Major Authors

Différance Derrida takes Saussure's notion of the linguistic sign a step (ok, a lot of steps) further. Saussure emphasized the way in which we make sense of signifiers based on their difference from other signifiers ("cat" differs from "pat," "cap," "hat," and so on--this is how we process language). The emphasis here is on phonetic differentiation. Derrida adds to this sense of difference his notion of "différance," a neologism coming from the two senses of the French word "différer": "to defer" and "to differ." Take the most straightforward example: how do I define the word "difficult"? I look it up in the dictionary, which, unfortunately, is not full of all sorts of wonderful actual signifieds, but just provides me with a list of other possible signifiers: "complicated," "hard," "challenging," etc. No matter how hard I try, I can never make the signified present; I am caught in an endless chain of signifiers leading toward signifieds that are in themselves signifiers of other signfieds, and so on. Therefore, the condition of language itself is différance: the difference of words from one another and the endless deferral of what they mean, in the sense of a fully present signified. (Think, by the way, of how far the Symbolists go to establish a fully present signified: when I name a thing, I make it present.) Two concepts related to Derrida's view of language are the trace and supplementarity. Each signifier, if it means anything, means as a result of difference from a virtually infinite number of other signifiers. These other signifiers are not present, yet they are not completely absent, either, since they help to establish whatever meaning the given signifier takes on. This is the trace, a kind of residue of all of the other meanings that any given signifier does not appear to have, but on which it depends for its own meaning. In this context, of course, the idea of any utterance having an exact, unique, definitive meaning is an illusion. All that we really have is the play of signification. Moreover, although language seems to lack something--the presence of the signified--it more than makes up for this through what Derrida refers to as the supplement, the "superabundance" of the signifier. Remember, a "supplement" is something that adds to another thing, while not being part of it. This is precisely the way signifiers work, in their différance. That supplement, while not present in any given signifier, adds to the play of signification of the signifier. Hence, any utterance always has many more potential meanings than it appears to need, and some of those meanings may go in entirely different directions--hence, they way in which texts can deconstruct themselves in their attempts to mean something. They meaning something, nothing, and potentially everything at the same time. (Compare this with Roland Barthes and the "irreducible plurality" of meaning.)

Major Authors

Revised: May 21, 2003

Contact: Prof. Christine Roth or Cary Henson