| DifferAnce is an anglo-saxonized version of the french
word for differance which, I'm told, sounds like the word
"difference" in French, but is spelled differently. I
wanted a way to make this term conspicuously different from
difference and easy to type, so I have used a capital A in
the middle of the word. In published writings, I, and
others, sometimes use differance. The exact
way to write this term in English, however, has not been
entirely established. At any rate, "differAnce" is a term
that Derrida coined. Derrida also is responsibility for the
popularity of the word "deconstruction' in our postmodern
vocabularly. "Deconstruction", however, is a term he
harvested from a little known use of the word
"deconstruction" in Heidegger.
What follows is is me quoting Derrida and reflecting on
his term differAnce in my paper that has recently been
called the "Pomo Primer". It is referenced at the end of
this note.
The word "differAnce", spelled with an "a", is a
coined
term, and Derrida contrasts it with the vernacular
term
"difference". Patterns of "Difference," he explains,
[are ]
'produced' - deferred -- by 'differance'"
(Derrida, 1982,
p.14). But what does this mean? That difference is
deferred
by differAnce?
Imagine observing a quilt on the wall with patches
of yellow,
blue and white. If you notice the yellow and the
non-yellow,
you see a pattern of concentric boxes. If you notice
the
blue and the non-blue you see a checkered design.
Each
pattern is a play of differences, but it is a
different set
of differences when yellow is differentiated from
non-yellow
than when blue is differentiated from non-blue, a
different
set of differences that shows us different patterns.
What is interesting about this shift from one
pattern to
the other is that it not only calls our attention to
a
new pattern, but that it suppresses our awareness of
the
other pattern. DifferAnce, defers a pattern of
differences
(say the pattern of differences between the blue and
the
not-blue). That is, one pattern of differences
pushes
into the background another possible play of patterns.
You cannot study the pattern of yellows and the
pattern
of blues at the same time because differAnce causes
one or the other patterns to be "deferred".
DifferAnce
is the hidden way of seeing things that is deferred
out of awareness by our distraction with the imagery
that captures our attention. Because it contains
this
other way to see things "DifferAnce is
the...formation of
form."(Derrida, 1976, p.63). It is the "historical
and epochal 'unfolding' of Being..."(Derrida, 1982,
22).
DifferAnce might be related gestalt switch in looking at
an ambiguous picture. It is, on the one hand, what is
pushed to the background, the pattern created by the blue
and white, say, and it is also what is able to push the
other pattern into the background. It is what causes one or
the other pattern to be deferred.
from:
Shawver, L. (1996). What Postmodernism Can Do for
Psychoanalysis: A Guide to the Postmodern Vision. The
American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 56(4), pp.371-394.
Derrida, J. (1976). Grammatology. Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins
Derrida, J. (1982a). Differance. In J. Derrida (Ed.),
Margins of Philosophy, pp. 3-27. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press.
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