Key Concepts
1. It is impossible to tell someone what you really mean: Derrida was deeply
concerned with the failure of language. Language is all we have to express how we ‘feel’,
yet it is also the very thing that fails to express this ‘feeling’ adequately. Derrida suggests
that when attempting to describe a feeling to others the subject will always fail to capture
meaning, they will be merely engaging in the process of what he calls differing. What is
being described is not being defined by what it is, but by difference. So, to put it simply
(if it is possible) when you are describing meaning you are only ever referring to other
signs, you are merely free falling down the slippery linguistic system.
For example: you want to tell someone you love them, so, as is procedure, you utter the
words “I love you”. However, the moment these words become phonic, they are taken
from the real in which they were conceived and placed into the imaginary. I suppose the
easiest way to get your head around the concept is to consider the idea that to every
single person love surely does not meet the same definition? The meaning of “I love you”
is so uniquely arbitrary to everyone, therefore, love has multiple meanings. Every time
someone says “I love you” they temporarily become the author of the sentence, they
attach to it a new meaning, then, someone else says “I love you” and once again, the
words fall into slipperiness and meaning is redefined. So basically, whoever you fall in
love with will never actually know, because you will fail to put whatever ‘love’ is into
words. See, language is slippery and deceptive, it’s trying to ruin your relationship (okay,
the last few sentences are not valid Derridean points, just me, trying to be funny, but
hours of reading Derrida does that to you)
2. Words just refer to other words and not thoughts or feelings: to Derrida, nothing
escapes this endless play of meaning, and the endless differing that takes place. The
concept of ‘play’ is key here. Play refers to how language is right in our grasp and
slipping away from us all at once! Look at the word play as a perfect example, play could
refer to performance, to action, or to escaping language, for you need no words to play in
some circumstances. The multiple meanings of ‘play’ in itself is an example of not only
how words refer to other words, but of Derrida’s rejection of a text only ever having one
meaning. Leading on to the next point….
3. “There is nothing outside of the text” (NATC 1692) Derrida rejects the idea of an
assumed universal truth. For this idealises the idea of something having a centre, and
subsequently, something fixed, meaning, fixed. Derrida favours de-centring. He urges a
mode of thought that considers the idea of a text having an original presence as elusive.
(getting metaphysical now) the very concept of ‘presence’ is reliant upon reconstruction
and interpretation and is defined by what is absent, it gets its definition by it’s other,
which is exemplary of Derrida’s point that the linguistic system is slippery and based
upon differing in space and time, fixed definition is impossible in such a system. Another
way to think of the concepts of ‘presence’ and ‘absence’ is the idea that if words refer to
other words then how can there be a point of origin? Maybe there never has been, and
never can be a ‘present’?
