Gwatter06, Derrida

Back to the beginning it seems, Derrida was one of those difficult reads, similar to that of Lyotard and such. Derrida just seemed to be circular in his thoughts, while reading the excerpt I felt as though the theorist repetitively said the same thing over and over just in different fashions at times, creating a very dense reading. Although the reading was quite tough, I was able to somewhat grasp the gist of the author’s concepts and meanings behind the literature. Early on the reader is introduced to Derrida’s early explanation of differance and how it relates to difference and what its signification is in literature. Derrida explains, “With it’s a, differance more properly refers to what in classical language would be called the origin or production of differences and the differences between differences, the play [jeu] of differences. Its locus and operation will therefore be seen wherever speech appeals to difference” (120). What I believe Derrida is describing here is that differance refers to the creation of difference. It is obviously not a word, but implemented in our language and understanding of language it creates what we know difference not to be, hence giving us the capacity to realize and produce difference within literature. He explains this by stating that “differance is neither a word nor concept” rather it relates to “what has been most decisively inscribed in the thought of what is conveniently called our ‘epoch’” (120). I believe that this relates to a topic that we covered early on in the course in which was attempting to signify postmodernism (what it is and what time it is from). I think that Derrida relates differance as inscribing our era, and this injection of differance, in which theorist like Nietzsche, Sussure, Freud, Levinas and Heidegger strive off of, actually relates to the era of postmodernism. Another interesting concept that I came across in the reading was Derrida’s understanding and implementation of language in our society. Derrida concurs that “Language is necessary for the spoken word to be intelligible and so that it can produce all of its effects” (130). This basically explains that without language, words would have no meaning and we would lose our comprehension in society as a whole. This closely relates to De Sausser’s notion that, “without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula.” There were many other concepts that Derrida closely relates to De Sausser, such as his explanation of the system of linguistic differences and how it applies to the signifier and the signified in which he explains that without these differences can a subject become a signifying subject. All in all Derrida was a dense read, but still a unique and intriguing one.