Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Satire's Club: Reality, Reason, And Knowledge In Joseph Andrews, Heather Anne Law Davis

Theses Digitization Project

Satire has been credited with possessing the power to deconstruct the distinctions we make between opposing concepts and thus lead us to reevaluate established views. Structuralist Ferdinand de Saussure claimed that language relies on sets of opposites, or binary pairs, to create meaning. Building on this idea, deconstructionist Jacques Derrida explored the hierarchies he believed were inherent in all binary pairs, arguing that on concept in each pair occupies a superior position in our consciousness.