Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

106 reframing latin america
rationalize inequality. Instead of basing it on birthright, they explain it as
a product of naturally occurring differences between individual human beings.
The idea is that a free society removes limits placed on individuals,
freeing them to make of themselves as they wish, or at least as they are able
according to capabilities. Our moral principles impel us to create safety nets
for those who are physically or mentally incapable of looking after themselves,
but beyond that we allow human beings to be whatever they are able
to be. This is the foundation of the meritocracy, the idea that one’s merits
determine one’s future, not birthright or bloodline.
Of course, for this system to operate as it is supposed to, there must
be a “level playing fi eld,” as it is often called in contemporary political
parlance. One person cannot have unfair advantages over another. Much
contemporary political debate takes place over the degree to which we have
created equal opportunity. Conservatives tend to argue that we have done
so, whereas liberals tend to believe that we need to do more. Either way,
both liberals and conservatives operate on the common foundation that
with a level playing fi eld one’s class position will refl ect one’s natural capacity
or, as it is sometimes called, one’s God-given talents. They readily
acknowledge that exceptions to the rule occur, that some people squander
their God-given talents, while others who lack such gifts get lucky and rise
above their likely station in life. But proponents of a meritocracy believe
that in most cases “the cream rises to the top.”
It would seem, then, that we have abandoned to the dustbin of history
the notion of class essentialism. But have we? Semioticians argue that our
contemporary justifi cations for inequality are not so different from those of
our premodern ancestors. We disseminate resources based on the belief that
some people are more deserving than others because of qualities they were
born with, be it intelligence, determination, patience, or whatever other
trait allows them to excel in life. Whereas the proponents of this system
believe it is rooted in objective truths about human nature, semioticians see
it as based on ideas (i.e., discursive constructs).
Semioticians are highly suspicious of modernist claims to equality, seeing
them as facades for hierarchical power relations rooted in discursive
constructs of race, gender, and nationality, among others. Take, for example,
the case of John Edwards, the Democratic vice presidential candidate in the
2004 election. Edwards was born to a working-class family in a small town
in South Carolina and, like his father, worked in a mill as a young man. But
Edwards was also intelligent and driven. He became the fi rst member of his
family to attend college, eventually going on to have a long and lucrative
career in law. Starting in the mid-1990s, he began a meteoric political ca-