Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, pp

Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, pp.17-31

Deconstruction is a reading of a text that exhibits its origin in diffrance. It means finding the oppositions that structure a text, i.e., seeing how, trying to say one thing, the text also says the reverse.

Before we consider Derridas deconstruction of Husserls text, we should look at the text itself.

The text is simply the first part of the first of Husserls six Logical Investigations. This small fragment indicates, stands for, the whole of Husserls corpus!

Deconstructing it, one can, according to Derrida, deconstruct the whole of Husserls phenomenology.

What does Husserl say in this small text.

He makes a number of preliminary distinctions.

The first is between expressive and indicative signs

He writes, Every sign is a sign for something, but not every sign has meaning, a sense that the sign expresses (Logical Investigations, tr. Findlay, 2 vols. New York: Humanities Press, 1970, [here after cited as Husserl 1970]. p. 269).

Expressions are distinguished by being meaningful signs (ibid., p. 275). What they express is a meaning or sense.

Thus, the word, horse expresses one sense, the word, house, another.

The case is different with indications.

All sorts of things can serve as indicative signs.

A brand can be seen as the sign of a slave. A chalk mark can indicate a house to be robbed.

Although they are deliberately produced, these signs do not by themselves have meaning. Their relation is not that of expression, but rather that of one thing standing for another (ibid., p. 270).

Behind this is a relation of beliefs. All indicative relations share the common circumstance that a belief in the existence of one thing motivates the belief in another.

The motivation to proceed from one to the other is based on association (ibid., p. 273-4).

By contrast, the relation between an expression and the sense it expresses is not a question of belief. The expression seems to point away from itself to its sense. But this pointing, Husserl writes, is not an indication ... . The existence of the sign neither motivates the existence of the meaning, nor, properly expressed, our belief in the meanings existence (ibid., p. 279).

What we have here is a distinction of two types of functioning.

The same sign can have both an indicative and expressive function.

In communicative speech, this double functioning is absolutely required. Thus, in speaking to another, a person must not just produce an articulate sound-complex. [H]e must, Husserl writes, endow it with a sense in certain acts of mind, a sense he desires to share with his auditors. Expressing this sense, the sound complex becomes an expression.

Yet, for it to function as such in communicative speech, it must also function as an indication. The auditor must take the speaker to be a person, who is not merely uttering sounds but is speaking to him, who is accompanying those sounds with certain sense-giving acts ... (Husserl 1970, p. 277).

Thus, the sign, house, can express some object out there. It can also indicate my mental act of endowing the sound with a sense.

For Husserl, these two forms of functioning are not coextensive. Signs can function expressively without indicating anything.

Thus, Husserl writes, that indication is not the genus of which an expression is the species. To mean is not a particular way if being a sign in the sense of indicating something (Husserl 1970, p. 269). If it were, then all expressions would also have an indicative function. In communicative speech they do. Mental acts are always indicated by our spoken worlds. We cannot see such acts directly. Something must stand in their place as a mark for them.

Speaking with others, however, is not our only type of discourse. We also speak to ourselves.

When we do, the expressive function continues, but the indicative one drops away.

In Husserls words, ... expressions also play a great part in uncommunicated, interior mental life. They continue to have meanings as they had before (ibid., p. 278). They do not, however, function as indications.

It is not the case that in soliloquy one speaks to oneself, and employs words as signs, i.e., as indications, of ones own inner experiences (ibid., p. 279).

The reason for this is that indications stand for their referents. But such standing for seems out of place when the referent itself is present. Given the referent, we have no motivation to employ a substitute for it. In Husserls words: In monologue words can perform no function of indicating the existence of mental acts, since such indication would there be quite purposeless. For the acts in question are themselves experienced by us at that very moment (ibid., p. 280).

In interior monologue, then, we are in our mental life, self-present without any mediation.

The words in their expressive function do not indicate the mental acts. They do not stand for them.

The question here is: what is there relation to such acts? Are they these act themselves? If not, why would we not say that they have an indicative function? Do they have no relation? Are they simply to things lying side by side?

Husserls answer rather complex. It involves, first of all, a further distinction between indication and expression.

It concerns their relation to their referent. Referring in the case of indications is a matter of standing for something. This is a direct relation where the existence of one thing brings about the belief in another.

By contrast, an expressions relation to its referent is mediated by its sense. The expression refers through its sense.

In so doing, it has the possibility of having its reference confirmed by a direct experience of the referent. There can be a fulfillment of its sense in a corresponding intuition.

In Husserls words, the meaning conferring acts or the meaning intentions which endow an expression with sense can be fulfilled by the meaning fulfilling acts which actualize their relation to objects. When this occurs, the intended sense of an expression, e.g., the book is on the table, is intuitively confirmed.

We see the object on the table and agree with the assertion.

Since the assertions reference is mediated through its sense, there is here a double identification. We grasp the spoken sounds in terms of their sense, and grasp this sense in terms of a corresponding intuitive presence. As Husserl puts this: The sounded word is first made one with the meaning-intention, and this in its turn is made one with its corresponding meaning fulfillment (Husserl 1970, p. 281).

Behind this double identification is the fact that the meaning conferring act that gives meaning to my words is the same act that gives meaning to intuitive presence.

Thus, the act that allows me to understand the words of a language fails in a foreign language. All I hear are verbal noises. When I do understand a language I understand the meaning intentions attached to its words. So I understand, e.g., that casa has the same intention as house. What is this intention? It is that of grasping a one in many. I interpret the multiple experiences I have as experiences of some object. In Husserls words:

It belongs to perception that something appears within it, but interpretation makes up what we term appearance--be it correct or not, anticipatory or overdrawn. The house appears to me through no other way but that I interpret in a certain fashion actually experienced contents of sensation. ... They are termed appearances or, better, appearing contents precisely for the reason that they are contents of perceptive interpretation (Logische Untersuchungen ed. Ursula Panzer. Husserliana XIX, 2 Vols. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984, p. 762).

For Husserl, perceptual experiences--e.g., particular contents of sensation--achieve their status as appearances of some object through interpretation. The interpretation places them in a framework of identity in multiplicity. This happens whenever we continually take them in the same sense.

As Husserl writes in describing how we suppose ourselves to perceptually grasp one and the same object through the change of experiential contents, different perceptual contents are given, but they are interpreted, apperceived in the same sense, ... the interpretation (Auffassung) according to this sense is a character of experience which first constitutes the being of the object for me (ibid., p. 397).

This is the sense that my words express. Thus, I confirm my verbal assertions by first grasping their meaning intentions. I do this by taking them as the interpretative senses of some perception. I then see if the perceptions I am actually having confirm this interpretation. If they do, the verbal assertion is confirmed.

Back to the question. What is the relation of the words in solitary mental life to my mental acts. Husserls answer is that they do not indicate the acts. Insofar as they function as words, we concentrate on their senses: but these senses are those of the mental acts. So the words, taken as expressive meanings, are the interpretative senses or interpretative intentions of our perceptual acts.

Is this sufficient. Can we reduce the words that float in our heads when we are thinking about something to the senses they express. Can we eliminate the empirical elementthe actual words in the actual language we happen to be thinking infrom internal soliloquy

Derridas critique of this involves two oppositions: The first concerns the status of the sign. Is the sign prior to the truth or posterior?

If the latter is the case, one would subject sign to truth, language to being, speech to thought, and writing to speech. So the order is writing, speech, thought, being, truth. Truth is the correspondence of being and thought. Intuition is that through which this correspondence is verified. Speech is true insofar as it corresponds to thought (the sense of what we say). Writing is true insofar as it corresponds to speech (represents it accurately).

If the former is the case, if the sign prior to the truth, then the activity of signification although it has no truth in itselfconditions the moment and concept of truth. (24) The claim is that Husserl also wants to affirm this, that he will accord a growing attention to that which, in signification, in language, and in inscription, deposits ideal objectivity, produces truth or ideality, rather than simply records it (25).

