Différance

Différance is a French homonym used in the context of deconstruction. The French word différer means both "to defer or postpone" and "to differ." In an essay of the same name by Jacques Derrida, différance gestures toward many things. One such thing is the idea that words and signs can never fully summon forth what they mean, but can only be defined or explained using more words. Différance itself, is neither a word, nor a concept, nor a thing. Words and concepts/theories are themselves different from other words or concepts and this difference gives their meaning.

For example, the word "house" means what it means moreso because of how it differs from "shed", "mansion", "hotel", "building", "hovel", "hours", "hows", "horse", etc. etc., than how the word "house" may be tied to a certain picture of a traditional house. Though not just differences between the word ^*] is relevant here, differentials between the picture signified are also covered by Différance. Deferral is also important here, the words that occur after "house" in any expression will revise the meaning of that word, and sometimes dramatically.

So the fuller meaning is always postponed in language, there is never a moment when one can say the meaning is complete and 100%. Think of someone looking up a dictionary for a word, then looking up the words found in that word's definition, and so on, such a process would never end.

The 'a' of différance is a deliberate "misspelling", though it sounds the same when enunciated. This hightlights the fact that its written form is not heard completely, and serves to prioritise writing, see archi-writing

Derrida introduced this portmanteau in the course of an argument against the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, who sought a rigorous analysis of the role of memory and perception in our understanding of sequential items such as music or language. Derrida's différance argued that because the perceiver's mental state was constantly in a state of flux, and differed from one re-reading to the next, a general theory describing this phenomenon was unachievable.

Because of this, we reside in an inescapable web of language, which, moreover, shifts each time we hear or read a given utterance. There is a deferment of meaning with each act of rereading. There is a difference of readings with each rereading. In Derrida's words, "there is nothing outside the text", text, in Derrida's parlance, refers to context and includes all about the "real-life" situation of the speech/text, cf., speech act theory.

It may seem contradictory to suggest that Différance is neither a word nor a concept, however, it is obvious that the difference itself between words cannot only be another word, since it is of another order, the same applies to concepts. For example, one might say the difference between a "house" and a "home" is that one is a building, and the other a family or social unit. The problem is however, that these differences, "building"/"family" are themselves given meaning by further differences.

A clear example of this effect occurred in England during the Renaissance period, when oranges first began to be imported from the Mediterranean. Yellow and red came to be differentiated now to a new colour term "orange". What is the meaing of these words before 1600? What is their meaning afterwards? Such effects go on all the time in our use of language and frequently, in fact, according to Derrida this effect forms the very basis of language/meaning. Such changes of meaning are also often centres of political violence, as is apparent in the differences invested in male/female, master/slave, citizen/foreigner etc. Derrida seeks to modulate and question these "violent hirarchies" through deconstruction.

Perhaps it is a misconception that différance seeks contradictory meanings. It does not necessarily do so. It can, but what it usually describes is the re-experience, the re-arrival of the moment of reading. Roland Barthes once remarked that those who never reread anything are obliged to read the same text everywhere -- this wry comment summarizes the phenomenon of different experience for each iteration.

We are, keep in mind, discussing just one text -- every text. No distinction is necessarily made between texts in this very "basic" level. The difference/deferment can be between one text and itself, or between two texts, this is the crucial distinction between traditional perspectives and deconstruction.

Derrida's neologism is, of course, not just an attempt at linguistics or to discuss writtten texts and how they are read. It is, most importantly, an attempt to escape the history of metaphysics; a history that has always prioritised certain concepts, eg, those of substance, essence, soul, spirit (idealism), matter (realism), becoming, freedom, sense-experience, language, science etc.. All such ideas speak of a certain thing/idea being present. Différance, instead, works off absence, and, in effecting a concentration of certain thinking, Derrida takes on board the thought of Freud's unconscious (the trace), Heidegger's destruction of onto-theology, and Nietzsche's play of forces.

Yet he does not approach this absence and loss with the nostalgia that marks Heidegger's attempt to uncover some original truths beneath the accretions of a false metaphysics that have accumulated since Socrates. Rather it is with the moods of play and affirmation that Derrida approaches the issue.

Derrida's is a form of negative theology, an attempt to give a metaphysics without pointing to any existent essence as the most important or as the controlling aspect. The differnces and deferrings of Différance, Derrida points out, are not merely ideal, they are not inscribed in the contours of the brain nor do they fall from the sky, the closest approximation would be to consider them as historical, that is, if the word history itself did not mean what it does, the airbrushing speech of the victor/vanquished.

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