In this paper, in the first place, I aim to enquire into Bernard Stiegler’s critical appropriation of his mentor Jacques Derrida’s notion of différance, emphasizing how Stiegler’s philosophy of technology stems from an original interpretation of the main tenets of deconstruction. From this perspective, I will investigate Stiegler’s definition of technology as tertiary retention, i.e., exosomatized, artificial memory interrelating with biological memory, testing its hermeneutic strengths as well as possible weaknesses. In the second place, I aim to contrast Stiegler’s (...) understanding of technology with the concept of multistability brought forward by postphenomenological philosophies of technology such as those elaborated by Don Ihde and Peter-Paul Verbeek. This investigation will enable me to submit that Stiegler’s approach represents a peculiar and innovative way to conceive of technology. On the one hand, indeed, it does not seem to fall prey to the criticisms raised by postphenomenology against traditional philosophies of technology such as Martin Heidegger’s or Jacques Ellul’s, deemed to be overly deterministic, abstract and pessimistic in their understanding of technology. On the other, it retains important methodological precautions from deconstruction, thereby pointing at some possible blind spots of postphenomenology, especially concerning the vexed question of the empirical-transcendental divide, which Stiegler aims to develop beyond both Derrida’s and postphenomenology’s stances. (shrink)

This essay shows that Derrida's discussion of "Differance," is remarkably parallel to Plato's discussion of Difference in the Parmenides. Plato's presentation of "Parmenides'" discussion of generation from a One which Is is a version of Derrida's preconceptual spacing. Derrida's implicit reference to Plato both interprets Plato and explains the obscure features of "Differance." Derrida's paradoxical remarks about Differance are very like what Plato implies about Difference. Derrida's Differance addresses the puzzle that concepts are required to construct the beings in a (...) plurality of objects, but concepts cannot differentiate unless there is already a plurality of objects. Plato's version of the same problem is a notational variant of Derrida's Husserlian dilemma. Derrida, following Davidson, is not only skeptical about the project of founding metaphysics on simple entities, but also holds that necessity has no foundation in the "world." Plato, on the other hand, retains the idea that necessity has an objective basis in the self-evident truths of mereology. (shrink)

This article examines Derrida's critique of Hegel. It argues that there are two key issues that Derrida misunderstands in Hegel's thought: first, Hegel's response to the concept-intuition dichotomy that plagued Kant's critical thought; second, that Hegel's notions of reason and the dialectic, when they are conceived non-metaphysically, are not tools employed to subsume differences but are, like Derrida's différance , fundamentally concerned with thought's instability. The article shows the way in which Derrida develops the notion of singularity by an (...) examination of the discussion of responsibility in his later writings. It is argued that the way that Hegel and Derrida consider the notion of singularity is a much better marker for distinguishing these two thinkers than Derrida's own interpretation of Hegel. Key Words: Jacques Derrida • dialectic • differance • G. W. F. Hegel • normativity • reason • responsibility • singularity. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the influence of J. Derrida’s philosophy on the early thought of French phenomenologist M. Richir. Main texts for the analysis are Derrida’s report « La Différance » and the article « Le Rien Enroulé » by Richir. The author stresses their deep figurative and substantive interconnectedness. Thus, Richir borrows from Derrida a number of key philosophical figures, including the figure of différance itself, and applies them to phenomenological landscape through the “first-person” narrative. Having examined the (...) correlation between Derrida’s figures of différance and Richir’s phenomenalization, the author concludes that Richir, influenced by the impersonal figure of différance, leads his “first-person” narrative in an attempt to take it beyond the limits of classical phenomenological discourse. Moreover, the author finds preconditions for Richir’s introduction of one of his early key concepts “nothing” (rien) in the text of Derrida’s « La Différance ». The main thesis of this research is: Richir borrows Derrida’s understanding of consciousness and performs phenomenological description from its perspective. The paper considers Derrida’s text as a key to understanding Richir’s article « Le Rien Enroulé » and, as a result, the key to his early philosophy in general. (shrink)

