings as separate acts. Therefore, we have adopted Derrida's term presence to denote that meanings are both found and created in a single act.

According to Derrida (1982), "presencing itself unnoticeably becomes something present" (p 23). Returning to our example, when we set up white/black in a signifier/signifier relationship we are both finding the relationship and creating it. This is analogous to having the following discussion: "White is the opposite of Black." "I never thought of it that way." "Well do because it is." Differance, therefore, is a continual process of meaning presencing rather than a static existence between signs, identities, speakers, auditors, and audiences. "In a certain aspect of itself, differance, is certainly but the historical and epochal unfolding of Being or of the ontological difference. The a of differance marks the movement of this unfolding" (Derrida, 1982, p. 22).

While Derrida does not use the term differance to discuss identity formation, from a post-structural perspective the presencing of specific identities is no different than presencing black/white, especially given the intrinsic relationship between language and subjectivity. When we manage or negotiate conflicting roles (e.g., mother/daughter, superior/subordinate), we feel the tracing of identities in the words spoken that define our roles. When we dress or act differently than our parents, we differ from and defer their identities from ours and yet presence our parents' identity as that which we revolt against. Indeed, Sarup (1989) draws upon Jacques Lacan to argue that identity:

only comes into play through the principle of difference, by the opposition of the 'other' or the 'you' to the 'I'. In other words, subjectivity is not an essence but a set of relationships. It can only be induced by the activation of a signifying system which exists before the individual and which determines his or her cultural identity. Discourse, then, is the agency whereby the subject is produced and existing order sustained. (p. 29)

Once it is granted that the subject is constituted in language, one key to understanding how specific identities become presenced is to understand the system of linguistic and identity signification. Derrida's concept of differance provides a particularly useful vocabulary when looking at how different identities are discursively constructed in public argument against other identities. We now turn to a discussion of how personae serve as a form of public argument from a Derridan perspective. We also shift to the use of the terms trace, presence, and chain of signification to mark our post-structural perspective on language and identity.

PERSONAE IN PUBUC ARGUMENT AS DIFFERENTIATION

Campbell (1975) argues that individuals put forth created personalities, or personae, during the act of communicating; just as...

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