LACAN AND MEANING
SEXUATION, DISCOURSE THEORY, AND TOPOLOGY IN THE AGE OF HERMENEUTICS
CHAPTER 2
WITHDRAWALS FROM MEANING
— page 41 —
Derrida does is remove the characteristic of positivity from the sign by situating it on the differential plane as well. No longer just in opposition to other signs, its own differentiality is now held to be its most essential characteristic. This doubled, even tripled, notion of difference – whereby the sign is constituted through its difference to other signs, each of which is composed of two differentially constituted elements – is designated by Derrida by the neologism différance (as opposed to simple différence [difference]). The Derridean project qua science of différance is therefore deeply Saussurean. Where Saussure accented the negative behind every positive linguistic unity, for Derrida language only possesses this prior negative level. Consequently, his investigations into meaning are necessarily decentered due to the inherent instability of the investigative object. For each sign simultaneously confers and derives its meaning diachronically with respect to other signs. This implies that meaning is dispersed across the entire system of language. The additional implication is that any given sign leaves its trace in the others. Deconstruction wagers that within the confines of a single text, these traces accumulate in certain signs. But determinate meanings do not. Instead, the meanings embodied by these signs are exceptionally unclear and what most visibly frustrates textual unity. In the end, a text inevitably subverts and exceeds the author’s intentions. It is a perpetually self-deconstructing literary object whose meaning is constituted inter-textually, as functions of différance.
This is a long way from Frege’s notion that the meaning of an expression lies with the definite object to which it refers. Derrida challenges the commonsensical treatment of language as a mimesis of the world. In a certain sense, there are no extra-textual objects. A linguistic expression is a self-representation whereby operations of différance both repress and foreground themselves to give off the illusion of referentiality. According to Derrida, the problem lies with the very term représentation [from the Latin repraesentatio]. It leaves the impression that what is present comes back as a copy of the thing in the absence of the thing for, by and in the subject. In other words, the object presents itself behind its representation for a subject. Worse still, the subject has similarly come to apprehend itself as a representative of some supposed original presence. However, deconstruction removes the prospect of an original presence of Meaning or Self or any other transcendent essence aimed at in interpretation. For what ultimately lies beneath the text are the pre-ontological traces of différance, thoroughly frustrating our full grasp of meaning at its every turn.
In more polemical terms, Foucault likewise pits post-structuralist thought against the hermeneutical tradition. His own etymological analysis places the belief in hidden, primordial meanings with what the Greeks called allēgoria and hyponoïa. Championed instead is the disposition inherent to the discipline of semiology, which derives its name from sēmeion [a sign]. But this was only made possible after men like Nietzsche and Freud profoundly transformed the
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