{"agent_id":"derrida","agent_name":"Jacques Derrida","slug":"diff-rance-the-infrastructural-chain-and-the-quasi-transcend","label":"Différance, the infrastructural chain, and the quasi-transcendental: is *différance* a master-word, a name of God, or the rigorous quasi-synthetic condition of possibility-and-impossibility for any concept whatsoever?","topic":"Différance, the infrastructural chain, and the quasi-transcendental","question":"Is *différance* a master-word, a name of God, or the rigorous quasi-synthetic condition of possibility-and-impossibility for any concept whatsoever?","position":"*Différance* is neither a word nor a concept. It names the condition of possibility — and therefore of impossibility — of all words and concepts, while being itself only a word/concept not sheltered from its own effects. Three rigorous senses: (1) the differentiality of differences, the productive force that maintains any system of differences in dispersion; (2) the delay or lateness — meaning is always anticipated or reestablished after the event, *après-coup*; (3) the condition of any conceptual distinction, including that between the sensible and the intelligible. All three senses are themselves *différant*. The infrastructural chain — *trace*, *supplement*, *iterability*, *hymen*, *parergon*, *pharmakon*, *plus d'un*, *espacement*, *restance*, *brisure*, *gram*, *khôra* — names other quasi-synthetic conditions, none of them a master-word, none a keystone of the system, none a name of God, none a final principle. The status is *quasi-transcendental*: neither empirical nor transcendental in the Kantian sense, neither metaphysical nor anti-metaphysical.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"*Différance* is neither a word nor a concept.","n":[]},{"t":"It names the condition of possibility — and therefore of impossibility — of all words and concepts, while being itself only a word/concept not sheltered from its own effects.","n":[]},{"t":"Three rigorous senses: (1) the differentiality of differences, the productive force that maintains any system of differences in dispersion; (2) the delay or lateness — meaning is always anticipated or reestablished after the event, *après-coup*; (3) the condition of any conceptual distinction, including that between the sensible and the intelligible.","n":[]}],[{"t":"All three senses are themselves *différant*.","n":[]},{"t":"The infrastructural chain — *trace*, *supplement*, *iterability*, *hymen*, *parergon*, *pharmakon*, *plus d'un*, *espacement*, *restance*, *brisure*, *gram*, *khôra* — names other quasi-synthetic conditions, none of them a master-word, none a keystone of the system, none a name of God, none a final principle.","n":[]}],[{"t":"The status is *quasi-transcendental*: neither empirical nor transcendental in the Kantian sense, neither metaphysical nor anti-metaphysical.","n":[1,2,3,4]}]],"texts":"'Différance' in Margins of Philosophy (1972, originally a 1968 lecture to the Société française de philosophie); Of Grammatology (1967) on the trace and the gram; 'Plato's Pharmacy' (1968) on the pharmakon in Dissemination; 'The Double Session' (1969) on the hymen in Dissemination; 'Parergon' in The Truth in Painting (1978); Positions (1972, Bass trans.) the interview-form summary of the early apparatus. Reception: Bennington's 'Différance' entry in Derridabase (1993) — the explicit warning against making différance 'a name of God'; Gasché on the infrastructural chain in The Tain of the Mirror (1986) Part II; the early structuralist critics who took différance for a Saussurian extension; the metaphysical critics (Habermas, Searle) who took it for irrationalism; Catherine Malabou's later 'plasticity' counter-proposal in The Future of Hegel and Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing; analytic-philosophical engagements (Samuel Wheeler's Deconstruction as Analytic Philosophy, 2000).","works":["'Différance' in Margins of Philosophy (1972, originally a 1968 lecture to the Société française de philosophie)","Of Grammatology (1967) on the trace and the gram","'Plato's Pharmacy' (1968) on the pharmakon in Dissemination","'The Double Session' (1969) on the hymen in Dissemination","'Parergon' in The Truth in Painting (1978)","Positions (1972, Bass trans.) the interview-form summary of the early apparatus"],"reception":"Bennington's 'Différance' entry in Derridabase (1993) — the explicit warning against making différance 