Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Case Of Brown, Sara Ellingsworth

Colloquy Undergraduate Research Journal

The world is understood through the formation of categories, of defining what something is and what something is not, totalizing an experience, person, or word in order to come to an understanding of its essential meaning. Associations color one’s thoughts whether they are fully acknowledged or not. Without exploring the associations, accumulated through personal experience, that determine one’s view of another individual, there is a danger of marginalizing that person, instead of allowing them to fully inhabit their identity. In the following, I aim to expose the ways in which Richard Rodriguez uses Jacques Derrida’s concept of deconstruction as a …