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Différance

Philosophy
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Différance refers to the process by which meaning is created through difference and deferral. It emphasises instability in language.

Detailed Definition
Coined by Derrida, différance suggests that meaning is never fixed but always shifting through relations between signs. In poetry, it appears in ambiguity, wordplay, and layered meanings. Poets exploit the instability of language to create richness and multiplicity, inviting endless interpretation.
Example
Example in poetry:
Derrida's concept of différance — the simultaneously spatial (differing) and temporal (deferring) play of differences through which meaning is constituted without ever arriving at full presence — is enacted in Mallarmé's poetry, which Derrida reads as the foundational text of deconstructive poetics; Language poetry's refusal of transparent meaning — the displacement of reference, the foregrounding of signification's instability — enacts the philosophical logic of différance at the level of poetic practice; A poet working with etymologies might illustrate différance by tracing how a word's meaning has been constituted through its differences from other words and deferred across historical time — the word "philosophy" itself carries a chain of differentiation and deferral; Celan's compressed, deferred meanings — where the poem seems to approach a center of meaning that perpetually withdraws — can be read as an enactment of différance in the poetry of testimony; The way rhyme works in poetry — where one sound defers to another, meaning is produced through difference rather than presence — is a concrete illustration of différance as a formal principle: the first rhyme term's meaning is incomplete until the second term arrives, and that second term introduces new differences; Dickinson's dashes — which break and defer the flow of meaning, producing gaps where the reader must supply connections — enact at the typographical level the philosophical logic of différance: meaning is always arriving through a process of deferral and difference
Additional Notes
Différance is a neologism coined by Derrida in his 1968 lecture of the same name, deliberately spelled with an 'a' (instead of the grammatically correct 'e' in 'différence') to make a distinction that is audible only in writing — a performative enactment of the concept itself. Différance combines the French verb 'différer' in its two senses: to differ (to be distinct, to be other) and to defer (to delay, to postpone). Meaning in language is produced through these two operations simultaneously: signs mean what they mean through their differences from other signs, but the presence of meaning is perpetually deferred — we never reach a final, self-present meaning but are always referred to further signs. Derrida derives this from Saussure's structural linguistics but radicalizes it: if meaning is constituted by difference, there can be no originary presence that grounds the system. For poets, différance describes the permanent instability of poetic meaning. Related terms: the trace, supplement, arche-writing, Saussure, logocentrism, iterability.
Also Known As
deferred meaning trace play poststructural spacing
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