Here the activity of signification has no truth because of its priority. In Derridas words, if the sign in some way preceded what we call truth or essence, there would be no sense in speaking about the truth or essence of the sign (24). It would proceed truth if we take the sign, as Husserl does, as the structure of an intentional movement. This is the movement that establishes the subject object relation and hence the very possibility of truth as correspondence.

The claim here is that in Husserl must assert both. He wants to say both that the structure of an intentional movement is prior to truth and that this structure is governed by truth. It is prior insofar as it establishes truth. Husserls genetic analysis of our mental life, Derrida claims, shows this.

The sign is posterior to truth insofar as Husserl also wants to say that this structure is determined by truth.

In this second case, Husserls appeal is to the dialectic of intention and fulfillment. The dialectic is such that, although every perceptual sense experienced by us is a sense we intend, not every sense we intend comes to be fulfilled by a corresponding intuition. Only those senses that are intuitively embodied by the being that we intend will be fulfilled. This independence of our object means that there is a constant adjustment of our interpretive intention until it reaches fulfillment. Derrida however never mentions this. He simply focus on the fact that for Husserl truth is a matter of the ideal contents of the judgmentthe meaning contents. How such contents arise is not raised by the Husserl of the Logical Investigations.

The second opposition is between

mental life as involving contingent associations, as empirical (as that which could be otherwise) which needs to be bracketed to get at the ideal, non contingent relations

and

mental life regarded genetically as the pre-expressive, prelinguistic stratum of sense, which the reduction must sometimes disclose by excluding the stratum of language. (31).

Husserl both wants to bracket such life and make it the object of his inquiries. The claim here is that he never can clarify the relation between transcendental phenomenology and phenomenological psychology, between the ego as a transcendental subject and the ego as an empirical subject, the ego as a ground of the world, and the ego as in the world having empirical, contingent relations to its objects. (12-14).

What do we reach, when we perform the reduction? Note: Husserl claims we reach transcendental consciousness. Empirical consciousness is simply an interpreted stratum of this. It appears when we take the relations we observe to be to involve external objects. The interpretative frame is that of the subject in the world.

In the reading, Derrida makes the claim that the turn to solitary mental life is an implicit reductionone which embodies this opposition between transcendental and empirical..

This view involves a number of claims.

The first is that the sphere of indication is that of empirical facticity.

In Derridas words, Having its origin in the phenomena of association, and always connecting empirical existents in the world, indicative signification in language will cover everything that falls subject to the reductions: factuality, worldly existence, essential non-necessity, nonevidence, etc. (Derrida 1973a, p. 30).

The second is that the reduction is a bracketing of empirical existence. Given that an indicative sign cannot be conceived without the category of empirical, which is to say only probable, existence (ibid., p. 42), it must fall to the reduction.

The third is that the reduction is a reduction to consciousness taken as a field of intuitive self-presence. This sense of the reduction is implied by the self-presence Husserl assumes in interior monologue. Speaking to ourselves, we have no need of indications since our meaning is immediately present to us in consciousness. Given this, the reduction to monologue Husserl uses to distinguish the expressive from the indicative function is implicitly a phenomenological reduction. When we engage in it, we are actually engaging in a reduction to consciousness taken as a field of intuitive self-presence.

Now, the question is, what do we actually find here? Is it the case that no indication occurs in solitary mental life.

If expressions could not function without indication, not just interior monologue would be impossible.

The reduction itself would be undermined. This is because its goal has been defined as the self-presence that allows expressions to function on their own.

This can be put in terms of the bracketing of empirical existence that the reduction is supposed to accomplish. For Derrida, indicative signification implies empirical existence. If expressions could not function without such signification, then the bracketing of empirical existence also brackets the functioning of expressions.

What would remain after this bracketing would, then, be devoid of both language and meaning.

Derridas claim is that, in fact, that the functioning of the meaning intentions that animate our speech also require indication. The pre-expressive, prelinguistic stratum of sense that generates sense in our acts is, he claims, interwoven with indication.

Thus, the reduction is contradictory. At the one hand, it eliminates empirical existence, on the other it actually has such existence as its goal insofar as it want to uncover the prelinguistic stratus that generate sense and language. Such strata as association involve indication. Once we penetrate into the sense giving act, into its genesis and functioning, we find ourselves in empirical existence.

Husserl would say, that Derrida is leaving out the fact of the eidetic reduction which pulls out the ideal forms from the empirical functioning of the interpretative acts that generate meaning. Who is right?

Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, pp.32-47

Themes:

The assertion that expression and indication cannot really be distinguished

Both are externalizations.

Expression is externalization, one that intends an outside which is that of an ideal object. (32)

So is indication (even though it intends a real object).

Both are voluntary:

I intentionally produce the indication and the expression

meaning is vouloir dire (wanting to say).

This is the reason why Husserl does not take gestures, the yawn, etc., as expressing meaning. They involve no intent to put certain thoughts on record expressively There is no animation of them by a sense bestowing act. (35)

Note: in passing, Derrida gives a curious argument that Husserl intentional consciousness and voluntary consciousness as synonymous (34)

Admitting that every intentional lived experience may in principle be taken up again in an expressive experience, and admitting that all expressions are voluntary, every intentional experience is voluntary. The conclusion here is that in spite of all the theses of receptive or intuitive intentionality and passive genesis, the concept of intentionality remains caught up in the tradition of a voluntaristic metaphysics, that is, perhaps, of metaphysics as such. (ibid.).

Husserl would deny this, but Derrida would say that it follows from Husserls premises. An example of deconstruction, of see how the author affirms the opposite of he theses.

Communication to the other cannot occur without indication. My words stand for my thoughts. But, as Husserl admits, expression is originally framed to serve the function of communication (38). As such, it requires indication since the hearer does not directly experience the inner experiences of the other.

As Derrida notes, the premise here is that presence. We must rely on indication because we have no primordial intuition of the presence of the others lived experience (40).

When, however, in solitary speech, indication falls away, we must be in the sphere of pure presence. Here, pure expression will be the pure active intention (spirit, psyche, life, will) of an act of meaning that animates a speech whose content is present. The meaning has therefore a presence to the self in the life of a present that has not yet gone forth from itself into the world, space, or nature. All these going-forth effectively exile this life of self-presence in indications (40)

Is this the case?

Husserl does say that in interior monologue, the expressive function continues, but the indicative one drops away. In his words, ... expressions also play a great part in uncommunicated, interior mental life. They continue to have meanings as they had before (ibid., p. 278). They do not, however, function as indications. It is not the case that in soliloquy one speaks to oneself, and employs words as signs, i.e., as indications, of ones own inner experiences (ibid., p. 279).

The reason for this is that indications stand for their referents. But such standing for seems out of place when the referent itself is present. Given the referent, we have no motivation to employ a substitute for it. In Husserls words: In monologue words can perform no function of indicating the existence of mental acts, since such indication would there be quite purposeless. For the acts in question are themselves experienced by us at that very moment (ibid., p. 280).

The key is that the acts in question, the acts that animate the words, are themselves experienced by us at that very moment. This is the immediate presence to the self in the life of a present that Derrida is talking about.

Does this mean that as Derrida claims, the turn towards solitary speech is actually an implicit reduction?

The claim is based on two premises:

The first is that an indicative sign cannot be conceived without the category of empirical

existence (42)

This is because, in indication an existing sign or empirical event refers to a content whose existence is at least presumed, and it motivates our anticipation or conviction of the existence of what is indicated. (ibid.). In other words, indication is a one to one relation of two existents, belief in the motivating the belief in the other. My belief in your speaking motivates my belief that there is something going on in your head.

The second is that the phenomenological reduction is a reduction of such empirical existence.

In Derridas words, the reduction to the monologue is really a putting of empirical, worldly existence between brackets. We dont even have to assume the existence of actual words in our heads. In solitary speech, we no longer use real words, but only imagined words. (43). As he also puts this, we content ourselves with imagining the word, whose existence is thus neutralized. It has no more reality than any other imagined object. Thus, in this imagination of the word, we no longer need the empirical occurrence of the word. (ibid.).

Thus, no empirical existence need at all be presumed.

