Movie Fight Club

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Movie Fight Club

Fight Club may not be a traditional piece of rhetoric yet it lends itself surprisingly well to the principles of deconstruction as outlined by Foucault, Derrida, Grassi and Burke. The God-terms in the novel are not the God-terms that mainstream society is familiar and/or comfortable with, which is not an accident. The ideas and values that are given importance and dominance in this writing as well as the drama that the reader is invited into, are not those of mainstream society, which leads the reader to reevaluate his/her concepts of knowledge and power as well as the ethical self as created by the characters, situations, and the choice of language.

The idea of logo centrism is a large part of the creation of the transcendental signified in this novel. In any given type of rhetoric the reader / listener / recipient inadvertently must decide what significance and value is placed on all aspects of the piece including that which in not shown by the language. The rhetoric of Fight Club forces the reader to make the uncomfortable choice of what the theme beyond the language is, what is assumed and what is taken for granted by the language in conjunction with what is taken for granted and assumed by the reader. In other words, the storyline and language in the novel force the reader to assign power and knowledge as well as importance to ideas and themes that rub against the grain of everyday common morals and blur the line between the traditional ideas of right and wrong. Faking an illness in order to find the feeling of acceptance as the protagonist in the novel does, is not “right” in the normal world view yet within the confines of this rhetoric it is “right” because of the peace that it brings ...

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The reason that this works as rhetorical strategy is the reader is lured into a false expectation of the outcome of the novel. The reader assumes while reading that the participants in the fight club will come to some epiphany through their fighting. This is not at all what happens. The mini epiphany that takes place for the narrator is yet another prolonging and pushing aside the real problem, that of self acceptance.

Another psychology of form with regards to the promise/fulfillment model is also prevalent in this discourse. The characters who feel othered are invited to accept that otherness and embrace it. What is promised to the reader by the discourse is the knowledge that their feelings of otherness are not theirs alone but are shared by many others and the promise of fulfillment is in the very fact that there are others.

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