Notes from Differance by Jacques Derrida
Differance
Jacques Derrida
«DIFFERANCE»
Page: 1 (4.17%) @ 19 Mar 2026 02:12:14 AM
In the one case “to differ” signifies nonidentity; in the other case it signifies the order of the same.
By same, did he meant order of the same entity, or, order of the signification of nonidentity?
Page: 2 (8.33%) @ 19 Mar 2026 10:38:12 PM
Differance is neither a word nor a concept. In it, however, we shall see the juncture—rather than the summation—of what has been most decisively inscribed in the thought of what is conveniently called our “epoch”: the difference of forces in Nietzsche, Saussure’s principle of semiological difference, differing as the possibility of [neurone] facilitation,2 impression and delayed effect in Freud, difference as the irreducibility of the trace of the other in Levinas, and the ontic-ontological difference in Heidegger.
Page: 2 (8.33%) @ 19 Mar 2026 10:40:42 PM
I shall speak, then, of a letter—the first one, if we are to believe the alphabet and most of the speculations that have concerned themselves with it.
While this is very poetic, it is not economical in the way I prefer serious text. This is not about style. This paragraph doesn't contain any information in the current context.
Page: 4 (16.67%) @ 19 Mar 2026 11:05:17 PM
The difference between two phonemes, which enables them to exist and to operate, is inaudible. The inaudible opens the two present phonemes to hearing, as they present themselves. If, then, there is no purely phonetic writing, it is because there is no purely phonetic phone. The difference that brings out phonemes and lets them be heard and understood [entendre] itself remains inaudible.
Page: 4 (16.67%) @ 19 Mar 2026 11:10:52 PM
This differance belongs neither to the voice nor to writing in the ordinary sense, and it takes place, like the strange space that will assemble us here for the course of an hour, between speech and writing and beyond the tranquil familiarity that binds us to one and to the other, reassuring us sometimes in the illusion that they are two separate things.
Page: 4 (16.67%) @ 19 Mar 2026 11:13:36 PM
Now, how am I to speak of the a of differance? It is clear that it cannot be exposed. We can expose only what, at a certain moment, can become present, manifest; what can be shown, presented as a present, a being-present in its truth, the truth of a present or the presence of a present. However, if differance is (I also cross out the “is”) what makes the presentation of being-present possible, it never presents itself as such. It is never given in the present or to anyone. Holding back and not exposing itself, it goes beyond the order of truth on this specific point and in this determined way, yet is not itself concealed, as if it were something, a mysterious being, in the occult zone of the nonknowing. Any exposition would expose it to disappearing as a disappearance. It would risk appearing, thus disappearing.
Page: 7 (29.17%) @ 19 Mar 2026 11:24:43 PM
Within a conceptual system and in terms of classical requirements, differance could be said to designate the productive and primordial constituting causality, the process of scission and division whose dif- ferings and differences would be the constituted products or effects.
Page: 7 (29.17%) @ 20 Mar 2026 12:42:08 AM
But philosophy has perhaps commenced by distributing the middle voice, expressing a certain intransitiveness, into the active and the passive voice, and has itself been constituted in this repression.
Page: 8 (33.33%) @ 20 Mar 2026 12:53:42 AM
I shall only note that between differance as temporalizing-temporalization (which we can no longer conceive within the horizon of the present) and what Heidegger says about temporalization in Sein und Zeit (namely, that as the transcendental horizon of the question of being it must be freed from the traditional and metaphysical domination by the present or the now)—between these two there is a close, if not exhaustive and irreducibly necessary, interconnection.
Page: 8 (33.33%) @ 20 Mar 2026 12:56:14 AM
It was Saussure who first of all set forth the arbitrariness of signs and the differential character of signs as principles of general semiology and particularly of linguistics. And, as we know, these two themes—the arbitrary and the differential—are in his view inseparable. Arbitrariness can occur only because the system of signs is constituted by the differences between the terms, and not by their fullness. The elements of signification function not by virtue of the compact force of their cores but by the network of oppositions that distinguish them and relate them to one another. “Arbitrary and differential” says Saussure “are two correlative qualities.”
This creates an illusion of knowledge. The illusion is of degree, not of quality. We think we know because we know the sign of it. In reality, we only know (and that also, partially) the difference between those words.
Page: 9 (37.50%) @ 20 Mar 2026 02:38:38 AM
What we note as differance will thus be the movement of play that “produces” (and not by something that is simply an activity) these differences, these effects of difference. This does not mean that the differance which produces differences is before them in a simple and in itself unmodified and indifferent present. Differance is the nonfull, nonsimple "origin"; it is the structured and differing origin of differences.
Page: 13 (54.17%) @ 20 Mar 2026 07:42:21 PM
We might be tempted by an objection: to be sure, the subject becomes a speaking subject only by dealing with the system of linguistic differences; or again, he becomes a signifying subject (generally by speech or other signs) only by entering into the system of differences. In this sense, certainly, the speaking or signifying subject would not be self-present, insofar as he speaks or signifies, except for the play of linguistic or semiological differance. But can we not conceive of a presence and self-presence of the subject before speech or its signs, a subject’s self-presence in a silent and intuitive consciousness?
Can there really be an intuitive consciousness? If we observe our discovery of self in our childhood, it obviously comes after a rudimentary language, and a practice of signification, therefore differance, already quite in practice in that stage of our life.
Page: 16 (66.67%) @ 20 Mar 2026 08:03:50 PM
The concept of trace (Spur), of facilitation (Bahnung), of forces of facilitation are, as early as the composition of the Entwurf, inseparable from the concept of difference. The origin of memory and of the psyche as a memory in general (conscious or unconscious) can only be described by taking into account the difference between the facilitation thresholds, as Freud says explicitly. There is no facilitation [Bahnung] without difference and no difference without a trace.
Page: 17 (70.83%) @ 21 Mar 2026 01:34:44 AM
In this context and under this heading, the unconscious is not, as we know, a hidden, virtual, and potential self-presence. It is differed—which no doubt means that it is woven out of differences, but also that it sends out, that it delegates, representatives or proxies; but there is no chance that the mandating subject “exists” somewhere, that it is present or is “itself,” and still less chance that it will become conscious.
Page: 23 (95.83%) @ 21 Mar 2026 02:42:36 AM
What is unnamable here is not some ineffable being that cannot be approached by a name; like God, for example. What is unnamable is the play that brings about the nominal effects, the relatively unitary or atomic structures we call names, or chains of substitutions for names.
Page: 23 (95.83%) @ 21 Mar 2026 02:52:02 AM
Such is the question: the marriage between speech and Being in the unique word, in the finally proper name. Such is the question that enters into the affirmation put into play by differance. The question bears (upon) each of the words in this sentence: “Being / speaks / through every language; / everywhere and always /.”