It is in 1965 that, as well known, Derrida publishes in Tel Quel one of his most important writings on Antonin Artaud : La parole soufflée. In what follow, however, the deep meaning of such an essay is not immediately related to the specifically Artaudian questions it arises, but to the fact that Derrida’s most famous neologism – différance – makes between its pages (for three times) the first appearance. It is in any case important to keep in mind (...) the distinction between its two different ed... (shrink)

To contemplate writing a comparison of aspects of the philosophical works of Śaṅkara, a major philosophical figure in India of the eight or ninth centuries, and Jacques Derrida, a so-called postmodernist thinker, gives a writer reason to pause and to consider moving forward with caution. A writer must proceed cautiously because writing is a risky endeavor, according to Derrida, who also perceives it as a violent exercise because language is more primary than writing in the sense that it is not (...) possible to inquire about the origin of language because we already exist within it, and we cannot get outside of language to examine its origin.1 From another Derridean perspective within the context of interpreting Plato .. (shrink)

In Of Grammatology, Derrida discusses Leroi-Gourhan in relating différance to memory, the ‘program’, and the history of life. In Technics and Time, 1, Stiegler argues that Derrida failed to draw all the philosophical implications of linking différance to the questions of life and retention. Derrida returned to the life sciences in 1975, in a seminar not published in its entirety until 2019. There, Derrida attempts to deconstruct the geneticist François Jacob's account of the ‘logic of life’, but Derrida's (...) analysis of different kinds of memory and programs seems confused, suggesting that the Derridean text remains haunted by the deficiencies of his earlier reading of Leroi-Gourhan. Later in the seminar, Derrida shows foresight concerning the problems arising from seeing the genetic molecule as akin to a computer program, despite Jacob making this link via Schrödinger and Wiener's discussions of negentropy. When Derrida turns to a reading of Freud and libidinal energy, however, he ‘assumes’ a reading of Laplanche but ignores the latter's critique of Freud's own preoccupations with the second law of thermodynamics. The limitations of Derrida's attempts to bring deconstruction together with scientific understanding expose the need for the kind of ‘organological’ and ‘neganthropological’ approach that Stiegler will ultimately pursue. (shrink)

This essay shows that Derrida's discussion of "Differance," is remarkably parallel to Plato's discussion of Difference in the Parmenides. Plato's presentation of "Parmenides'" discussion of generation from a One which Is is a version of Derrida's preconceptual spacing. Derrida's implicit reference to Plato both interprets Plato and explains the obscure features of "Differance." Derrida's paradoxical remarks about Differance are very like what Plato implies about Difference. Derrida's Differance addresses the puzzle that concepts are required to construct the beings in a (...) plurality of objects, but concepts cannot differentiate unless there is already a plurality of objects. Plato's version of the same problem is a notational variant of Derrida's Husserlian dilemma. Derrida, following Davidson, is not only skeptical about the project of founding metaphysics on simple entities, but also holds that necessity has no foundation in the "world." Plato, on the other hand, retains the idea that necessity has an objective basis in the self-evident truths of mereology. (shrink)

The doctrine of eternal recurrence in Nietzsche is an essentially ecstatic doctrine. It is also strangely incommunicable. Here the ecstasy that reveals singularizes. The essential revelation closes the one to whom it is given in his own singularity ; only a singularity opens to the abysses and the Dionysian truth. Heidegger could then see in it an ontological doctrine. And an authentifying-singularizing-doctrine. Not, though, the same as his own. For Heidegger could suggest that the time horizon in which this doctrine (...) conceives Being in its Becoming-the "deep eternity"-is in fact not a deep structure of time, but the linear time of an eternity of instants. Eternity is not deep. In addition the subject of the Nietzschean ecstasy-which longs for eternity- cannot appropriate itself, cannot become a whole, cannot really achieve singular existence. Are these Heideggerian thoughts criticisms of the Nietzschean experience? Is the deep ontological truth to be then sought elsewhere? Is the wholeness of one's own life- the essence of this existence- to be then sought in another experience of the time-horizon of Being? Or else do these Heideggerian observations not rather point to another structure of the thought involved-something like a surface thought? And to another structure of the one smitten by this thought-a singularity that exists only in a circle of continuous metamorphoses? Some deconstructive work by Derrida encourages us to look in this direction. (shrink)

