ABSTRACT
Deconstruction involves the close reading of texts of any kind in such a way as to demonstrate the three tenets of Derrida’s work: fi rst, that meanings of words are insecure and never fully under our control; second, that the metaphysics of presence implies the existence of an underpinning unity of knowledge that needs to be disrupted to expose its internal illogicalities as well as the source of its authorisation; and third, that deconstruction opens up a space for justice – a
space in which the other (something new, productive and unforeseeable) emerges. The fi rst tenet (the insecurity of word meanings) rests on two ideas: différance and deferral. Derrida argues against the proposal that the relationship between a word (sign or signifi er) and its meaning (signifi ed) is determined, concrete and stable. He proposes that an inscription or mark does not represent a thing or image, as if refl ected in a mirror. Instead, the relationship between a word and its meaning is more diffuse and active, what he describes as ‘the regulated play of differences’ and ‘the instituted trace’ he calls différance (Derrida 1976, 62). The implication of this argument for the reading of texts suggests that word meanings escape accurate defi nition and conceptualisation because word meanings arise from differences to other words, allowing semantic slippage or deferral to occur, whereby meanings become parts of ever-emerging chains of signifi cation:
It is because of différance that the movement of signifi cation is possible only if each so-called ‘present’ element, each element appearing on the scene of presence, is related to something other than itself, thereby keeping within itself the mark of the past element, and already letting itself be vitiated by the mark of its relation to the future element, this trace being related no less to what is called the future than to what is called the past, and constituting what is called the present by means of this very relation to what is not: what it absolutely is not, not even a past or a future as a modifi ed present.