The same holds for he associations which connect indication with the indicated

: Having its origin in the phenomena of association, and always connecting empirical existents in the world, indicative signification in language will cover everything that falls subject to the reductions: factuality, worldly existence, essential non-necessity, nonevidence, etc. (Derrida 1973a, p. 30).

Is this a correct reading of the reduction? Is the phenomenological reduction the same as this turn to solitary speech? Is it the case, as Derrida asserts, this, then, is already a phenomenological reduction which isolates the subjective experience as the sphere of absolute certainty and absolute existence (44)?

Not exactly. The reduction does not end in the sphere of pure expression or pure meaning. It does not end in that of the mental acts. It goes all the way to the level of time consciousness.

For Husserl, in the Prolegomena of his Logical Investigations, empirical existence has a definite sense. It is the domain explored by the natural sciences. They shape its concept. An account of the difficulties Husserl finds in natural science would divert us from our purpose. Briefly noted, they involve the paradoxes that arise in our attempting to use the natural, scientific description of the world to explain our grasp of this world. After the Logical Investigations, Husserl attempts to avoid these difficulties by bracketing empirical existence. Such bracketing means that we cannot use sciences account of the world to explain how we came up with this account.

It does not mean, as Derrida states, that the phenomena of association fall to the reduction. Insofar as they are immanently given, these phenomena are possible objects of inner perception. They form part of the domain that is open to the inspection of consciousness. This inspection reveals the role they play in consciousnesss making sense of the world, i.e., in its constitution of the worlds sense-filled presence. As such, rather than falling to the reduction, their inspection is part of its goal: that of showing how the world comes to presence.

A more complete sense of the reduction is implicit in this last remark.

The practice of the reduction is the reverse of that of constitution. Constitution describes the process by which we build up, layer by layer, the sense of the world. Basically, this process involves the layered positing of unities in multiplicity. Different unities posited on one level become the multiplicity which supplies the material for the positing of a higher level unity. For example, our perceptions of individual objects in a room supply the material for the positing of such objects, and these, in turn, supply the elements for our grasp of the sense of the room as a whole.

The reduction reverses this process layer by layer. Performing it, we suspend our belief in the posited unities present on one level so as to regard their constituting elements. We can do this again and again until we reach the ultimately constituting level. So conceived, the reduction can be applied to every constitutive process, including those that build up our interpretive, perceptual intentions. To the point that the phenomena of association lie at their basis, the reduction should uncover them.

For Husserl, the reduction in the sense of the epoch opens up the possibility of the reduction understood as the process by which we undo the work of constitution. The reduction in this more complete sense is not really equivalent to Derridas reduction to monologue. Pursued to the end, it leaves intact neither our meaning intentions nor the objects which fulfill them.

It, thus, does not end with a set of self-present meanings, i.e., the meanings of the expressions we employ in monologue. Turned towards our interior mental life, it undoes (or suspends our belief) in their presence to seek out the constitutive basis of such presence. Thus, rather than being a reduction to the presence of meaning, the reduction, as it proceeds, is a reduction of this presence. This follows from its character as the reverse of constitution. Given that constitution proceeds level by level, the presence it constitutes also has its levels. The reduction, in reversing the work of constitution, suspends (or reduces) the layers of such presence one by one. The only presence that it does not undo is that of the original, non-constituted layer. The reduction of presence ends with this. If we wish to conceive it as a reduction to presence, such presence is that of the original hyletic data of consciousness.

Ultimately, this is a reduction to the givenness of such data in time consciousness. Derrida realizes this, since, as we shall see, he turns and examines whether self-presence is really possible on this ultimate level.

Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, pp.48-59

The reading begins with Derridas rehearsal of Husserls claims about interior speech. They are:

In inward speech, I communicate (indicate) nothing to myself. I can at most imagine myself doing this. (48)

Husserl does say: But in the genuine sense of communication, there is no speech in such cases, nor does one tell oneself. One merely imagines (man stellt sich vor) oneself as speaking and communicating (49)

In inward speech, I communicate (indicate) nothing to myself. Such an operation would make no sense. The existence of mental acts does not have to be indicated because it is immediately present. (48)

Husserl does say: In monologue words can perform no function of indicating the existence of mental acts, since such indication would there be quite purposeless. For the acts in question are themselves experienced by us at that very moment (49)

General difficulties with this view.

It seems to imply an immediate presence to myself of my acts. But Husserls example is someone saying to himself: You have gone wrong, you cant go on like that. Who is speaking. Who is being spoken to? There seems to be a subject object split here, a divide, a distance. But is this possible if inner life is one of sheer presence. Presence at the same moment of subject and object?

Doesnt the possibility of inner speech point to the presence of the other in one, of inner alterity. Is being a for-itself possible without this divide? Is ethical conduct?

With regard to language: Language is learned from others. It involves indication, alterity. Could it not be possible that this alterity becomes internalized with the use of language? t is to say, that language in importing alterity makes possible our being as a for-itself?

Specific difficulties.

How can Husserl really speak of our imagining ourselves as speaking. Isnt imagining a form of re-presenting. It involves the image and the reality. One re-presents the reality with the image. The image stands in the place of the reality. It indicates it. But how is this possible in inner life if everything is sheer presence. The difficulty then is that Husserl both asserts that one merely imagines (man stellt sich vor) oneself as speaking, that is one represents one self as a speaking and a communicating subject (49) and declares that such representation has no place in the inner sphere.

Derrida next engages in a very general argument against the distinction between expression and indication. This is the fact that when I effectively use words, I must from the outset operate (within) a structure of repetition whose basic element can only be representative. (50). This is because a word is a sign. But, as Derrida writes,

A sign is never an event, if by event we mean an irreplaceable and irreversible empirical particular. A sign which would take place but once would not be a sign. ... A signifier (in general) must be formally recognizable ... It must remain the same, and be able to be repeated as such ... (ibid., p. 50).

This return to the sign as such, however, is not a return something that exists independentlya pre-existing ideal meaning. The sign, as such, has no meaning. Thus, the return to the word or sign is really a re-presentation of the sign by a substitute, something standing in its place. I utter a word. I say the same word again. The new word stands for the previous utterance. I say the word again. Again it stands for the previous utterance which stood for the previous utterance, etc. Each new speaking of the word thus re-presents a previous speaking.

If this is correct, two conclusions follow. The first is that re-presentation (and hence indication) is essential to the functioning of signs as such. One cannot therefore eliminate it to make the distinction between expressive and indicative signs.

The second is that the ideality of language as such, and hence of senses, involves repetition and hence re-presentation and hence indication.

Let me show this by the contrast between Husserl notion of ideality, and that of Derrida.

Husserls position is that assertions, in expressing senses, express what is ideal. For Husserl, this is a fundamental fact of his theory of knowledge: The fact, namely, that all thinking and knowing is directed to objects or states of affairs whose unity relative to a multiplicity of actual or possible acts of thought is a unity in multiplicity and is, therefore, an ideal character (Husserl 1900-1901, II, 9; Husserl 1984, p. 12).

This fact explains how the same experience can have a content in a twofold sense, how next to its inherent actual content, there should and can dwell an ideal, intentional content (ibid., II, 16; Husserl 1984, p. 21).

The latter content is embodied in the objects or states of affairs presence as a sense. This is its presence, in perception, as a unity in a multiplicity of possible perceptual acts.

As I said last time, this ideal content can be returned to again and again. Its sense can be repeatedly confirmed as the same. Because of this, the intuitively confirmed sense can function as an item of knowledge. An individual can claim to know something and express his knowledge in an assertion whose sense can be repeatedly understood and confirmed by others who fill out the range (the many) of perceptions of the one object, this by having the actual perceptions.

Derridas conception of ideality, however, abstracts from such perceptual sense. It is not the case that the possibility of the return is grounded on the presence of an ideal sense that can be seen to be fulfilled again and again by intuition. Rather, the return itself constitutes the ideality.

As Derrida writes: ... ideality is not an existent that has fallen from the sky; its origin will always be the possible repetition of a productive act (Derrida 1973a, p. 6).