This essay shows that Derrida’s discussion of “Differance,” is remarkably parallel to Plato’s discussion of Difference in the Parmenides. Plato’s presentation of “Parmenides’” discussion of generation from a One which Is is a version of Derrida’s preconceptual spacing. Derrida’s implicit reference to Plato both interprets Plato and explains the obscure features of “Differance.” Derrida’s paradoxical remarks about Differance are very like what Plato implies about Difference.Derrida’s Differance addresses the puzzle that concepts are required to construct the beings in a plurality (...) of objects, but concepts cannot differentiate unless there is already a plurality of objects. Plato’s version of the same problem is a notational variant of Derrida’s Husserlian dilemma.Derrida, following Davidson, is not only skeptical about the project of founding metaphysics on simple entities, but also holds that necessity has no foundation in the “world.” Plato, on the other hand, retains the idea that necessity has an objective basis in the self-evident truths of mereology. (shrink)

Through a re-articulation of Derridean différance, Bernard Stiegler claims that the human is defined by an originary default that displaces all psychic and social life onto technical supplements. His philosophy of technics re-articulates the logic of the supplement as concerning both human reflexivity and its supports, and the history of the différance of life itself. This has been criticised for reducing Derrida's work to a metaphysics of presence, and for instituting a humanism of the relation to the inorganic. (...) By refuting these claims, this article will show that Stiegler's doubling of différance enables him to articulate the human as constituted by both the individuation characteristic of ‘life’, and that of a technical, psychic, and collective individuation. Putting forward a reading of the logic of the trace in life, and emphasising the aspects of Leroi-Gourhan, Simondon, and Canguilhem that Stiegler uses in his reading of Derrida, I will demonstrate that the political stakes of adaption and adoption in his Noopolitics require this re-articulation of différance. Technics shapes the human future, arising from this differential mutation; marking the invention of the human as the site of the political. (shrink)

In inquiring into the nature of deconstruction in Derrida we see that it hides an opposite aspect of onto‐generative emergence as stated in the wording of the Yijing. What is hidden is the movement of difference‐making and generalizing repetition by way of certain presupposed reality. In examining Derrida's notion “différance” , his contrast between an ontology of presence and a philosophy of absence, in explaining the origin of meaning à la de Saussure, has transformed into the polaristic structure of (...) all differences, whether it be in language or in things. The Saussurian distinction between the signifier and the signified no doubt reflects this polarity but not reveals an underlying transcendent‐immanent principle called “différance,” or, the dao 道 in Chinese philosophy. This “difference” in language leads to ramification of meanings which could be self‐deconstructive such as the extended use of the word “spirit” demonstrates. (shrink)

This article provides, through a discussion of the work of Jacques Derrida, an examination of the philosophical basis of postmodernism. The first section identifies and explains the positive claims of postmodernism, including the key claim that all identities, presences, etc. depend for their existence on something which is absent and different from themselves. The second section further illustrates the positive claims through an analysis of Derrida's "deconstructionist" reading of Plato. The final section raises a number of critical problems for postmodernism: (...) that it confuses aesthetics with metaphysics; that it mistakes assertion for argument in philosophy; that it is guilty of relativism; and that it is self-contradictory. -/- . (shrink)

This experimental article claims that relatively recent trends in Western philosophy provide a much more open approach to philosophies originating in nonwestern traditions, including the Chinese, than found in most mainstream Western philosophy. More specifically, I argue that a slightly modified version of Jacques Derrida’s concept of différance offers a hermeneutic parallel to native Chinese philosophical approaches to interpretation. These converge in the view that Western and Chinese philosophies cannot be reduced to the other in conceptual terms and that (...) a finalized meaning or interpretation of each is a priori unattainable, thus providing a future opening for – and even integration of – a Chinese-Western dialogue in global philosophy and ethics.*. (shrink)

