ChittyChittyBangBang Derrida

Not going to lie, Derrida's article, Differance, was a bit out there for me...there was a lot of "theory" talk: "We provisionally give the name differance to this sameness which is not identical..." (120) ; )
Although from what I gathered he made some interesting points. He referred to some of De Saussure's principles of semiotics. As Sausurre said, "In language there are only differences" (16). According to Derrida, "Differance is neither a word nor a concept..." (120) He points out the separation of difference from differance as, "differance points out the irreducibility of temporalizing...Differance is not simply active; it rather indicates the middle voice..."

Derrida focuses some on the letter A which is the most important difference in differance. With it's a, differance more properly refers to...the origin or production of differences and the differences between differences, the play of difference." Macherey says that, "What is important in the work is what it does not say" (18). Differance could be read as an open text. We need to turn the text inside out to really understand it and read it from multiple angles.

Differance is more than just a word. I found it interesting the way Derrida would speck of letters such as a and e. The structure of a word can influence its signs and meanings so much. Words can mean so many different things. It reminds me of our class discussion about Hebdige. We have a common set of assumptions but some words have different meanings based on people's interests and backgrounds. So words are ambiguous in that sense.