Différance is a term Derrida coined in 1968 in response to structuralist theories of language such as Saussure's structuralist linguistics. While Saussure managed to demonstrate that language can be shown to be a system of differences without positive terms, it was Derrida who opened the full implications of such a conception. There is an unconceptualizable, unperceivable dimension in language in the thinking of difference without positive terms making difference itself the prototype of a remainder outside Western metaphysical thought -it is thus the very condition of the possibility of Western thought. Such a conception of difference is not brought into an order of the same in language through any concept, common sense or given identity, nor is difference an identity, nor is it between two identities. It is the deferral of difference — différance. Derrida developed terms whose structures are inherently double in this manner: pharmakon (both poison and cure), supplement (both surplus and necessary addition, and hymen (both inside and outside).
Further to Derrida's critique of structural linguists is the limited and colloquial definition of writing they used in the championing of speech. Writing is seen here to be graphic, empty of all complexities, fundamentally phonetic (and hence a representation of the sound of language) utile for memory but secondary to speech. Speech is considered by the structuralists to be closer to the thought, primary emotions, intentions and ideas of the speaker. Derrida introduces a graphic element into his spelling of différance that cannot be detected by the voice. The effect of punctuation and spaces in the body of the text is another example of the unrepresentable dimensions available to writing, revealing both that writing cannot be thought of as entirely phonetic, nor that speech is entirely auditory. Spaces in writing are perceptible as the unpresentable silences in speech.
Derrida's oeuvre could be viewed as an exploration of the nature of writing in the broadest sense as différance. To the extent that writing always includes pictographic, ideographic, and phonetic elements, it is not identical with itself. Writing, then, is always impure and, as such, challenges the notion of identity, and ultimately the notion of the origin as 'simple'. It is neither entirely present nor absent, but is the trace resulting from its own erasure in the drive towards transparency. Writing is neither essential nor phenomenal, it is not what is produced but what allows for the possibility of production. In meditations on themes from literature, art and psychoanalysis, as well as from the history of philosophy, part of Derrida's strategy is to make visible the 'impurity' of writing (and any identity), often by deploying rhetorical, graphic, and poetic strategies at once. Blurring boundaries between disciplines in his texts, such as in Glas (1974) or The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond (1980), Derrida shows the inseparable nature between the poetic and/or rhetorical, signifying element of a text, and the content or meaning, the signified element of the text
Further to Derrida's critique of structural linguists is the limited and colloquial definition of writing they used in the championing of speech. Writing is seen here to be graphic, empty of all complexities, fundamentally phonetic (and hence a representation of the sound of language) utile for memory but secondary to speech. Speech is considered by the structuralists to be closer to the thought, primary emotions, intentions and ideas of the speaker. Derrida introduces a graphic element into his spelling of différance that cannot be detected by the voice. The effect of punctuation and spaces in the body of the text is another example of the unrepresentable dimensions available to writing, revealing both that writing cannot be thought of as entirely phonetic, nor that speech is entirely auditory. Spaces in writing are perceptible as the unpresentable silences in speech.
Derrida's oeuvre could be viewed as an exploration of the nature of writing in the broadest sense as différance. To the extent that writing always includes pictographic, ideographic, and phonetic elements, it is not identical with itself. Writing, then, is always impure and, as such, challenges the notion of identity, and ultimately the notion of the origin as 'simple'. It is neither entirely present nor absent, but is the trace resulting from its own erasure in the drive towards transparency. Writing is neither essential nor phenomenal, it is not what is produced but what allows for the possibility of production. In meditations on themes from literature, art and psychoanalysis, as well as from the history of philosophy, part of Derrida's strategy is to make visible the 'impurity' of writing (and any identity), often by deploying rhetorical, graphic, and poetic strategies at once. Blurring boundaries between disciplines in his texts, such as in Glas (1974) or The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond (1980), Derrida shows the inseparable nature between the poetic and/or rhetorical, signifying element of a text, and the content or meaning, the signified element of the text