This act, however, is not limited to senses, which Husserl takes as ideal. It directs itself to signs in general. Because of this, they also can count as ideal. But ideality in the case of the sign is the result of re-presentation. Thus, the ideality of signs necessarily implies representation. It does so, Derrida adds, insofar as each signifying event is a substitute (for the signified as well as for the ideal form of the signifier) (Derrida 1973a, p. 50).

The ideality of the sign, Derrida believes, is constituted by this repeated act of substitution. In fact, all forms of ideality are. The model of constitution through substitution holds for the ideality of the sensible form of the signifier, the ideality of the signified (of the Bedeutung) or intended sense and, the ideality of the object itself (ibid., p. 52). All three achieve their ideal presence through re-presentation. Re-presentation (Vergegenwrtigung) is the productive act whose repetition produces ideality.

Note the claim of the argument: In both expression and indicative communication, the difference between simple presence and repetition wears away (51).

Put in terms of the attack on presence, the claim is that the presence of the present is derived from repetition and not the reverse. This means that the direct presence Husserl takes as definitive of such speech cannot obtain.

Such presence is negated by the absence required by the representative relation. As Derrida sums up this argument, ... the primordial structure of repetition that we have just evoked for signs must govern all acts of signification. The subject cannot speak without giving himself a representation of his speaking ...

As involving the notion of the presence of the presence, this is ultimate a claim about how we experience the present. It is ultimately justified by Derridas account of time consciousness.

Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, pp.60-69

Situation: Husserls assertion that the distinction between indication and expression shows itself in soliloquy

It is not the case that in soliloquy one speaks to oneself, and employs words as signs, i.e., as indications, of ones own inner experiences (ibid., p. 279). The reason for this is that indications stand for their referents. But such standing for seems out of place when the referent itself is present. Given the referent, we have no motivation to employ a substitute for it. In Husserls words: In monologue words can perform no function of indicating the existence of mental acts, since such indication would there be quite purposeless. For the acts in question are themselves experienced by us at that very moment (ibid., p. 280).

At the same moment, im selben Augenblick, literally, at the same blink of the eye

According to Derrida, the claim, here, is that self-presence must be produced in the undivided unity of a temporal present so as to have nothing to reveal to itself by the agency of signs.

If this is not the case, then we cannot separate expression from indication. Also since the move to soliloquy is an implicit reduction, this too fails. There is no escaping empirical contingency. In fact as Derrida writes, ... if the present of self-presence is not simple, if it is constituted in a primordial and irreducible synthesis, then the whole of Husserls argumentation is threatened in its very principle (Derrida 1973a, p. 61).

The undermining of Husserls argumentation also includes his notion of ideality and hence of knowledge. For Husserl, ideality is a one in many phenomenon. Multiple acts have one and the same content. We can return to this ideal content again and again.

According to Husserl, this is a fundamental fact of his theory of knowledge: The fact, namely, that all thinking and knowing is directed to objects or states of affairs whose unity relative to a multiplicity of actual or possible acts of thought is a unity in multiplicity and is, therefore, an ideal character (Husserl 1900-1901, II, 9; Husserl 1984, p. 12).

This fact explains how the same experience can have a content in a twofold sense, how next to its inherent actual content, there should and can dwell an ideal, intentional content (ibid., II, 16; Husserl 1984, p. 21). The latter content is embodied in the objects or states of affairs presence as a sense. This is its presence, in perception, as a unity in a multiplicity of possible perceptual acts. This ideal content can be returned to again and again. Its sense can be repeatedly confirmed as the same. Because of this, the intuitively confirmed sense can function as an item of knowledge. An individual can claim to know something and express his knowledge in an assertion whose sense can be repeatedly understood and confirmed by others.

This whole notion of knowledge has to be abandoned when we say with Derrida that ideality is constituted by a repetitive substitution, i.e., by a repetitive standing-in-the-place-of that has the same form as the indicative relation. It is not the ideal content that grounds the possibility of the return, and hence of knowledge in Husserls sense. Rather the return grounds the possibility of the ideal content.

This reversal may be put in terms of the notion that the ideal is what may be indefinitely repeated in the identity of its presence (Derrida 1973a, p. 6).

For Derrida, to include the ideality of the sense or noema in consciousness (to assume that we can encounter it directly in our consciousness) is to assume that presence to consciousness can be indefinitely repeated (ibid., p. 10). This, however, assumes that the present, or rather the presence of the living present can sustain this repeated presence. Here, as Derrida remarks: The ultimate form of ideality, the ideality of ideality, that in which in the last instance one may anticipate or recall all repetition, is the living present, the self-presence of transcendental life.

It is what can be returned to again and again. The presence of some content that can be returned as the same presupposes the self-presence of transcendental life. The content can be directly present to me, because the living present is. There is no absence in the living present, in its now, that would separate me from the content.

Derridas position is that this supposed self-presence is actually the result of a repeated substitution. In his words, the presence-of-the-present is derived from repetition and not the reverse (Derrida 1973a, p. 52). As such, its ground is a nonpresence. Its basis is the absence that allows the substitute to take the place of what it substitutes for. I just said allow. I should have said requires. If presence itself involves absence, I never directly encounter the content. I only grasp it through its substitute or indicative sign.

Whet then is Derridas argument? It is that when we look at the Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness, we find that Husserl both affirms and denies that the presence of the presence involves absence. Here, as Derrida remarks phenomenology seems to us tormented, if not contested from within, by its own descriptions of the movement of temporalization ... (Derrida 1973a, p. 6).

Thus, on the one hand, Husserl asserts that time has a living core, which is the punctuality of the real now. As he cites Husserl: The now-apprehension is as it were, the nucleus of a comets tail of retentions (SP, 62; Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness, p. 52). In this nucleus, we have unmediated self-presence.

On the other hand, the body of the descriptions in the Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness and elsewhere prohibits our speaking of simple self-identity of the present.

Why is that? In order to appear, the now with its content must be retained. (Otherwise it vanishes without a trace the instant that it appears). But retention retains what is no longer present. . In Derridas words, it retains a nonpresent, a past and unreal present (Derrida 1973a, p. 64). Given this, we have to say that the presence of the perceived present can appear as such only in as much as it is continuously compounded with a nonpresence and nonperception ... . (64).

Indication comes in when we say that our present retentions, the retentions that form the vertical of Husserls time diagram, re-present (or are substitutes for) the past (or the absent, the not present) content. Thus, insofar as the now can appear only through its retentions, it can appear only through indication. Indication understood as repeated substitution grounds the appearing now.

What we have here is a form of arch (original) writing, the original indication, which grounds the possibility of signs.

What would Husserl say to this? He would say, first we have an experience of the dying away, the paling (verblassen) or fading of a tone. This is not a substitute for anything. We interpret this experience as an experience of the departure into pastness of the tone.

He would also say that what we have here is a perception since we have the basic structure, contents, interpretation, intentional object. Thus, just as in perception I interpret sensuous contents as contents of some one object and thus posit the object as an x, so I have a multitude of different retentions, i.e., paling contents, and interpret these as contents of one and the same moment. Here the progressive paling of the contents gives this object the sense not just as an X, a static moment, but a departing moment.

One can also put this by saying that the self-identical, departing temporal content that is constituted through our interpretation of the paling contents is not, in Husserls account, itself a representation. It is an original, if constituted presence.

Its originality signifies that it is given in the only way it can be given, i.e., as a constituted one-in-many. As such it stands for nothing except itself. Just as any perceived object only stands for itself.

This point can be put in terms of Husserls remark that perception is here the act that places something itself before our eyes, the act that originally constitutes something. Retention (or primary memory) is perception because it originally constitutes the past. In Husserls words, if we call perception the act in which all origin lies, the act which constitutes originally, then primary memory [retention] is perception (Husserl 1966a, 41).

