21 levels of Self-Deception: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

T W E N T Y - O N E L E V E L S

The two terms ‘animus’ and ‘anima’ also reflect the ascendancy-descendancy duality. Animus involves thought, judgement and heroics and relates to what will henceforth be described as the ‘economy of ascendancy’. Anima involves imagination, care-taking and depth of vision — this will be described as the ‘economy of descendancy’. The gendering of these terms is also highly significant (animus — male, anima — female).

‘Deconstruction’ in the manner of Derrida, looks at binary oppositions, or polarities, with which Western philosophy has long been engaged. First it looks at emphasising the element of the binary that has historically been suppressed — Derrida was particularly interested in speech over writing and presence over absence. (Jacques Derrida — Of Grammatology.) Then it moves on to look at the creative possibilities opened up by seeing beyond the binary opposition. Such an opposition has been observed with regard to our economy of ascendancy and economy of descendancy — in which the latter is very much the suppressed. We noted similar suppressions with the dualisms explored earlier — object is privileged over subject, ‘something’ is privileged over ‘nothing’ and the masculine is privileged over the feminine. The next several chapters examine the economy of ascendancy and the economy of descendancy in more detail and examine the consequences of the suppression of descendancy.

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