Monday, October 11, 2004
(6:09 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
"Doomed by Deconstructo"
In issues 37-39 of Justice League Europe (April-June 1992), a motley group of DC superheroes face off against a villian named Deconstructo. In #37, a disaffected grad student has broken into the JLE's London headquarters in order to write graffiti: "Meaning is dead"; "A menu is as good as a myth." Two of the members arrive home, stumble upon him, and chase him, but he steals an alien artifact (the kind of theing they just keep laying around in Justice League HQ) that allows him to disappear in a puff of smoke. The bulk of the rest of the issue rotates around the various heroes preparing their new costumes, jockeying for leadership positions, and generally trying to recover from a recent decision by the UN (who ran the Justice League) to shut them down, forcing them to reassemble on their own auspices. Interspersed throughout are images of the grad student brandishing his alien magic wand, accusing the JLE of being an American attempt to dominate Europe, and spouting such sayings as "There is no meaning. In art. In life. In history. In heroes. We can only know what our minds choose to let us know." Most memorably, he shouts at a government building, "Language is a lie," catching the attention of Bruce Wayne, who is on a London vacation. Bruce Wayne (who is really Batman!) says, "Deconstruction isn't for me, I'm afraid. I've always thrived on order, on clarity, certainty, purpose... control." The Justice League puts in an appearance at a posh party, where their coordinator is attempting to raise funds to keep the League going. Outside the party, the grad student, still talking to himself, has been experimenting with his wand, and he causes a dove and a flower to trade heads. (Notable quote: "We're only human because we believe in the fiction of 'human.'") He breaks into the party and "deconstructs" many of the revellers, trading their arms for pieces of the avant-garde art, turning a man into a huge olive, etc. The JLE know that this is exactly what they were born to do: they rush to action, but Deconstructo erects a wall to block them. When they finally get outside, they find that he has ruined the entire city, turning it into a monument of his nonsensical sayings. Not knowing where to turn, they are suddenly joined by Batman, who, in a full-page shot, declares, "There is nothing that cannot be mastered... with the mind."In #38, the JLE splinters while Batman remains calm, observing. The younger, brasher members of the JLE (Flash, Powergirl -- one of many "Justice-League-only" superheroes in this b-team of the Justice League) attempt to chase him down with brute force, while some of the more reflective ones try to figure out how the magic wand works. Meanwhile, Deconstructo's monologue continues -- at one point he puts the image of his father onto the body of a pharaoh, and after claiming that "America" is a verbal construct, his father objects, "They saved us in two wars, those Yanks. Don't you tell me America's a lie!" Deconstructo responds, "That's right, pop. Don't lock me in the garage again, pop. I'm good. America's good. Liberty, justice, democracy. All bloody good words, ain't they? I fought for those words. I join up. I did, making the world safe for words. But words only let us believe what they have to believe!" Interestingly, the investigation into the wand's properties reveals that it just creates illusions, while Elastic Man (trying to be a detective like Batman) has determined that Deconstructo can only reassemble already-existing elements, "usually to make a mockery of what's there to make it less than it was." Batman notes that Deconstructo "leaves most witnesses alive... with escape routes. He wants news of his deeds to spread... as if driven by a desperate need for attention." The team reassembles, and after much deliberation, Powergirl attempts a full-frontal assault, leading to a dramatic full-page cliffhanger in which a statue controlled by Deconstructo apparently beheads her.
Finally, in #39, Flash (who is in love with Powergirl, I guess) loses his cool and attempts a similar assault, which causes him to disappear suddenly. Meanwhile, back at the HQ, Batman has done a background check on Deconstructo, which reveals the following:
Through my connections in the London art world, I've investigated his background. He's Archie Tipple, once a politically conscious artist who became disillusioned by the "lies" of the world. He used intellect to rebel against the cultural establishment and his own violent family. Until he came to believe that the mind controls all reality. He became obsessed with the Dutch philosopher Paul de Man, whose guilt over the Nazi propaganda he wrote in his youth caused him to question the self-deceiving power of language. Tipple sees art and civilization as lies, to be destroyed by a superior intellect. He once bombarded a restaurant with plastic whales illustrating the claim of deconstructionist Michael [sic] Foucault that a menu carries as much meaning as Moby Dick.Shortly thereafter, Flash reappears in the headquarters, claiming that the only way to get where he wanted to go was to close his eyes and follow a hunch -- leading everyone to start to realize that the mayhem caused by Deconstructo is (wait for it...) a social construct! The key is not to go after him physically, but to get people to stop believing in him! And Batman is just the man to do it, with his rigorous logic! The last half of the issue consists of an unsummarizable battle-scene, but suffice it to say, Batman throws him off his moorings enough to wrest control of the magic wand and put an end to the madness, ultimately putting Powergirl's head back on her shoulders. The League, which was formerly in disarray, feels like a team again. Everything is great. We've learned a valuable lesson.
To comment much further on this bizarre series of comic books, which strangely abstains from mentioning Derrida at all, would be ridiculous, but suffice it to say that it seems like an action-packed version of Michael Bérubé's "Anti-Derrida Two-Step. Step One: claim that his work is nihilist and would leave us all in chaos and darkness. Step Two: respond to patient rebuttals of Step One by claiming that Derrida is a trivial thinker and doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know." In the end, despite the fact that everything turns out to have been a huge illusion, everyone still feels like they somehow could have gotten killed -- and we're left with the loose end hanging where Batman said that Deconstructo leaves "most" of his victims alive with an escape route.
All I know is that I bought the Justice League Europe comics when I was 12 because Flash was in them, and I just had all my (many, many) comic books in storage somewhere when I first read about deconstruction in Intro to Lit Crit -- and eventually I said to myself, "That's why that seemed so familiar," dug them out, and showed them to my friends. And so, for Derrida Week, it seemed appropriate to dig them out one more time to give them the broad audience they deserve.