Here, retention, names not the retentions that are present on the vertical, but the act that takes these as its content. It interprets their continuous paling (represented schematically as their downward movement on the vertical) as their being contents of a continuously departing point. In this it is like our interpreting the contents of a spatial object departing from us. We take the shrinking together and paling of these contents as pointing to a spatial departure.

A question: how do we distinguish temporal from spatial departure?

What is the difference in the paling that we observe?

Speech and Phenomenon, pp. 70-87

Derridas account of the possibility of soliloquy.

It is the voice that keeps silencethat guards silencethat makes the illusion of solitary silent speech possible.

Such speech actually requires indication.

Indication requires a physical medium.

The voice provides this and yet does not visually appear (is not part of the visible external world and thus seems to be distinct from signs as in this world pointing to other things in this world). As a result, the voice seems internal. It gives us the illusion of an internal self-presence.

This illusion is further strengthened by the fact that when I speak, it belongs to the phenomenological essence of this operation that I hear myself speak a the same time that I speak. (77)

The point put in terms of Kants distinction of inner and outer: inner perception grasps only temporal relations, outer perception grasps only special relations.

The voice, as not seen, is only subject to a temporal apprehension.

Thus, hearing one self speak [occurs] in a self-proximity that would in fact be the absolute reduction of space in general (79).

This presence of the voice to consciousness is a self-affection. Hearing myself speak, I affect myself. I have the possibility of a return to myself through my words. With this, I have the possibility for what is called subjectivity or the for-itself (ibid.).

The claim, here, is that no consciousness is possible without the voice. The voice is the being which is present to itself, in the form of universality, as con-sciousness; the voice is consciousness. (79-80)

Derridas assertion that the voice is the being which is present to itself in the form of universality holds because this self-presence involves the repeated return to the same. We are present to ourselves through an ongoing process of auto-affection.

Each time we access itself it is through the words that the voice embodies. Since we do this again and again. The words are returned to again and again.

Thus, he medium through which this return is accomplished, i.e., the voice, achieves the form of universality through this repetition.

As a result, it exhibits the ideal universality of the significant sign.

How credible is this? Is it the case that when we cease speaking, we are no longer self-aware? What sort of speaking is this in silent monologue? Doesnt the voice have to be silent as well?

Derrida agrees: He takes the phonic element in the phenomenological sense and not [the sense] of a real sound (76).

This is the voice that keeps silence in the sense that it stays silent. But can it function as a physical medium. Perhaps we have to say that when we think in words, there are suppressed physical movements of the larynx and tongue. These provide the physical medium.

Still the question is whether there is not a deeper grounding of our self-presence? Arent we self-present, self-aware, even when we are not carrying on an internal dialogue. Derrida seems to admit this when he notes: What constitutes the originality of speech, what distinguishes it from every other element of signification, is that its substance seems to be pure temporal.(83).

Such temporality seems the real basis of our auto-affection. In fact, as Derrida writes, as soon one takes the movement of temporalization into account the concept of pure auto-affection must be employed as well.(83).

To establish this, Derrida gives his theory of temporalization.

This that temporalization understood as the addition of new moments and their subsequent retention results from the self-affection of the present.

This is because underlying presence is what Derrida calls differance.

. The argument here is that because there is no simple self-identity in the momentary present, there is an inherent divide in it. Its internal division makes it affect itself, the result being a new present.

Derridas position, then, is that the present returns to presence in a new now by affecting itself.

The contrast here with Husserl could not be more marked. For Husserl, the fact that the the primal impression ... is not produced by consciousness means that consciousness is nothing without impression (Husserl 1966a, p. 100). The now that animates consciousness is engendered by an externally provided impression.

For Derrida, however, the absolute novelty of each now is ... engendered by nothing; it consists in a primordial impression that engenders itself.

This self-engendering is a result of an auto-affection.

In Derridas words, The source point or primordial impression, that out of which the moment of temporalization is produced, is already pure auto-affection. ... it is a pure production ... it is a receiving that receives nothing (Derrida 1973a, p. 83).

This follows because what occasions it is nothing empirical--i.e., nothing external. It results from the difference introduced into the now by the original differance

This means Time, as the movement of this auto-affection is actually the movement of this strange difference (ibid., p. 85).

The strange difference is differance, taken as the operation of differing. This operation results in the pure production of the new now as well as the retention (or retentional trace) of the now which this new now replaces.

Both production and retention characterize the living present.

Thus, for Derrida, The living present springs forth out of its nonidentity with itself ... (ibid.).

Differance is also responsible for this presents self-presence.

The living present cannot be present to itself unless it can return to itself--i.e., encounter its presence in a new or retained moment.

This return arises from the operation of differing, i.e., the action that introduces a pure difference into the now. Insofar as this yields both a new and a retained presence, ... this pure difference ... constitutes the self-presence of the living present (ibid.).

The term, pure difference thus designates the non-identity with itself of the living presents nowness, a nonidentity that allows it to affect itself. Insofar as this self-affection results in a return to presence, it permits the living present to be self-present

For Husserl, as I mentioned, the advance of time is the result of a succession of primordial impressions. Their successive presence is the experienced succession of impressional moments. The premise here is that distinct impressions give rise to distinct moments. Times advance thus depends on the impressions not being implicitly included in each other. They must count as distinct original presences.

Derridas account of auto-affection makes him deny this. He writes:

The process by which the living now, produced by spontaneous generation, must, in order to be a now and to be retained in another now, affect itself without recourse to anything empirical but with a new primordial actuality in which it [the living now] would become a non-now, a past now--this process is indeed a pure auto-affection in which the same is the same only in being affected by the other, only by becoming the other of the same. This auto-affection must be pure since the primordial impression is here affected by nothing other than itself, by the absolute novelty of another primordial impression (Derrida 1973a, p. 85).

To claim that the primordial impression is affected by nothing other than itself and to equate this with its being affected by another primordial impression is actually to suppose that the second is implicitly included in the first.

For Derrida it is, insofar as difference is inherent in the first.

This difference allows the primordial impression to affect itself.

In other words, its being affected by another primordial impression is actually a self-affection.

Thus, the advance of time is not, as it is for Husserl, a function of distinct identities--i.e., distinct primordial impressions affecting consciousness.

Difference is, rather, prior to identity. The pure difference inherent in each content filled now makes it affect itself. This auto-affection gives rise to the next now. Each now, thus, has its identity as a distinct now only by becoming the other of the same. It has it by virtue of the self-affection of the same, which makes explicit the otherness, the pure difference, inherent in the same.

This also holds for the past moments given by the retentional traces. They are also inherent in the present by virtue of the pure difference it embodies. This difference makes the living now ... affect itself ... with a new primordial actuality, which is a next now, a new impressional moment.

This, however, makes it become a non-now, a past now. Given by the retentional traces they leave behind, such past moments come to be posited as identical temporal positions in departing time.

Who is right? Husserl or Derrida. Is the successive appearing of moments the result of difference or is it externally provided by successively given impressions as Husserl says.

For Husserl, the successive quality of time is ultimately the result of the successive presence of primordial impressions.

Derrida, having dismissed such primordiality, cannot use it to account for succession. Its origin is, in fact, differance understood as deferring or delaying , i.e., differance in the sense of postponing till later (Derrida 1973b, p. 136). Differance, then, means both differing and delaying. In Derridas words, the operation of differing ... both fissures and retards presence, submitting it simultaneously to primordial division and delay (Derrida 1973a, p. 88). By virtue of the first sense, the same is the same only in being affected by the other, only by becoming the other of the same (ibid., p. 85). This auto-affection, insofar as it results in the becoming the other of the same, brings about the new now. By virtue of the second sense, this new now is successive.

For Husserl, succession is present in the incoming impressions. But is not this to presuppose time as succession. In itself, out there, there is only change. Whence comes the spacing of this change that we call time?

Derrida, SP, pp. 88-104

The claim of this section is that there is no original, what we have instead is a process of continual substitution, one where one thing substitutes for (or stands in the place of) the next.

