différance
This is a synopsis for my students in ENGL 4F70 of a piece of writing by Jacques
Derrida. I apologize for any misrepresentations. -- Professor John Lye
Derrida's piece entitled Différance is, like the rest of Derrida,
difficult going: it is subtle, intricate, informed deeply with the philosophical
traditions in which Derrida is writing. I would like to just go to a few places in
the essay and look at some passages to try to get some of the basic ideas.
You will notice that the essay is about its name, différance:
that it uses an alteration in spelling but not in pronunciation to mark a
difference which is a difference of writing and of meaning.
Différance is that which all signs have, what constitutes them as
signs, as signs are not that to which they refer: i) they differ,
and hence
open a space from that which they represent, and ii) they defer, and
hence
open up a temporal chain, or, participate in temporality. As well,
following de Sassure's famous argument, signs 'mean' by differing from other
signs. The coined word
"différance" refers to at once the differing and the deferring of
signs. Taken to the
ontological level, the differing and deferring of signs from what they
mean, means that every sign repeats the creation of
space and time; and ultimately, that différance is the ultimate
phenomenon in the universe, an operation that is not an operation, both
active and passive, that which enables and results from Being itself.
At the heart then of existence is différance, not
essence.
Things only can be by virtue of differing. Without differing, no time
and space;
if time and space are constituted through differing/deferring as
constitutive of them, there are no absolute identities nothing 'is
itself' by virtue of its being, is simple and absolute identity with
itself. Any ultimate, transhistorical truth is only a truth by virtue of
difference; so that no ultimate 'truth' can be, and be itself, nor can it be
outside of time and space, and hence beyond contingency. Any 'truth'
exists, then, only continently, and relationally, through différance.
Before essence comes
existence, the conditionality of space and time: existentialism.
Signs only mean by difference
Meaning includes spatial and temporal aspects; meaning is never itself
in the same place as itself but is always just along the line, as meaning
is by virtue of that from which it differs. The reality of what meaning
is then opens up to radical question all claims for stability of identity
or truth; at the same time, it extends the range of meaning and being,
making the world into a network of meanings, as he writes:
The first consequence to be drawn [from Saussure and the
arbitrariness of the
sign and the constitution of meaning by différance] is that the signified
concept is neve r present in and of itself, in a sufficient presence that would refer
only to itself. Essentially (that is, of its being) and lawfully, every concept is
inscribed in a chain or in a system within which it refers to the other, to other
concepts, by means o f the systematic play of differences.
Play, or articulation
The word 'play' is important: it means something very similar to what
the word "articulation" means, a word I have been using from the
beginning of the course. Something is articulated if it is jointed: that
is what the word means, etymologically and in some of its current uses.
Something that is jointed is attached to something, but in such a way that
it has a freedom of movement and so can open up the possibility of
manipulation, of working with and in the world. An inarticulate cry is
one which is not jointed. Speech as we know it is articulated, that is,
jointed, on the level of phonemes, on the level of reference or
signification, and on the level of concepts. Only play, or articulation,
opens up time and space.
Différance creates as well the idea of the trace
Derrida writes that
It is because of différance that the movement of
signification is possible only if each so-called present element, each
element appearing on the scene of presence, is related to something other
than itself, thereby keeping within itself the mark of the past element,
and already letting itself be vitiated by the mark of its relation to the
future element....
In terms of signs, the trace is that which is constituted in the sign by virtue
of the fact that the sign is not other things but itself: if a word means, it means
by differing, and what it differs from becomes an inevitable, absent part of its
presence.
Exclusions, repressions, oppositions
Taken to various applications, the fact of différance is why
exclusions and repressions are so important to the operation of
deconstruction: because that which is, or means, is constituted by
virtue of the repressions and exclusions of différance,
and so 'means'or mutely invokes these repressions and exclusion, and is
constructed by virtue of them. So, supplements, those things which
are added on to explain something, are in fact more central than that
which is supplemented, because they point to the contingency of the
central part, a contingency upon the supplement; margins are not
peripheral, but central; and so forth. Oppositions also become central,
because they necessarily participate in each other, ther e is a
fundamental sameness and each must bear the trace of the other:
Thus one could reconsider all of the pairs of opposites on
which philosophy is
constructed and on which our discourse lives, not in order to see opposition erase
itself but to se e what indicates that each of the terms much appear as the
différance of the other, as the other different and deferred in the economy of
the same (etc...)
As Derrida further writes, "It is the domination of beings
that différance everywhere comes to solicit, in the sense that
solicitare , in old Latin, means to shake as a whole, to make tremble in
entirety."
While this is in reference to ontology, it is also applicable to the readings of
text: there is a homology in Derrida between being and signific ation. A
deconstructive reading is a solicitous reading, a reading which shakes things up by
uncovering the otherness at the heart of the meaningfulness, the radical dependence
of what is taken to be meaning on how that meaning is only meaning through tha t
which it displaces, defers, excludes.
Différance makes being and meaning radically
historical.
Derrida writes that we will designate as différance the movement according
to which language, or any code, any system of referral in general, is constitued
historically as a weave of differences. T he point here is that history is built
in, and is built is as a network of relations, that is differences, displacements,
traces, derferrals.
Consciousness and self-presence:
Derrida works many other things in his essay , things which it would be more
important to study in a philosophy class than in an English class. He puts into
question, for instance, the concept of consciousness, which is based on the idea that
we are present to ourselves: we are never exactly presen t, we cannot be, we are
deferred and differing always, so our center is not really a centre, our
self-presence is a fiction which disguises the play of opposition and displacement
within which we live and move and have our beings (not, of course, Derrida s words).
Before self-presence, instead of it, is the play of differences, the system of
difference which is what he means when he says writing , or "Arche-writing
and claims that writing comes before speech (speech is associated with
self-presence). He shows that différance is what is at the heart of Freud's
construction of human life, that for instance the pleasure principle and the reality
principle are united and co-sustained through
différance.
The Other
The central 20th century principle of The Other is also inscribed through
difference. The Other is central to phenomenological, existential, Lacanian and
deconstructive thought: we cannot exist without t he Other, that existence which is
not us but through which we are constituted.
Erasure
We must use words and concepts which are necessarily open to question, such as
self : so when we use them, we should put them under erasure, use them and the at
the same time be aware that they are open to question, that they can be
deconstructed, and so incorporate that potential in our considerations by marking
them as "under erasure. " All traces are of their nature under
erasure. So is the concept of being or essence itself. When Derrida responds the
the question, "What is literature?", the first thing he does is put into
question the is : is literature an is ? that is, is it an entity? Is it an
essence? At the heart of literture must be différance; it is not an is , it
is a field of différance.
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Last updated February 6, 1997
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