Daisy, Derrida

Reading Derrida was difficult due to the fact that he dwells on ideas we discussed in the beginning of the semester, such as difference. Derrida is concerned at looking into words and what makes them function. Difference allows the words to function and be set apart from each other. The signification of a word is made-up of all the things that it is not. For example, the word dog is able to create a meaning due to how it differs from other objects.
Derrida, a French philosopher, talked about the term differance with an –a. This is a French term, which means both to defer and to differ. To Derrida, this word then has two significations, “in the one case, ‘to differ’ signifies nonidentity; in the other case it signifies the order of the same” (120). Putting an –a in place of an –e, makes the word different, and it coincides better with being different.
While Derrida puts an –a in place of an –e, it still looks the same, so when I viewed it I immediately thought of the word difference. The missing –e did not change my interpretation of the word. So to me, difference and differance represent sameness to me. So was Derrida trying to be different by adding the –a, or was he showing us that there really isn’t difference.
This made me think of Adorno and his idea of sameness. One the outside, things look different to us, like the word differance might look to some people, but going back to the origin of the word is sameness. A word as a signifier causes many different significations, but the “epoch” or origin of the word is the same. Like Saussure talked about, language is about difference. The connection and significations between the person and referent is arbitrary, however, the origin of the referent is the same for everyone. I’m looking forward to class tomorrow to help get rid of some of my confusion.