Derrida put this claim in terms of the notion of supplementation. What is supplemented is the lack of the original, the lack of its primordial presence. In Derridas words, the addition [of supplements] comes to make up for a deficiency, it comes to compensate for a primordial nonself-presence (87)

So defined, the notion of supplementation is perfectly general. Its concept applies to every indicative relation. In Derridas words, ... this concept of primordial supplementation not only implies nonplenitude of presence ... it designates this function of substitutive supplementation in general, the in the place of (fr etwas) structure which belongs to every sign in general (ibid., p. 88).

To apply this structure to temporalization is to assert that the living present is not originally present. Its continued presence is the result of a repetitive supplementation, one where supplements are repeatedly put in in the place of this present.

Thus, the nonplenitude of presence of the living now is supplemented in the direction of the past by the retention that stands in the place of the just departed moment. Derridas claim here is that the now can only appear through its chain of retentions. The chain, however, is a chain of substitutes, each acting to substitute for the nonpresence of what it retains. Given that the original appears only through the chain, we have to say, phenomenologically, that the chain is first and the original is second.

Now, normally we would say that the original is first. It is actual. The retentions are second, they are possible only if there is an original, an original to which they are added on as its retentions.

Derrida reverses this: He asserts that what we have here is the strange structure of the supplement. This is one where by delayed reaction, a possibility produces that to which it is said to be added on (ibid., p. 89). Here paradoxically a possibility (the retentions) produces the actually it is supposed simply to be added on to.

The same argument can be made about the arising of new nows. We can say that

the nonplenitude of presence of the living now is supplemented in the direction of the future by the addition of the new now. Thus, the now that appears only to vanish is supplemented by the next now

Both supplementations are based on an original nonplenitude, i.e., the absence that is implicit in the difference that underlies presence. Both occur together. Thus, the supplementation by the new now makes the present now a just past moment. But this departure from presence is one with the supplementation occasioned by retention.

The result, then, is time. Time is the movement of this strange difference. Its origin is the differance that is prior to the self-identity of the living now.

For Derrida, then, the action supplementation is actually that of differance. Difference itself involves both differing and delaying in the sense of postponing till later (Derrida 1973b, p. 136)

.

This means that its operation both fissures and retards presence, submitting it simultaneously to primordial division and delay (Derrida 1973a, p. 88).

By virtue of the first sense, presence differs from itself. It involves nonpresence. Fissured by it, it only appears to disappear. By virtue of the second sense, this reappearance, understood as a supplementation, involves a delay and hence is successive.

Derridas claim is that this successive supplementation constitutes the original, i.e., the living present as the source of evidence. If this is so, then it applies to every original insofar as all originality is give in the now that is the living present.

In particular it applies to our belief that the origin of signs is the original we stand for.

As I cited Derrida, ... this concept of primordial supplementation not only implies nonplenitude of presence ... it designates this function of substitutive supplementation in general, the in the place of (fr etwas) structure which belongs to every sign in general (ibid., p. 88).

The rest of the section is devoted to showing this. He does this through a reading of Husserl. He wants to show that when Husserl acts simply as a phenomenologist, his analyses confirm Derridas positions. It is only when he gives way to the prejudices of a metaphysics of presence, that he opposes these positions.

What I will do is give Derridas reading and then give Husserls response.

The first point concerns Husserls distinction between the acts that give meaning to an expression and those that give it the intuitive fullness, in which its relation to an expressed object is constituted. (90).

Derrida assets that this distinction means the fulfillment of the aim by an intuition is not indispensable. (ibid.). In other words, the meaning, understood as a substitute for the intuition, as standing for it, can exist independently.

In support of this, he quotes Husserl again: this [intuitive relation to an object] need not occur: the expression functions significantly. It remains more than mere sound of words, but it lacks any basic intuition that will give it its object. (91).

This ability of an expression to function significantly in the absence of intuition means according to Derrida: The fulfilling intuition therefore is not essential to expression, to what is aimed at by the meaning. (ibid.).

Is this the case. Husserl would argue that I cannot speak of what I have never experienced. What comes first is the intuition. It has the sense, the one in many structure, that I grasp and use to animate my expression.

This means that I can only teach a child the meaning of a word, say, the box after the child has learned to identify the box as one and the same, an X, in the flow of experience.

This experience, of course, includes not just optical but also kinesthetic experiences, the experiences of picking up and manipulating the box.

The parent points to the box and says, box. Hearing this, the child links the word to the perception in a one-to-one relation

But then, the box is turned by the parent or the child itself moves.

The parent repeats the word, box.

Again there is a one-to-one relation, but now the word is linked to a new perception.

Now for Derrida, these one to one relations are substitutions. The word substitutes for the perception which substitutes for the box (the x that is intended, which is not the same as the perception of it). Repeated substitutions of this kind constituted the presence of the box. The box is there for me, is the original, through such repeated substitutions.

But for Husserl, this repetitive relation is not one to one, but many to one.

Thus, even though the perception has changed, for the child who has learned to see, the box hasnt.

For this child, the perception is part of a total pattern that refers the box. Learning to see is learning to grasp the single perception as part of a pattern (an internal horizon), all of whose members refer to the same thing.

In learning to use the word with multiple perceptions, the child thus learns that the link of the word is not to the perception but to the box.

All the perceptions refer to the box, understood as a point of unification of the total perceptual experience.

Their reference is to its being-there as an X, i.e., as a specific one-in-many.

The point of this is that the grasp of this one in many, or sense, is first. Only after the child has managed this can we teach him the appropriate use of a wordi.e., to use it with an unchanged referent even though the perceptions change.

What would Derrida say is response to this?

He would that since the X is never itself present, all the perceptions substitute for it.

Husserl would respond that the substitutions are not just one to one, but many to one. Each perception is grasp as part of a horizon, a pattern of perceptions, that refer to one and the same thing. But the many to one relation is that of a sense. This is what the word expresses.

Derridas next argument is that the distinction Husserl draws between logic and grammar also implies that meaning is independent of intuition.

To violate the laws of grammar means that one cannot compose a sense. Thus, Green is where does not have any sense, no more than and is or. As Derrida puts this, pure logical grammar, then, excludes from normal discourse only what is nonsense in the sense of Unsinn [sense-less]. (92). Once we satisfy this, we have sense even though we have expressions that are logically contradictory, such as the grammatically correct square circle. Such expressions have a sense, even though they can never have an object. (ibid.).

Husserls response: the word has a sense because the meanings of square and circle is known.

It is not the case of Mayan writing. There, the difficulty in translation is that the objects and ceremonies that the script refers to no longer exist.

In the case of a contradiction, this essentially lacks the possibility of confirmation and hence of truth. But this means that the assertions intention can only be carried out symbolically; it cannot derive any fullness from intuition or from the categorical functions performed on the latter, in which fullness its value or knowledge consists. It then lacks as one says, a true, a genuine meaning (97).

Here the true meaning is the one-in-many that is exhibited by the object in its appearing. This is the origin of sense. Square circle only borrows its meaning from those of square and circle

Derrida asserts that Husserl makes this distinction between simple meaning and the true meaning because the intuitionistic imperative, and the project of knowledge continue to command the whole of the description. (ibid.).

The next argument Derrida brings forward concerns Husserls account of subjectively occasional expressions. These are words, like I, you, yesterday, here, now, where to understand them it is, Husserl says, necessary to orient the actual meaning to the occasion, the speaker and the situation. (93)

Derrida denies this, he asserts Whether or not I have a present intuition of myself, I expresses something; whether or not I am alive I am means something. (95) As he also writes, Just as I need not perceive in order to understand a statement about perception, so there is no need to intuit the object I in order to understand the word I (96).

The claim here is that (1) such occasional expressions cannot in principle be replaced in speech by a permanent objective conceptual representation and that (2) this implies that they function as meanings independently of the objects which would supply them with such a representation (94).

Husserls response to the first is a flat denial. He asserts that

every subjective expression allows itself to be replaced by an objective expression . . ., the latter being one that can explicitly specify its own circumstances (LU, Tb. ed., II/1, 90; F., p. 321). In other words, it can become an objective expression by including in its content the elements whose absence makes the expression occasional. These are the references to the relevant circumstances in which the expression occurs.