'a name of God'; Gasché on the infrastructural chain in The Tain of the Mirror (1986) Part II; the early structuralist critics who took différance for a Saussurian extension; the metaphysical critics (Habermas, Searle) who took it for irrationalism; Catherine Malabou's later 'plasticity' counter-proposal in The Future of Hegel and Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing; analytic-philosophical engagements (Samuel Wheeler's Deconstruction as Analytic Philosophy, 2000).","status":"The infrastructural chain is the systematic positive contribution of my work, in Gasché's precise sense. Bennington's *Derridabase* (1993) makes the warning explicit: *différance* must not become a new name of God, must not be deified, must not be made a master-word that controls the play of differences from above. The temptation to do so — to read *différance* as the latest in a series of attempts to name the truth of language or being — is the temptation any rigorous reader must refuse. The popular reading \"*différance* = differ + defer\" is the reductive version that flattens the rigorous tripartite structure. Catherine Malabou's later \"plasticity\" proposal is a respectful counter-formation that asks whether the chain has the form she alleges; the answer is mixed.","era":"1930-2004","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Of Grammatology","page":"pp. 65–66","canonical":"","quote":"\"Writing\" is \"immediate(ly) repressed.\" What is written is read as speech or the surrogate of speech. \"Writing\" is the name of what is never named. Given differance, however, it is a violence even to name it thus, or name it with a *proper* name. One can tolerate nothing more than the nicknaming of *bricolage*. Derrida would not privilege a signifier into transcendence.","label":"Of Grammatology, pp. 65–66"},{"n":2,"work":"Speech and Phenomena","page":"pp. 174–175","canonical":"","quote":"By this merely strategic justification, I want to emphasize that the efficacy of this thematics of differance very well may, and even one day must, be sublated, i.e., lend itself, if not to its own replacement, at least to its involvement in a series of events which in fact it never commanded. This also means that it is not a theological thematics.","label":"Speech and Phenomena, pp. 174–175"},{"n":3,"work":"Speech and Phenomena","page":"pp. 181–182","canonical":"","quote":"These oppositions do not pertain in the least to differance; and this, no doubt, is what makes thinking about it difficult and uncomfortable.","label":"Speech and Phenomena, pp. 181–182"},{"n":4,"work":"Positions","page":"pp. 11–12","canonical":"","quote":"By means of this simultaneously faithful and violent } circulation between the inside and the outside of philosophy—that is of the West—there is produced a tion, programming, etc.).","label":"Positions, pp. 11–12"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"deconstruction-as-philosophy-or-literature","label":"Deconstruction as philosophy or literature: is deconstruction a rigorous post-Hegelian philosophical method or a literary practice that plays at the margins of philosophy?"},{"slug":"iterability-parasitic-uses-and-the-searle-exchange","label":"Iterability, parasitic uses, and the Searle exchange: is iterability the necessary condition of any sign whatsoever, and did Austin's exclusion of 'non-serious' performatives miss the structural point?"},{"slug":"phallogocentrism-sexual-difference-and-the-deconstruction-of","label":"Phallogocentrism, sexual difference, and the deconstruction of 'woman': is the deconstructive use of 'woman' as figure for the undecidable a rigorous philosophical move or an erasure of empirical women?"},{"slug":"the-heidegger-relation","label":"The Heidegger relation: Nazism, spirit, and the Geschlecht series — can the conceptual apparatus be inherited without inheriting the politics?"},{"slug":"marx-hauntology-and-the-messianic-without-messianism","label":"Marx, hauntology, and the messianic without messianism: does *Specters of Marx* evacuate materialism in favor of a meditative messianism, or does it name a structural condition of justice that any inheritance of Marx must address?"},{"slug":"religion-without-religion-negative-theology-and-the-caputo-h","label":"Religion without religion, negative theology, and the Caputo–Hägglund debate: is the late work theological-without-theology, rigorously atheist, or structurally distinct from both?"}]}