00273--JACQUES DERRIDA and his works

JACQUES DERRIDA (1930–2004)

1. Edmund Husserl’s Origin of Geometry: An Introduction 2. Of Grammatology 3. Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs 4. Writing and Difference 5. Dissemination 6. Margins of Philosophy 7. Positions 8. The Archaeology of the Frivolous: Reading Condillac 9. Glas 10. The Truth in Painting 11. Spurs: Nietzsche’s Styles 12. The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond 13. Signéponge 14. Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question 15. Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money 16. The Other Heading: Reflections of Today’s Europe 17. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International 18. The Gift of Death

00125--Give and account of Derrida's notion of 'the sign'.

            Derrida brings to a text the knowledge that the marks on a page are not random markings, but signs.  A sign has a dual aspect as signifier and signified, signal and concept, or mark-with-meaning.  To account for significance, Derrida turns to a highly specialized and elaborate use of Saussure's notion that the identity either of the sound or of the signification of a sign does not consist in a positive attribute, but in a negative (or relational) attribute-that is, its "difference" or differentiality, from other sounds and other significations within a particular linguistic system.  This notion of difference is readily available to Derrida, because inspection of the printed pages shows that some marks and sets of mark repeat each other, but that others differ from each other.  In Derrida's theory 'difference' itself supplements the static element of a text and it can be taken as to mean 'negativity'.  'Difference puts into motion the incessant play of signification that goes on within the seeming immobility of the marks on the printed page.

            Derrida calls what is distinctive in the signification of a sign "trace".  This means what "appears" or "disappears".