Husserl then asserts that The content, which in a specific case the subjective expression means in orienting its meaning to the occasion, is an ideal unitary meaning in exactly the same sense as a content of a fixed expression (Ibid.).

The meaning expressed is a one in many, when all the circumstances are specified. So when I replace I with James Mensch, I have an ideal meaning, i.e., one thing that can be present in many different assertions.

What about the word I in itselfdoesnt it have a meaning? Not in the same sense as James Mensch. This word and also similar words, according to Husserl, function as universally operative indicators (LU, Tb. ed., II/1, 82; F., p.316).

As such an indicator, the word I means only your vis--vis intends himself. Like other occasional words - such as here, now, today, yesterday, etc. - it points to a circumstance in which it is used without expressing the circumstance's particular content.

This means, according to Husserl, that every occasional expression implies a distinction between the indicating (anzeigende) meaning of a word and the "indicated (angezeigte) meaning" of the circumstance it points to (LU, Tb. ed., II/1, 83; F., p. 316). A further conclusion is that, in understanding an occasional expression, we must pass from the indicating (anzeigende) meaning to the "indicated (angezeigte) meaning".10

If we grant this then we assert that in an occasional expression, meanings per se do not alter.

The indicating meanings, as simply pointers, remain the same.

So do the indicated meanings of the various objects pointed to by the occasional expression. Thus, the fact that someone else uses the word I to refer to a different subject neither affects the inherent content of my own subject nor changes the content of the word I as a universal indicator.

What changes in each case, as Husserl says, is "the act of meaning" - i.e., "the subjective act which gives the expression its (understood) meaning" (LU, Tb ed., II/1, 91; F., p. 322). The change, in other words, is in the movement from the indicating meaning to the various possible indicated meanings, which as a pointer the word I can refer to. Granting this, Husserl's original assertion follows. The content meant or referred to by the occasional expression is not itself occasional. It is just as much ideal - i.e., capable of being held constant in a definite description - as the content of a fixed expression.

subjectively occasional expressions

Derrida: The ability of language to function in the absence of intuition demands that meanings must function without intuition. It requires our being in principle excluded from ever cashing in the draft made on intuition in expressions ... (SP, 92).

Husserls response. This ability requires an initial intuition. The functioning of meaning without intuition is a functioning of an intending of a range of perceptions. The meaning intends the same one-in-many that the intuition (if it were present) would offer. But this means that this functioning without intuition is based on an original intuitive acquaintance with the object.

Difference, pp. 129-140

Two meanings in French: To differ (difference as distinction), to defer, to put off to latter

Derrida proposes to combine the two in the word, differance.

This change of spelling cannot be heard in French. The unheard of quality points back to something prior to both difference and deferring

The claim is that all sense, all conceptualization relies on these two, but both are grounded on difference.

Note: the argument here is Fichtes: The ground is distinct from the grounded, if it were the same then it would be in need of a ground

Thus, Derrida claims that difference is neither a word nor a concept

What it does is: as grounding temporal difference, set up temporal spacing,

As grounding the difference between signs, it sets up sense

One way to way to think about this is in terms of Hericlituss insight that difference is prior to identity. Reality is like the back stretched bow

If differance is prior to identity, then we cannot think of it as the difference between two already existing things. The things themselves are only possible because of differance.

Thus, differance is not a thing but the ground of things. If thought is thing/object thought, then differance is unthinkable.

It is however possible to see what it does through its effects.

So, according Derrida, time itself is an effect of difference.

Underlying the present instant is a divide, a difference, that makes the now differ from itself, and in doing so produce a new now.

As Derrida puts this, Time is the movement of this strange differance (85)

The differance is such that times presence is never all at once, but always deferred.

By virtue of its grounding in differance, the presence of the time in the now is deferred to the next now, where its presence is deferred again.

Another effect of this is in language. Here difference, as grounding the difference between signs makes possible language

Note: the notion of language here is that of a code. It is De Saussures notion.

De Saussure: the meanings of language are given by the differences between its signs.

a difference generally implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in language there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from the system. The idea or phonic substance that a sign contains is of less importance that the other signs that surround it (140)

Point: the meaning of a linguistic sign is constituted not object it refers to but by the differences it has to others systems

An example: You say red, but see one shade, I say red and see some other. How would we tell the difference in our seeing? We could not if all our other color words were adjusted accordingly, i.e., if the system of differences maintained itself.

Derridas point in all this: Every concept is inscribed in a chain or a system, within which it refers to another and to other concepts, by the system and chain of differences

It is not intuition that determines its meaning then: the signified concept is never present in itself in an adequate presence that would refer only to itself. (140)

Rather difference determines the meaning.

Note: if we grant this then we have an endless chain of signs referring to signs.

There is no intuition anchoring it.

Differance then as controlling this linguistic system is outside of it.

Such a play, thendifferanceis no longer simply a concept, but the possibility of conceptuality

It is the ground that stands outside of the grounded

It is then neither itself a concept nor one word among others (140).

This is why it is misspelled with an a.

How do we handle this. For normal philosophical discourse, the principles of such discourse are within it. They are speakable.

But differance is not.

As Derrida puts the situation:

What I put forth here will not be developed simply as a philosophical discourse that operates on the basis of a principle, of postulates and that moves according to the discursive line of a rational order (135).

It cannot since what is at issue is a transcendent truth outside of the sphere of writing>

What remains is simply a strategy without finality, a blind tactics, One which no longer follows the line of logico-philosophical speech What remains on the even and the aftermath of philosophy is the concept of play, the unity of chance and necessity in an endless calculus. (135)

What does this concretely mean? It means that Derrida will not put forth positions, but rather deconstruct them. Deconstruction means finding the oppositions that structure a text, seeing how, trying to say one thing, it also says the reverse.

Derrida, Differance, pp. 139-149

What is differance? Given that it is not a word or a concept, this is a hard question for Derrida to answer.

He attempts, however, various answers.

He says that the differences that permit language are effects. (141) of differance. Differance is the movement of play that produces these differences, these effects of difference.

Differance is the nonfull, nonsimple origin; it is the structure and differing origin of differences. (141).

This cause is not a subject or substance .. or a being that is somewhere present and escapes the play of differences

Note: if it were then being/identity would be the ultimate ground, not difference.

But then what is it?

Derrida says, Let us begin again. Differance is what makes the movement of signification possible only if each element that is said to be present, appearing on the stage of presence, is related to something other than itself (142)

The point: signification depends on something other than presencei.e., on absence.

As Derrida puts this in Speech and Phenomena, [t]he absence of intuition--and therefore of the subject of the intuition--is not only tolerated by speech; it is required by the general structure of signification, when considered in itself.

According to Derrida, this structure is that of indication.

Indicative signs stand for their referents. Substituting for them, they require their absence.

Thus, when I hear another person speaking, I take his spoken words as signs indicating the presence of the persons mental acts. Such acts are not present to me. If I could see them, if I could somehow enter the others head and observe his mental functioning, such signs would be useless to me.

the possibility of language rests on our avoiding any metaphysics of presence and this requires our being in principle excluded from ever cashing in the draft made on intuition in expressions ... (Derrida 1973a, p. 92).

What is the origin of the absence that make language possible?

Time.

If there were no time, everything would continue to be present. It would be like freezing the movie on one frame.

Time, however, depends on differance. On the now being divided, differing from itself.

The present in time is constituted by a relation to what absolutely is notnot to a past or a future considered as a modified present, but to non-presence pure and simple.

In other words, it is by virtue of the interval that separates it from the past and the future. This interval is not the past moment or the future moment but rather the spacing between the present and such moments.

This spacing is differance (it is not time, but a ground of time).

The present moment is a moment by an interval [that separates] it from what it is not, [i.e., from the past and the future]

This division that makes time possible also divides the now. It makes it separate itself from itself so as to become a new now.

Thus, for Derrida, The living present springs forth out of its nonidentity with itself ... (ibid.). The now always escapes its identification with one position in time. Its being present is one with its departure from that instance. Its presence is mixed with an absence that makes it depart.

