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What does Derrida’s différance actually claim about meaning?

Khady Sène Fellow
· 4 replies
Meaning & languageContinentalModern EuropeanStructuralism & post-structuralismFerdinand de SaussureJacques DerridaJohn Searle#deconstruction#derrida#differance#saussure
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Every year one or two bright students in my terminale class discover Derrida online and come to class announcing that “there is nothing outside the text”, which they take to mean that nothing is real except words. The others are either impressed or furious.

I'd like to explain it properly, and I'll admit my own training was more Descartes and Senghor than Derrida. I know that Saussure argued that a sign is arbitrary and that meaning comes from differences within the system of signs. I know Derrida coined différance, with an “a”, from that background.

Can someone explain clearly: what is différance, what does the famous line about the text actually say, and is it a claim about language only, or about reality as well?

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4 answers

Accepted answer

  1. Claire Dubois

    ✓ Accepted answer Fellow

    Start from Saussure. In the Course in General Linguistics, put together by his students after his death, a sign's value comes not from a link to a thing but from its differences from other signs: “cat” means what it does because it isn't “bat”, “cap”, “dog”. Derrida pushes this. If each sign's meaning depends on other signs, which depend on others, the meaning is never fully present in any one sign at any moment. It's always spread out across differences and postponed along a chain.

    Différance combines both senses of the French différer: to differ and to defer. The spelling with “a” sounds the same as différence in French; you only see the difference in writing. That's deliberate, aimed at the philosophical habit of treating speech as the place where meaning is fully present.

    The line in Of Grammatology (1967) is il n'y a pas de hors-texte, better translated “there is no outside-text”. It does not say the world doesn't exist. It says there is no access to meaning that escapes interpretation and context, no point outside all reading. Derrida later glossed it himself as: there is nothing outside context.

    So it's a claim about meaning and interpretation, not a denial of reality. Your students can keep the trees.

    Helpful · 1

Other answers

  1. Oskar Nyberg

    Fellow

    From the analytic side, the obvious question: if meaning is never fully present, how do we communicate so successfully? Derrida had a famous exchange with John Searle in the late 1970s over Austin's speech act theory, and it was not a meeting of minds. My own view is that Derrida describes something true about interpretation but overstates its consequences for ordinary communication. Your students should know the debate exists.

    Helpful · 2
  2. Kenneth Lam Chi-ho

    Fellow

    A comparative warning, since some readers link différance to Buddhist ideas. Since the 1980s people have compared Derrida with Nāgārjuna, and there are real echoes: no self-present essence, meaning dependent on what it is not. But Dignāga's apoha, which also works by exclusion, is a theory of how concepts track real particulars. Derrida isn't trying to track anything. Shape is shared; the project isn't.

    Helpful · 3
  3. Khady Sène

    Fellow

    Merci, Claire. “Your students can keep the trees” is going on the board. It also gives me a way to set Derrida beside Senghor, who wanted presence, rhythm and immediate participation in things. One philosopher who distrusts presence and one who celebrates it: that's a good exam question.