Living through Différance

Différance : A term used by Jacques Derrida in the greater realm of deconstruction, making sense of the dissonance in our lives that lead to truth. Derrida favors truth in the practice of writing, hope in the play and movement of words and ideas, and structural survival (see below) that allows both knowledge and near immortality through the layering of texts and the world. Read more in Derrida's "Différance" and my Mise-en-abyme in Wayne Wang's New York and Hong Kong films (to learn more about how I see Derrida's positive layering method that works in contrast to a suffocating and frightening black hole of despair).

Ellipsis: Derrida discusses the Ellipsis as the 'space of play' in "Before the Law." Here a gap is created through différance; a friction opens up a porthole. The space may be in the inbetween, the framing of an object or notion. How do we enter a painting? A new city?

Difference and Repetition: Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze's book and concept of difference. The authors value dissonance in juxtaposition of closely related things or concepts to reach more acute truths. They also value repeated activities to make understand more about ourselves and the world through slight differences in their repetition.

Becoming: Deleuze's term for living in an active sense. It assumes the person is living through difference and repetition to have a heightened awareness of their reality and living through the Virtual.

Virtual: Deleuze's term for our imagined reality that is, paradoxically, the real reality instead of the physical, Actual world. The Virtual encompasses dreamworlds, imaginations, and memories that come from focal points in our Actual worlds.

Examples of Living through Différance:

traveling & comparing a new culture or city to one's own (difference)
learning about something in one's life or recalling a memory through viewing a film (Virtual)
writing in a journal (Différance)
taking time to write a letter by hand
reading about the life of someone one strives to be
visiting an art museum (framing)
cooking from an old family recipe found in a box
shaping reality through memories (Virtual)
looking at old photographs (Virtual)
tasting wines...especially very close varietals
keeping a weekly schedule, but also breaking from it
celebrating a yearly holiday (repetition)
In what ways do you live through différance?

On Language

Posted by Kathleen Clare Waller on Saturday, September 29, 2012

The ‘Illegal’ Trap in nytimes.com

By LAWRENCE DOWNES

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/28/the-illegal-trap/?smid=pl-share

This recent article on the term "illegal immigrant" got me thinking back to a discussion on Judith Butler in an MA class as well as my teaching of Huckleberry Finn in America. Language is a reflection of thought; it is creative expression filled with nuances, cultural relevance, knowledge, power, and more. Whether a word is harmful or positive (or the language of an entire book/film/essay/etc) the ideas will not go away when we censor them. In fact, the ignorance to the points will breed further misunderstanding and sometimes hatred. The N word is in Huckleberry Finn, so we must understand why and also look at how it has changed historically. The term "illegal" is not demeaning when applied to a people if one is trying to fight FOR their legality. However, the fight to rid a group of people from the word indeed shows their deep feelings of being forgotten both by their homelands and their host countries.

A serious misunderstanding has taken place. Calling the foundational status of a term into question does not censor the use of the term. It seems to me that to call something into question, to call into question its foundational status, is the beginning of the reinvigoration of that term. What can such terms mean, given that there is no consensus on their meaning? How can they be mobilized, given that there is no way that they can be grounded or justified in any kind of permanent way. What is the task for politics when it invariably must use terms, must use the language of universality, for instance, precisely when the conventional usages of the term do not include the radical democratic uses of the term one has in mind for the term?
Butler, Judith (Conference.) "Left Conservatism, II." in: Theory & Event. Vol.2, Issue 2, 1998.

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The ‘Illegal’ Trap in nytimes.com