This division affects everything that is in time. The departure of time is its departure. What is past is not.

So Derrida continues:

but the interval that constitutes it in the present must also divide the present in itself, thus dividing along with the present everything that can be conceived on its basis, that is, everything being (143)

With this, we have a new definition of differance:

It is this constitution of the present as primordial and irreducibly nonsimple [since it contains the nonpresent] that propose to call differance (143)

What differance then means is that everything in time is self-divided.

In particular, the subject itself is self-divided. It has no simple self-presence. It can know itself only through language. It has an indicative relation to itself, it knows itself through signs.

As Derrida puts this, quoting Saussure, language [which consists only of differences] is not a function of the speaking subject

For Derrida, this implies that the subject ( self-conscious) is inscribed in the language, that he is a function of the language (145). In other words, no language, no self-aware subjectivity.

Corollary: animals are not self-aware. They do not have the language to present themselves to themselves.

Note: here language is not a system of signs anchored in presence. It is a code, the meanings of its elements are constituted by their differences from each other.

The use of language is similar to the employment of any code It implies a play of formswith no determined or invariable substratum (146).

All presence, then, is derived.

We thus come to posit presence--and in particular, consciousness, the being-next-to-itself of consciousness-- ... as a determination and an effect. Presence is a determination and effect within a system which is no longer that of presence but that of differance (147).

Derrida, Differance, pp. 149-160

The final part of the essay is Derridas attempt to find historical antecedents for his doctrine of differance.

The doctrine: that presence and, in particular, the self-presence of consciousness is founded on differance.

The claim: this was Nietzsches, Freuds, and Heideggers move

Each of them based presence and self-presence on something else.

For Nietzsche, we have the assertion that consciousness is effect of forces and that force itself is never present; it is only the result of a play of differences. (148)

Nietzsche: the view is that the ultimate reality is one of will to power

What we have is a dynamic of competing forces

The dominant force sets the character for what appears

We have many souls, a social structure of souls (49),

the soul is a multiplicity of the subject (43),

it is a multiplicity of drives and emotions--which is strongest, that which most expresses will to power.

That is the one that appears.

Can we get rid of the opposition?

No. There is no inherent essential unity in the world. No higher conceptual unity in which conflicts are resolved.

Thus, what appears is the winner of the opposition. On a more basic level, we have the fact that the difference in quantity is the essence of force (148).

To eliminate one of the forces is to eliminate the force itself as appearing.

Thus, the force only appears when it acts against some opposing resistance.

So also, in the self, the dominate element shows itself by opposing the others.

Note: the model here is Darwins view of life as a system of struggle for existence

It only exists in terms of the opposition.

Derridas interpretation of this: We shall therefore call differance this active discord of the different forces and of the differences between forces which Nietzsche opposes to the traditional metaphysics (149)

As for Freud,

Consciousness is based on the two principles of differance.

The first differance as delay or deferring. Thus, the ego in the interest of self-preservation delays satisfaction of some of the demands of the id.

It also substitutes a symptomatic satisfaction for a real one. The basis here is that of substituting a possible for an impossible representation. The latter is deferred (put off) in favor of the former.

Apart from this, we have the fact that the unconscious cannot directly be made conscious. Consciousness and the unconscious differ from each other. And yet the explanation of conscious life requires the postulation of the unconscious, which leaves its traces on the consciousness in the form of symptoms.

Here, we conceive of differance as the relation to an impossible presence, (150). This is a relation to the absolutely other that apparently breaks up any economy

The point: consciousness is supported by the unconscious. But this is the id with the death instinct. Were this instinct to be given full play, consciousness would vanish. In the archives of consciousness, as we shall see, is a principle undermining them.

Here Derrida says the establishment of a pure presence without loss is one with the occurrence of absolute loss, with death (151)

Why? Because if one let the unconscious become fully present, the ego would be overwhelmed. It exists, the relation to reality exists, through repression.

With the alterity of the unconscious, we have to deal not with the horizons of modified presentspast or futurebut with a past that has never been nor every will be present, whose future will never be produced or reproduced in the form of presence.

We have only the translation of this into symptoms. But the symptom is not the unconscious. It is a trace that cannot be conceivednor therefore can differanceon the basis of either the present or the presence of the present.

(152). The point is that the symptom is the clothing of what itself cannot appear.

Heidegger:

The ontological differance:

The differance between Being and beings

That Being is distinct from beings.

For Heidegger this is the distinction between presence and present (Anwesen und Anwsendenden).

His claim: this difference is always forgotten.

We are always taking Being as some being that is present (155)

Thus, we take being as God, matter, will to power, history, etc., etc.

We move from standing out to standing open to standing in, each cycle determining an epoch in the history of being.

The question: why do we forget, why do we take Being as a being.

Heideggers answer: Being is finite, it can only appear perspectivally in terms of some aspect of beings. It can never appear as itself.

Thus, the trace of difference (between being and beings) effaces itself from the moment that being appears as a being-present (156)

This is because presence can only appear as the presence of some thing.

Derridas take: the whole thing is controlled by differance.

Differance (is) older than the ontological differance or the truth [presence, disclosure] of being.

It is a differance so violent that it refuses to be stopped and examined as the epochality of Being and the ontological difference (154)

Derrida, Differance, Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays, pp. 129-160

Overview

A convoluted attempt by Derrida to define his concept of differance. The concept does not signify difference, alterity, but rather what is generative of it. With its a, difference more properly refers to ... the origin or production of differences ... (130).

As such, it is neither a word nor a concept (130). This follows first of all from Saussures position (which Derrida accepts without comment) that difference is the functional condition, the condition of possibility, for every sign; and it is itself silent (133). It is silent since it is not a sign but the condition for the possibility of signs. The logic here is straight out of Fichte. Differance resists conceptualization--i.e., philosophys founding opposition--because it sustains it. (133-4).

The fact that it is not a word or concept immediately introduces an ambiguity into Derridas statement: 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 differings and difference would be the constituted products or effects. The difficulty is that differance is not a concept and hence cannot be placed with a conceptual system. The conclusion then is that differance is a self concealing process. Its action, in producing differences, is a self concealment insofar as it cannot be grasped in terms of what it makes possible.

Derrida puts this fundamental position in a number of ways:

1). Saussures notion of the arbitrariness of signs and the differential character of signs. The two are inseparable. Arbitrariness can occur only because the system of signs is constituted by the differences between the terms, and not by their fullness. It is not the contents, or the intuitive fullness which corresponds to these which is primary, which determines the differences between the signs. Rather the reverse. The elements of signification function ... by the network of oppositions that distinguish them and relates them to one another. (139). Given this, the meaning of the sign is arbitrary, not determined by relation to the world, but only by its position within the system of signs. (There is an echo here of Platos dialectic, where each concept has meaning only in terms of other concepts). On the one hand, this view allows Derrida to attack Husserls notion of adequate, intuitive self-givenness: the signified concept is never present in itself, in an adequate presence what would refer only to itself. Every concept is necessarily and essentially inscribed in a ... system, within which it refers to ... other concepts, but the systematic play of differences. (140). On the other, it allows the condition for this to be placed outside of this system. Such a play, then--defferance--is no longer simply a concept, but the possibility of conceptuality. It is then neither itself a concept nor one word among others (140). This is why it is misspelled with an a.

2. The ambiguity of the situation this leaves us with is summed up in Derridas comments on his conclusion: we shall designate by the term differance the movement by which language, or any code, any system of reference in general, becomes historically constituted as a fabric of differences. (141). He immediately adds that the terms employed in this definition, constituted, produced, created, movement, historically, etc. are not only to be understood only in terms of the language of metaphysics (141-2). In fact, he uses these terms only out of strategic convenience and in order to prepare the deconstruction of the system they form. (142).

3. As he earlier remarked, what I put forth here will not be developed simply as a philosophical discourse that operates on the basis of a principle, of postulates ... and that moves according the discursive line of a rational order (135). It cannot since what is at i