This chapter undertakes a serious reflection on the question of Derrida's obscurity, based on a close reading of one of his most important texts, the 1967 essay, “La différance.” The procedure is to tease out what Derrida is saying, often paragraph by paragraph or even sentence by sentence, posing questions about how to read particular passages, with a view to seeing in what ways Derrida's essay falls into obscurity. Derrida's sometimes replaces argument with puns and other forms of linguistic (...) play, and he often assumes the reader's acquaintance with Lacan, Heidegger, and other difficult thinkers. Derrida's “semantic analysis” of différance is, quite lucid and suggests an interesting argument from the essentially differential nature of linguistic meaning to the untenability of metaphysical claims about the fundamental role of presence and subjectivity. (shrink)

This paper attempts to elucidate on Jacques Derrida’s concept of deconstruction and its difficult elements, viz., differance, dissemination, destinerrance, and geocatasthrophe. These basic ideas need elaboration for their proper understanding. Once successfully achieved, then here lies the significance of this paper.

This article casts light on Marc Richir’s remarkable and yet poorly known interpretation of the analyses of animality that Martin Heidegger develops in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude and Solitude. It shows that this interpretation unfolds as a two‑step critical revision of Heidegger’s analyses within the framework of Richir’s neo‑phenomenological project. On the one hand, Richir aims to offer the “right” interpretation of the cybernetic and grammatological history of life told by Jacques Derrida, by measuring it against Heidegger’s (...) theory of the organism. On the other hand, Richir rewrites the limits of Heidegger’s conception of animality in light of the overview of contemporary ethological research provided by Konrad Lorenz. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialtheorie und Philosophie Jahrgang: 5 Heft: 2 Seiten: 192-215.

A possible relation between Derrida's deconstruction of metaphysics and connectionism is explored by considering diffeacuterance in neural nets terms. First diffeacuterance, as the crossing of Saussurian difference and Freudian deferral, is modeled and then the fuller 'sheaf of diffeacuterance is taken up. The metaphysically conceived brain has two versions: in the traditional computational version the brain processes information like a computer and in the connectionist version the brain computes input vector to output vector transformations non-symbolically. The 'deconstructed brain' neither processes (...) information nor computes functions but is spontaneously economical. (shrink)

El presente trabajo se desarrolla a partir de una reconstrucción de los análisis de Roberto Rubio acerca de las dificultades en que incurre la oposición entre enfoque fenomenológico y semiótico, a la hora de aportar posibles soluciones al debate actual en filosofía de la imagen. Después de haber confrontado las perspectivas husserliana y heideggeriana con la teoría derridiana de la escritura, la referencia al arte de Duane Michals permitirá acercar el problema-imagen hacia el pensamiento de la diferencia y del acontecer (...) diferencial, terreno icónico en donde el juego inestable e indefinido de las oposiciones produce toda posibilidad de efecto semántico. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 212 Seiten: 81-96.

A Society of the Friends of Difference would have to include Heraclitus, Nietzsche, Saussure, Freud, Adorno, Heidegger, Levinas, Deleuze, and Lyotard among its most prominent members.

The paper attempts to answer a very obstinate fundamental problem—is literary meaning determinable at all? Would it be determinable if it were constructed by the language of the text? Or is this meaning open-ended, constantly deferred or shifted as a result of the very nature of signification? In this paper, I argue that the levels of _dhvani-ṣ Avivakṣitavācya dhvani _ and_ Vivakṣitavācya dhvani_ and their sub-levels are far more comprehensive than the concept of ‘_differance_’, both based on the play of (...) meanings. Ānandvardhana seems to anticipate Derrida in postulating the infinite suggested meaning over and above the expressed literal meaning in the levels of _dhvani_, though the admission of any definite literal meaning itself goes against the deconstructive approach of ‘_differance_’. The paper also deals with the analysing a few literary works with the levels of _dhvani_ and also how meaning of a text is revealed to the _sahrdaya_ (reader). (shrink)