A Random Memory Deconstructed

Deconstructionism: A philosophical movement and theory of literary criticism that questions traditional assumptions about certainty, identity, and truth; asserts that words can only refer to other words; and attempts to demonstrate how statements about any text subvert their own meanings: "In deconstruction, the critic claims there is no meaning to be found in the actual text, but only in the various, often mutually irreconcilable, 'virtual texts' constructed by readers in their search for meaning" (Rebecca Goldstein).

A Random Memory:
I was the only kid in my family who actually liked going to Bible Memory Camp every summer. It was worth enduring the long sermons and the smell of pinesol overpowering the scent of pines, for the berry picking, paddle boats, and the possibility of a horse ride, if you were lucky. Picture a small-group Bible study outdoors about forty years ago...
A teacher, call him "Joe" tells his pre-adolescent students, "the 'mark of Cain' is the Negro color." One of my brothers counters, "No, it isn't."

Teacher then asks that brother,"How would you feel if your sister (me) married a Negro (word drawn out)?

Brother, "I wouldn't care."

Teacher, "I'll pray for you, brother!!"

Okay,now I'll illustrate deconstructionism: On the obvious level, the deconstructionist would say Teacher Joe brought his own interpretation to the Biblical test based on his own cultural racial prejudices. Right. So far so good. But then maybe the deconstructer speculates that my brother with his young, fantasy-inclined mind was really thinking about me being married to a negro in a symbolic way, say like a virgin being sacrificed to a dragon to appease the gods. In this scenario, my brother says, "I wouldn't mind" only because he wouldn't have cared about me being fed to the dragon, sheerly for its entertainment value. Or, maybe, he just didn't care at all about much at all and that's what he really meant. But since Teacher Joe didn't know my sibling was just contrary and primitive, he didn't think of that. (Nor did he think of anything else except for apple pie and pork rinds.) But further speculation yields the dark possibility that Teacher Joe interpreted was actually subconsciously thinking how interesting it would be for me to be with a black man! In this scenario, I am the white (innocent) virgin marrying Joe's own dark id/shadow side. Mmmm-mm. Shudder. Shudder. (Scarier than being sacrificed to a dragon to appease non-existent gods.) So in these interpretations, did my brother stand up for me or did he give me away to the dragon or did he give me away to Joe or to a real negro man or was he just weird? And was I still a girl or was I grown up when married off to the dragon, dark side or black man? And speaking of Cain to get back to the original text, Cain wasn't much of a "brother's keeper" and neither was Teacher Joe so Teacher Joe was a Cain-type, killing innocents while sounding pious, with a fake offering. See how I subverted the text in no time? That's deconstructionism. The only part that makes sense to me is that Joe Blow was pre-biased by his racist subculture to distort the Biblical text and pass on the prejudice. But hopefully you can see that after awhile everybody's so confused, in the deconstuctionist process, that they throw up their hands in despair yelling, "Anything can mean anything you want it to mean!" And that, my friend, is exactly what has happened in our culture. Freud should have stuck with his first love of literature, especially Shakespeare, and not married his views to literary criticism (crit. lit. sh#@). F Y I, If I really thought a negro spouse could symbolize a dragon or a shadow side, (I don't) then in deconstructionist land, I would be the racist bigot, which I'm not.

Breathe.
But, really, racism is serious issue. So why did I marry deconstructionism with racism? "To kill two birds with one stone." Now who came up with that metaphor and why did they? Was it Audubon who actully killed birds to sketch them? What kind of cultural prejudices could have influenced such an idiom? (Ad infinitum.)

A happy ending is coming so will this random memory be interpreted as comedy or tragedy? I guess it depends on how you choose to interprete it.

Need I mention the camp was segregated, that blacks attended a separate week? (Why would they bother?) Anyways, I was one of the only two who would memorize my whole book of verses to receive a gift Bible as the token black cook sang, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot..." (Bet that negro was ready to go home when her shift ended.) Anyways, the happy ending is that I thought for myself, read the Bible, found that it endorses love and equality, not racism. All this is the gospel truth, though what Bible memory camp endorsed wasn't.