Jacques Derrida on Differance

At first look, this reading was extremely confusing in regards to difference in the meanings of the words "difference" and "differance". As I type, the autocorrect wants the second word to be corrected to the double e spelling instead of with an a. This shows what Derrida is discussing when he says "in fact or theory we can always erase or lessen this spelling mistake" (280). As a writer using a computer, there is no way to explain meaning when using the word "differance"with the a spelling.

In an act of writing, however, words can be used to explain the meaning and use of the a spelling. Derrida uses words and the concept of time and space to discuss difference that produces presence. Presence does not provide truthful substance. The differance that Derrida discusses calls into question time and space, it has neither existence or essence. It can be compared to language in a system where signs do not have essential meanings or the original "differ", in which it would mean to be unlike the other. The language in which signs do not have essential meaning is when reality is considered "textual"and everything is a signifier of another signifier. The meaning of differance comes about in this text because it makes the point that the presence produced by difference is not what it has always been thought to be.

When meaning is not present within a sign, and when signs only have signification in their relation to one another, then we are relying on an idea similar to that of putting speech above writing instead of the two on the same level. We can only expose the presence that we are currently in. Any other presence is a past or a future and cannot be described in the same way an existing presence can be described. Derrida says that we "question the authority of presence or its simple symmetrical contrary, absence or lack." (285) This absence is a constraint of our language in taking on the exigence and speaking to an audience about the rhetorical situation.

Derrida, Jacques. “Différance.” Literary Theory: An Anthology, Second Edition. Ed. Julie Rivkin and
Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Wiley/Blackwell, 2004. 278-288.