Derrida: In The Wake of Differance.

“I fear we are not getting rid of God because we still believe in grammar…”[1]
Differance, a name which does not name? A mere spelling mistake? Or perhaps, the site of a grammatical transgression? We are in the midst of a transgression, an error, a graphic mistake, a misapplication of the rules of a proper grammar. It is grammar which rules, or at least provides the rules, which governs its correct usage. All articulations must conform to its rules, to its syntax, to its metaphysic. With this graphic mistake, the ‘a’ of differance, can we not hear the Nietzschean laughter? Perhaps Nietzsche’s laughter would be the only sound which might indicate the site of the grammatical transgression, the site of the graphic ‘a.’ If the ‘a’ does not lend itself to a hearing, to an ear which might be so attentive, does the graphic error have any import in speech? Would the erroneous ‘a’ not simply be passed over in silence? How can Derrida make the in inaudible mistake audible? Or perhaps, how can Derrida speak the unspeakable? Derrida’s treatment of differance is therefore strategic, in the sense that differance is not, and cannot be given to a present glance, or a glance in general. Differance, is not a concept, nor a name, eludes the order of the namable, the visible, or the hearable; is not given to the as such of its non-name, but rather, threatens the possibility of the as such in general. Perhaps, scariest of all, Derrida claims that: “there is neither Being nor truth to the play of writing, insofar as it involves differance.”[2] Shall we be fearful in the wake of differance? Derrida seems to proceed playfully[3] in a Nietzschean manner, in a dance at the end of philosophy, armed with a kind of laughter[4], perhaps at our expense.
How do we proceed in the wake of this silent spelling mistake, this differance? Or is everything, perhaps, merely the wake of differance? Differance, at once a “sameness,” which is not identical to itself, and a “unity” which defies all unification, does not purport to rule, but rather subverts all rulers. Differance at once means to differ as spacing, as non-identity, and to defer as sameness, delay and temporalization. Although given in the form of a sign[5], differance is not of the order of signs. Signs represent the present in its absence, differance has never been present, it is therefore of a different type. It is differance which allows the going forth of the sign which represents the present. The differences, at the heart of Saussurean diacritics, are the effects of differance. This non-concept, which opens up the possibility of all signification, refers to an order, which is not the order of western metaphysics, not the order of decidability. Signification becomes possible, only insofar as each present presence retains a ‘trace’ of something other than itself, which is in turn emptied of its sense by its relation to a future element. In this movement, the movement of differance, everything is divided and indecisive. The infinitive “ance” of differance seems to textualize the indecision, between the active or the passive sense. In Derrida’s treatment everything is strategic, tactical, if differance can appear as a sign, yet at the same time remain relegated to silence, to invisibility, what does this say about the sign?

The silent mistake, the “a” of differance, would have been missed in a speech, it can only be rendered graphic. In the relation between speech and writing, if we are attentive, we can see the difference between differance in writing and differance in speech. One differance, the graphic one, can be accounted for, or reckoned with, the other cannot. Is this not the difference of differance? Does the movement of differance not hold us in relation to what appears as merely accidental, to what seems to be beyond the opposition of presence and absence? Difference maintains a relation to a certain alterity, which is neither present nor absent, in the sense that an absence might be rendered present. The trace of a certain other, an unconscious in the Freudian metaphysic, is maintained by differance; but neither the trace, nor differance, is given to a present or to a past. We are left with mere traces, which are self-effacing, which disappear in appearing, which cannot be made present and are not part of the regime of presence. The trace must efface itself in its “issuing forth”:
“The effacement of this early trace (die Fruhe Spur) of difference is therefore “the same” as its tracing within the text of metaphysics. The metaphysical text must have retained a mark of what it lost or put in reserve, set aside.[6]
Is this perhaps the site of the forgetting of the difference between Being and beings? Are we at the site of a profound forgetting, a forgetting which has animated the entire history of western philosophy?
“Being has always made “sense” has always been conceived or spoken of as such, only by dissimulating itself in beings; thus, in a particular and very strange way, difference (is) “older” than the ontological difference or the truth of Being.”[7]
How are we to think the outside, beyond the text of western metaphysics? If Derrida’s treatment of differance has been strategic this is due, no doubt, to the fact that there is no outside, only an inside. The inside of grammar, the God, whose eradication Nietzsche feared would be delayed, or deferred, perhaps indefinitely. The shadow looms large in the wake of the death of God. Does it make any sense to live in the hope of a name, which would render the graphic mistake thinkable? Would this quest, the quest for a name, which Derrida calls Heideggerian, not make of grammar an absolute God? If we affirm differance, the permanently provisional, which seems to question the grammar of the question, which seems to omit the possibility of a name which names, we must do so in a playful manner, perhaps with a laugh or a grin.



[1] Freidrich Nietzsche. Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ. Trans. R.J. Hollingdale. Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1974. p. 38.
[2] Jaucques Derrida. Speech and Phenomena: And Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs. Trans. David B. Allison. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. p. 158.
[3] The concept of play here taken in the sense Derrida gives it as a unity of chance and necessity.
[4] “Laughter.- Laughter means: being schadenfroh but with a good conscience.” Freidrich Nietzsche. The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1974. p. 207.
[5] Signs, taken in the Saussurean diacritical sense, as arbitrary and differential.
[6] Derrida. Speech and Phenomena. P. 156.
[7] Ibid., p. 154.