Rick Santorum's Structuralist Problem

Also unsympathetic to the plight of the LGBTQ community.
 For more Santorisms à la Feminist Ryan Gosling, visit Fuck No Rick Santorum!

Given Rick Santorum's recent strong showing in Iowa, I wanted to share this (only very slighted) edited piece I wrote for my literary criticism class last semester. I'll be the first to admit that it's not my best work, but I liked it for this blog because it addresses a contemporary concern, it's related to issues affecting the LGBTQ community, and it (hopefully) makes literary analysis seem a little more relevant. 

While he is not an author and does not produce work that is considered “literary” in the strict sense of the term, ex-senator Rick Santorum is a figure that can be brought to critical analysis using literary theory. In many of his statements, Santorum uses the rhetoric of language as a vehicle for developing his political ideas. Such rhetoric unknowingly invites a critique from structuralist theorists, a critique that shows that Santorum understands neither the implications of his comments nor structuralist thought. Santorum’s critics, most notably the popular writer Dan Savage, also frequently apply structuralist theory as a method for defaming Santorum’s character.

Structuralism is a linguistic system of thought influenced by the work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and concerned with how language is used to produce meaning. Saussure argued that language is both arbitrary and relational. It is arbitrary because words can be randomly assigned to objects and can represent those objects irrespective of an object’s character. Language is relational because it only takes on meaning when used in other linguistic contexts. In this line of thinking, words only create meaning when they are grouped with other words to form sentences, just like we only understand the concept of “dark” by simultaneously understanding the concept of “light.” For structuralists, even though language is arbitrary and relational, it constitutes a concrete reality. 

Santorum is far from a structuralist, but some of the rhetoric he uses mirrors structuralist concerns about language, even though he fails to reach the same conclusions that a structuralist would probably make. In a segment from Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, Stewart shows clips of Santorum arguing against gay marriage by saying that the term “marriage” connotes a relationship between one man and one woman and cannot be applied to unions that differ from this standard. In one clip, Santorum makes this argument by analogy when he states, “I can call this napkin a ‘paper towel’ but it is a napkin. Why? Because it is what it is, right?” Santorum offers a different analogy later when he states in a separate clip, “[gay marriage] is like, you know, handing up this [glass of water] and saying that this glass of water is a glass of beer. Well you can call it a glass of beer but it’s not a glass of beer it’s a glass of water, and water is what water is.” 

Santorum’s arguments are weak ones. His first analogy does not work very effectively because a napkin is not radically different enough from a paper towel to offer the stark contrast that Santorum is trying to make. Essentially, a napkin really is a paper towel, so, by analogy, gay marriage really is equal to marriage. Disregarding his poor choice of analogy, his argument also does not make much sense because, according to structuralist theory, words are arbitrarily assigned, meaning that the term “marriage,” contrary to Santorum’s beliefs, can be applied to different unions outside of the referent that Santorum acknowledges. The shifting definition of marriage across history and culture supports this point. In the United States alone, the definition of marriage has changed to outlaw polygamy (1862) and legalize interracial marriage (1967), which are only two of the many changes to the definition of marriage. 

Santorum’s critics have been quick to take advantage of the very structuralist theories that Santorum himself is unable to grasp. In an April 2003 interview with the Associated Press, Santorum compared homosexuality to polygamy, incest, pedophilia, and bestiality; in the same interview, he suggested that the government has the right to uphold sodomy laws (laws that were later overturned) because citizens don’t have the right to privacy (USA Today). Responding to these claims, the gay rights advocate and writer Dan Savage mobilized online supporters to create a new definition for "Santorum" (Dwyer). Savage attached a new referent to the word “Santorum” so that, instead of referring to the ex-senator, the word refers to a vulgar sexual act. Savage then created a blog, Spreading Santorum, and promoted it on Google so that users searching for “Santorum” find information on Savage’s definition before they find information on Rick Santorum. Savage’s method of resistance implicitly acknowledges structuralist theories of language by making use of the arbitrary aspect of word referentiality.