Theory is painless
and useful. See, phenomena like same-sex marriage prove this. Unbeknownst to themselves or their writers, articles like this one from the IHT indicate that sufficient exposure to French literary and cultural theory would ameliorate if not eliminate a good many social problems that arise from simple unrepentant daftness. Opposition to same-sex marriage? Referenda on changing the U.S. Constitution to specifically standardize "marriage" as heterosexual? All this and more evaporate in a puff of (Galois) smoke when confronted with this, perhaps the best-known salt in all French theory:tout autre est toute autre.
Yes, from my man J.D., old Jackie, Derrida himself. And frequently--heinously--mistranslated into English. My attempt: each other is each other. Sound like a Zen koan? Not as much as you think, and it has to do with enunciation. Emphatically enunciaite the last two words and you get the idea: JD here does not predict the Phoenix song title "Everything is Everything," but instead speaks to the distinctness of every extant thing, being, situation, and phenomenon. Thereby, a more developed translation of JD's phrase that teases out its implicit embedded meanings might be: each and every Other is distinctly Other, even if they're duplicates--they're both Other from each other, distinct even if exact copies or highly similar or analogous. (Or as one translator phrased it, "each other is wholly other." [The Gift of Death, trans. David Wills])
Thus, each marriage is itself distinct from every other marriage. It'd be easy to drag in the old warhorse "what about abusive or failed hetero marraiges, don't they undermine the devaluation-of-the-institution-of-marriage arguments?" and rely on that, but to do so would miss the larger argument at play here. Each marriage (or car or hamster or aneurysm) is discrete and distinct unto itself even if it looks/walks/quacks/poops like every other one. Every postcard of the Mona Lisa may be a reproduction of that painting and its image, but none is that painting, and each card occupies its own space in and has its own existence in the universe. (Remember all the flap about Benjamin's concerns for the devaluation of "art" in "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"?) Of course, the reënvisioned Battlestar Galactica does this too: even though "skinjob" Cylons are exact copies of the original model, each has its own life, experiences its own death, and occupies distinct and ineluctable physical space in the universe from each other exact copy (since they are all thus exact copies not only of the original model but also ipso facto of each other). Thereby also JD's phrase, which deliberately repeats the "same" words at beginning and end to draw attanetion to the fact that although they are the same words, each is a specific instance of that word that is like or analogous to the other instance, but remains discrete--and whose meaning, despite each instance creating the "same" sound, works according to proximity and context. (So, the act of repetition itself changes the sense/meaning/implication of the "same" words.)
So: in the same way that each human being, even if a clone or genetic twin, is distinct from each other human being, so each marriage is itself a distinct experience from each other marriage, even though they all have analogous elements and we use the "same" word to describe each one (i.e., just as Schnauzers and Great Danes are all "dogs," they are different kinds of "dog," and even then no two Schnauzers can occupy the same existence-space at the same time, and you wouldn't punish a clone-Schnauzer for the original having piddled on the rug.)
Yes, from my man J.D., old Jackie, Derrida himself. And frequently--heinously--mistranslated into English. My attempt: each other is each other. Sound like a Zen koan? Not as much as you think, and it has to do with enunciation. Emphatically enunciaite the last two words and you get the idea: JD here does not predict the Phoenix song title "Everything is Everything," but instead speaks to the distinctness of every extant thing, being, situation, and phenomenon. Thereby, a more developed translation of JD's phrase that teases out its implicit embedded meanings might be: each and every Other is distinctly Other, even if they're duplicates--they're both Other from each other, distinct even if exact copies or highly similar or analogous. (Or as one translator phrased it, "each other is wholly other." [The Gift of Death, trans. David Wills])
Thus, each marriage is itself distinct from every other marriage. It'd be easy to drag in the old warhorse "what about abusive or failed hetero marraiges, don't they undermine the devaluation-of-the-institution-of-marriage arguments?" and rely on that, but to do so would miss the larger argument at play here. Each marriage (or car or hamster or aneurysm) is discrete and distinct unto itself even if it looks/walks/quacks/poops like every other one. Every postcard of the Mona Lisa may be a reproduction of that painting and its image, but none is that painting, and each card occupies its own space in and has its own existence in the universe. (Remember all the flap about Benjamin's concerns for the devaluation of "art" in "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"?) Of course, the reënvisioned Battlestar Galactica does this too: even though "skinjob" Cylons are exact copies of the original model, each has its own life, experiences its own death, and occupies distinct and ineluctable physical space in the universe from each other exact copy (since they are all thus exact copies not only of the original model but also ipso facto of each other). Thereby also JD's phrase, which deliberately repeats the "same" words at beginning and end to draw attanetion to the fact that although they are the same words, each is a specific instance of that word that is like or analogous to the other instance, but remains discrete--and whose meaning, despite each instance creating the "same" sound, works according to proximity and context. (So, the act of repetition itself changes the sense/meaning/implication of the "same" words.)
So: in the same way that each human being, even if a clone or genetic twin, is distinct from each other human being, so each marriage is itself a distinct experience from each other marriage, even though they all have analogous elements and we use the "same" word to describe each one (i.e., just as Schnauzers and Great Danes are all "dogs," they are different kinds of "dog," and even then no two Schnauzers can occupy the same existence-space at the same time, and you wouldn't punish a clone-Schnauzer for the original having piddled on the rug.)