1

I am very perplexed by the concept of différance. Is it even a concept at all? I've had some sources saying otherwise. How should I interpret this?

4
  • See Zeynep Direk & Leonard Lawlor (editor), A Companion to Derrida, Wiley-Blackwell (2014), Ch.3 Difference. Sep 16, 2017 at 19:55
  • Could you perhaps say something about what you understand différance to be?
    – ig0774
    Sep 17, 2017 at 15:15
  • 1
    Could you make this more specific after reading, say, Wikipedia's Différance? The word is a play on "difference", in that "meaning" is constituted merely by differences between signs in a structure, and "deferral", in that meaning is perpetually deferred because every use changes the structure, and therefore all meanings it constitutes. Différance is the central concept of Derrida's philosophy, kind of like determinate negation is for Hegel, but Hegel's intent was to find objective meanings while Derrida's is to deconstruct them altogether.
    – Conifold
    Sep 17, 2017 at 20:50
  • Linked to structuralism and to the linguist De Saussure with his theory about languages and systems of signs; Cours de linguistique générale (1916): "In language there are only differences. A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas". Sep 18, 2017 at 11:19

0

You must log in to answer this question.

Browse other questions tagged .