ABSTRACT
In attempting to frame this chapter in the larger context of the volume’s
theme, I found myself pondering just how one might actually go about
‘dismantling a dichotomy’. Surely a dichotomy is already a whole in some
state of dismantlement, a ‘division of a whole into two parts’?1 Are we,
therefore, trying to break these parts up further in search of some ‘original’
code, a blueprint of a time when there was a ‘whole’, if ever there was one?
Or are we hoping that any further dismantlement will dissolve the two
parts, that by exposing the inconsistencies, we render the dichotomy useless to any subsequent attempts to pick it up?