Differance With an “A”. Difference, not Difference Derrida invents the term differance to refer...

Differance

With an “A”

Difference, not Difference

• Derrida invents the term differance to refer to the alternative understanding of difference . . . not the difference `between' terms, but the passage of infinite, endless differentiation giving rise to apparent identities between which one might then argue there is difference.

Differance, not Difference

• For Derrida, the term means both to differ and to defer.

• That means the term is spatial and temporal. To defer is to have the sign slide into another moment so that the sign’s presence in its SELF-SAME MOMENT is impossible. The sign is thrown out of itself into a sliding of signs between signs that refer back and forth between each other in networking fashion. That is how the field of reference works: signs refer to other signs in order to generate meaning.

• That means signs, in their capacity to represent object-referents, must team with other signs. For instance, at the level of the word, you need an “o” and a “g” to go with a “d” to make the word “dog.” You need a number of signs to make the word, and it is in how they interrelate as to what word is made: dog or god. The same can be said for a sentence: you need a verb to conjoin with a noun to make a sentence. Sometimes you need a direct object, an indirect object and of course a period to complete a sentence. Signs connected to other signs make signification.

Differance, not Difference

All We Find is Relation

Differance

But Don’t Misunderstand


• Derrida could be considered indifferent to the question of 'what is there' in favor of 'how do we depict what there is?‘

• For Derrida, origins are always depicted textually. Even to say that Derrida `reserves his judgment about what there 'is' collapses somewhat into what he avoids.


• Derrida does not definitively define any origin.

• He is interested in secondariness because that comes before the primary: the meaning makes the word; it constitutes our reality. Meaning gives life to the object, but the object precedes the word so we can’t start with meaning first and definitively.


• There is no first and definitively. There are combinations of relations.


• There may or may not be a 'beyond' to the plays of language about which he reserves his judgment. This is the beginning of a wordplay in which the 'world' and 'descriptive language' are already being figured in terms of oppositions between origin and secondarity.


• Derrida’s critics argue the following:

• surely there is something outside of the text: atoms, blood, rain, trees, bodies? Derrida seems to deny 'reality' in favor of `words'.


• Derrida cautions us not to misunderstand:

• This response misunderstands the sense in which Derrida means `text'. Like writing, he widens its definition.


'Text' for Derrida is such things as spacing, relationality, differentiation, deferral, delay.

To say there is nothing outside the text is to say that there is always relationality and differentiation. No matter what we imagine as 'reality', it could be argued that differentiation is critical to it.


Proponents of deconstruction argue that it is impossible to describe anger without entering into the world of language.Anger, then, would not fall outside of textuality.


Others proponents of deconstruction would argue that the experience of emotion is already `differential' (hate differentiates itself from disliking, love, etc.).

Or take the rain as it touches your face: it does so within a field of associations and differentiations.


That would be especially true if this was the rain that broke the drought, or the rain that rekindled the most magnificent memory of my life: meeting the person I love in a rain that felt very much like this one.


THIS RAIN RAINS MEANING but it is meaning-being and being-meaning!


it depends on how you look at it, and that depends on your . . .


relation to it at the moment.

Differance

A STEP FURTHER

A STEP FURTHER

Differance With an “A”. Difference, not Difference Derrida invents the term differance to refer...

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