Derrida: On "Writing and Difference"
Derrida's text, Writing and Difference, is comprised of various essays dealing with topics as diverse as the violence of metaphysics, the poet Antonin Artaud, the theater of cruelty, and a reading of Sigmund Freud. He devotes much of his text to discussion of Levinas, Hegel, and Heidegger and to some extent, Plato and Socrates. His references also include in smaller part Maurice Blanchot, Levi-Strauss, Kafka, Montaigne, Feuerbach, and various aspects of the Hebraic tradition and/or ideology. Derrida's aim throughout this collection of essays is to develop his idea of deconstruction as well as the concept of difference within writing.
The first few essays gradually develop and illuminate Derrida's idea of deconstruction. Rather than let his reader know what deconstruction is, Derrida lets him know what deconstruction is not. Deconstruction is not a form of analysis, a critique, a method, an act, an operation, or, as the word itself seems to imply, destruction. Rather, deconstruction is what Derrida calls an openness to the Other that "present[s] himself as absence" (103). He maintains, furthermore, that all speech is for the other and therefore, no logos as "absolute knowledge" can "comprehend dialogue and the trajectory toward the other" and that this "rupture of logosopens speech" (98). He is very concerned with the openings in speech and writing and describes them in terms of wounds and abscesses; he is very concerned with what these cracks in speech and/or writing reveal, and what fills these cracks. In a more general sense, Derrida's framing of deconstruction is that it destroys the claim of one dominating form of signification over another and ends up subverting most of the Western metaphysical tradition. Deconstruction illustrates how all texts shift and become increasingly complex in meaning when read in terms of the assumptions they raise and the questions they ask within themselves. That is, deconstruction is a kind of analytical reading of a text that brings to light the difference within the text itself.
Difference is very important to Derrida important enough for him to dedicate an entire compilation to its exploration. According to Derrida in the first few essays, meaning exists and is out there, and he describes it in the same terms as he describes the closure of the book. "It is there, but out there, beyondbut eluding us there" (300). However, the meaning that indubitably exists (though Derrida does not equate meaning with knowledge and does not seem to believe in "absolute knowledge") cannot be found out or articulate by Western metaphysics because the texts get in the way. This is why difference in the texts is so crucial to understanding to understanding writing, the place of writing, meaning, deconstruction, and understanding in general.
The word differnce is defined somewhat within the text as referring to the act of postponing or deferring. It is important to note that according to Derrida, the differnce is not a word or a concept or even a thing, just as deconstruction is not a method or operation. It is a complicated concept, and Derrida outlined an excellent example as he attempted to explain the differnce to his reader. Rather than positing the differnce in terms of writing and/or speech, Derrida takes a different look at it by applying it to the body, or to the I-body. More specifically, he explores how the individual is at once the I and the Other, illustrating innate differnce within the individual body of the individual I.
In his essay on Antonin Artaud, Derrida focuses on the act of speaking and writes:
As soon as I am heard, as soon as I hear myself, the I who hears itself, who hears me, becomes the I who speaks and takes speech from the I who thinks that he speaks and is heard in his own name; and becomes the I who takes speech without ever cutting off the I who thinks that he speaks. (177-8)
There are two different I's within the I, according to Derrida. The I who speaks always finds that its words are stolen before he says them, before he thinks them. Derrida expands this idea and claims that the I's birth has been stolen from him, that the I has been stolen from the I by the Other and the Other is God. The origin is eluded as the subject vainly searches for something that is always already missing. In this act of furtive stealing, God inserts himself between "myself" and "myself" filling up an opening that we can then relate to the opening in speech that Derrida had discussed earlier.
In providing this example, Derrida makes it easier to understand the differnce in words in comparison to the differnce in the I. Derrida's differnce deals with how words and even theories are different from other words or theories, and that this difference gives them their meaning. It is the idea of a negative definition that at this point in the text seems typical of Derrida's style: it is the method of defining or ascribing meaning to something not by what it is but what it is not.
For example, the word box. The word "box" is different in meaning from "chest," "container," "carton," "lox," "fox," and so on. Some of the alternative words in the list are synonyms for "box" but describe a very different kind of box. For example, a chest might be a kind of box in which valuables are stored; it might refer to the kind of boxes used by pirates, and so on. A container might refer to a Tupperware container used to store food; carton might refer to a packing carton or a carton of milk. All are boxes, but all are not boxes. The other words, lox and fox, are like box in that they sound like box. Otherwise, there is virtually no convergence of meaning. Furthermore, the word box when it appears in a sentence or thought will be followed by other words that will further define and refine its meaning. It is because of this that Derrida asserts that meaning is never full or complete, just like the closure of a book. Meaning, like the beyond of closure of a book, is ever elusive.
Derrida's main argument in Writing and Difference is that Western metaphysics obstructs meaning, and that it is important to deconstruct writing and discover the differnce in terms of both individual words and thoughts.
Derrida, Jacques. Writing and Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.