Deconstructing Raila Odinga's Saba Saba message

Debate will still continue on whether there is need for dialogue between CORD and Jubilee, or even among Kenyans on their political destiny.

I have heard it said that CORD leader Raila Odinga is not really clear about what he wants. Never mind that he has held press conferences and written a letter to the President.

So, is there anything in his letter and public statements that need decoding, nay, deconstruction? What is the import of imagery, nay, oratory in politics?

It has been said that a larger part of communication aims to obscure what we really mean. So that analysis and criticism must go beyond work of literature into the study of politics as well.

Politicians try to illustrate and draw vague comparison between what they are talking about and natural phenomena. So when Raila talks about gathering clouds, should that mean impending doom or a blessing in disguise. Clouds bring rain. Rain connotes life. So does Raila’s ‘mawingu yametanda’ mean doom or does it mean good?

In these things context, facial expression and the company you keep mean a lot. So let us examine deconstruction route and the rest in passing. Chiefly associated with the thoughts of Jacques Derida, it roots for the undecidability of meaning for all texts. So that deconstructive critic J. Hillis Miller has said that “deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of the text but a demonstration it has already dismantled itself”.

ARTIFACT

If fact the deconstructive movement was a clear response to structuralism (that literature had to be aligned to everyday human experience and obey known structures and forms) and formalism (treating work of art as an artifact that needs no interpretation).

The father of modern science of linguistics Ferdinand de Saussure reminds us that “words are not the things they name and, indeed, they are only arbitrarily associated with those things... Spoken nor written words have present, positive, identifiable attributes themselves, they have meaning only by virtue of their difference from other words (red, read, reed).”

Probably it is this line of thought that has led critics to insist that often they are simply trying to rescue the script from the author.

Yes, literature, I insist is the basis of all learning. The written or spoken word has message only after all possibilities have been brought forth.

The writer is the director of Yala Outcomes.