Written Assignment Paper - 4

Department of English,M. K. Bhavnagar University     

Name :-  Niyati Vyas

Roll No :- 14

Department :-M. A.English department

Semester :-  3

Paper No :-  204 Contemporary Western Theories And Film Studies 

UNIT - 1 Derrida And Deconstruction 

ASSIGNMENT TOPIC - Concept of DifferAnce by Derrida.                    

                                         This blog is a part of my academic written assignments.                    

                                  Différance is a French term coined by Jacques Derrida.It is a central concept in Derrida's deconstruction, a critical outlook concerned with the relationship between text and meaning. The term différance means "difference and deferral of meaning."

                                Derrida first uses the term différance in his 1963 paper "Cogito et histoire de la folie".The term différance then played a key role in Derrida's engagement with the philosophy of Edmund Husserl in Speech and Phenomena. The term was then elaborated in various other works, notably in his essay "Différance" and in various interviews collected in Positions.

                             In the essay "Différance" Derrida indicates that différance gestures at a number of heterogeneous features that govern the production of textual meaning. The first (relating to deferral) is the notion that words and signs can never fully summon forth what they mean, but can only be defined through appeal to additional words, from which they differ. Thus, meaning is forever "deferred" or postponed through an endless chain of signifiers. 

                              The second (relating to difference, sometimes referred to as espacement or "spacing") concerns the force that differentiates elements from one another, and in so doing engenders binary oppositions and hierarchies that underpin meaning itself.

                                        A term related to the idea of différance in Derrida's thought is the supplement, "itself bound up in a supplementary play of meaning which defies semantic reduction."

                                  Différance is a term that Derrida coins on the basis of a pun that the French language makes possible. An understanding of this term is helpful because it can explain a lot about Derrida’s apparently “mischievous” playing with language and ideas. I put “mischievous” in quotation marks because many people have misunderstood the powerful implications of his witty strategy. The pun is possible because in French the word différer can mean either to differ or to defer, depending on context. Différence can mean to differ from something or to defer something.

                                        If I was comparing two different objects of the same generic type (this hat is different from this one) I’d use différer just as I would if I was putting off an appointment (let's defer it until a time when we’ll both be free). The one, take note, implies spatiality (difference), the other implies temporality (deferral). What Derrida is asking us to do is to combine both, normally mutually exclusive, meanings in the one new term différance. 

                                             Because the term has passed into the English language (at least in theoretical registers) I’ll not be maintaining the italicised and accented French form from now on. The pun involves the use of the little letter “a.”

                                                        The French différence might mean either difference or deferral. Derrida’s new term, spelt with an “a” instead of an “e,” should be taken to mean both difference and deferral simultaneously. The first part of the pun we can call the performative--or auto-referential--aspect. What this means is that by both differing from itself (it means two different things at once) and deferring until infinity any final meaning (it cannot at any one time mean both differ and defer) the word itself is a performance of its meaning. Differance just is what differance means.

                                          The second part of the pun involves the fact that Derrida’s misspelling is only noticeable when the word is written. Saying différence and différance makes no difference in French, it is pronounced the same way with or without the alteration. What this brings to our attention is the difference between phoneme (audible mark) and grapheme (written, visible mark) and a certain imperceptibility of the difference. It is this imperceptible difference that Derrida is using, in his “Differance” article, to draw our attention to the permanently absent, inaudible and invisible trace.

                                           So we can say that Differance is the word that Derrida coins to describe and perform the way in which any single meaning of a concept or text arises only by the effacement of other possible meanings, which are themselves only deferred, left over, for their possible activation in other contexts. Differance thus both describes and performs the situation, or the conditions, under which all identities and meanings can occur--so that any text can be repeated in an infinite number of possible contexts for an infinite number of potential but undetermined addressees. It is a powerful modification of the ordinary notions of identity and difference. 

                                         It is possible to speak of things, words and concepts because it is not possible to present the absence that differance (which is supposedly neither a word nor a concept) designates. When reading Derrida it is useful to get a sense early on of what he is trying to say. The first thing to come to terms with is the fact that what he is trying to say cannot in any ordinary sense be said. 

 

                                    To say the unsayable is impossible. However the general message is that without this missing unsayable thing--there would be nothing to say at all ever and no possibility of saying it anyway. This is the possibility that Derrida calls (with characteristic perversity but also for very good historical reasons) writing. The Derridean process can be made visible however.