Poststructural and Postpositivist Analysis: Las Vegas Mass Shooting

This essay provides a poststructural and postpositivist analysis of the Las Vegas mass shooting, rejecting the idea of neutral knowledge and emphasizing the role of knowledge systems. It critiques Western philosophy and modernism, arguing that the failure of structures and systems, rooted in enlightenment ideals, contributed to the tragedy. The analysis employs postmodernism to deconstruct meaning and challenge the concept of the individual, aligning with post-structuralism to dismantle Western historiography. The essay references key theoretical frameworks and demonstrates how the shooting disproves the enlightenment belief in systems, ultimately arguing that the failure of these systems led to the mass shooting. The essay utilizes the work of Campbell, Bleiker, Fierke and Hiltzik to support arguments and claims.

LAS VEGAS MASS SHOOTING
Name
Institution

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Poststructural and postpositivist theories hold that knowledge is not neutral. Representing
the world is done in specific ways and in the process much is left out unrepresented as much as
highlighted. This process is unavoidable, arbitrary as well as political. It is against this
background that this paper probes and apply a Poststructural framework to present a
comprehensive analysis of the latest Las Vegas’ mass shooting in. It is impossible to found
knowledge purely on experience and systematic structures.
I will reject the idea of essential quality of dominant relation in hierarchy but deconstruct
knowledge systems which generate multiplicity thus singular meaning illusion. Thus
understanding the mass shooting in this case, it is essential to study both shooting itself and
systems of knowledge which led to the mass shooting. Thus I will levy an attack against the
western philosophy hegemony; rooted in ideals of enlightenment. It will operate as the critical
framework which is radical philosophy that seeks social change to explain the need for change to
understand why such mass shooting took place despite the modernism in the US.
Modernism presents a fragmented view of human history and subjectivity, yet present
these fragmentations as something very tragic and which needs to be lamented as well as
mourned as a loss (Fierke 2016). Thus works of art can be used to avail unity, coherence as well
as meaning that has been lost in most modern life; thus art can do what human institutions have
failed to do whereas postmodernisms celebrates this idea of fragmentation and hold that the
world is meaningless and needles to pretend that art can make meaning (Fierke 2016).
Thus I will employ the postmodernism to establish the unmeaning in meaning and shunt
to side concepts of subject and individual embedded in modernism teleological stories. Thus the
post-structural aligns with postmodernism to dismantle Western historiography metanarrative.
Thus the latest Las Vegas’ mass shooting disapproves the enlightenment idea that US thought it

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undergone based on the belief in structures and systems (Campbell and Roland 2016). The
failure in the systems and structures led to the mass shooting as the security and Americans
believed in modernisms theorist argument which have been dismantle here as American systems
failed to control guns based on belief on enlightenment (Hiltzik 2017).
Bibliography
Campbell, David and Roland Bleiker. 2016 'Postructuralism', in T Dunne, M Kurki and S Smith
(eds.) International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Fierke, K. 2016. ‘Constructivism’, in T Dunne, M Kurki and S Smith (eds.) International
Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Hiltzik, M. 2017. 'Thoughts and prayers' — and fistfuls of NRA money: Why America can't
control guns. The LA Times. Accessed 14 October 2017.