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Unit 7: Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences-Jacques Derrida

has an oral tradition that is independent of writing, and it is this independence that makes a pure Notes
science of speech possible. Derrida vehemently disagrees with this hierarchy and instead argues
that all that can be claimed of writing - eg. that it is derivative and merely refers to other signs -
is equally true of speech. But as well as criticising such a position for certain unjustifiable
presuppositions, including the idea that we are self-identical with ourselves in 'hearing' ourselves
think, Derrida also makes explicit the manner in which such a hierarchy is rendered untenable
from within Saussure's own text. Most famously, Saussure is the proponent of the thesis that is
commonly referred to as "the arbitrariness of the sign", and this asserts, to simplify matters
considerably, that the signifier bears no necessary relationship to that which is signified. Saussure
derives numerous consequences from this position, but as Derrida points out, this notion of
arbitrariness and of "unmotivated institutions" of signs, would seem to deny the possibility of any
natural attachment. After all, if the sign is arbitrary and eschews any foundational reference to
reality, it would seem that a certain type of sign (ie. the spoken) could not be more natural than
another (ie. the written). However, it is precisely this idea of a natural attachment that Saussure
relies upon to argue for our "natural bond" with sound, and his suggestion that sounds are more
intimately related to our thoughts than the written word hence runs counter to his fundamental
principle regarding the arbitrariness of the sign.
7.3.2 Arche-Writing
In Of Grammatology and elsewhere, Derrida argues that signification, broadly conceived, always
refers to other signs, and that one can never reach a sign that refers only to itself. He suggests that
"writing is not a sign of a sign, except if one says it of all signs, which would be more profoundly
true" (OG 43), and this process of infinite referral, of never arriving at meaning itself, is the notion
of 'writing' that he wants to emphasise. This is not writing narrowly conceived, as in a literal
inscription upon a page, but what he terms 'arche-writing'. Arche-writing refers to a more
generalised notion of writing that insists that the breach that the written introduces between what
is intended to be conveyed and what is actually conveyed, is typical of an ordinary breach that
afflicts everything one might wish to keep sacrosanct, including the notion of self-presence.
This ordinary breach that arche-writing refers to can be separated out to reveal two claims regarding
spatial differing and temporal deferring. To explicate the first of these claims, Derrida's emphasis
upon how writing differs from itself is simply to suggest that writing, and by extension all repetition,
is split (differed) by the absence that makes it necessary. One example of this might be that we
write something down because we may soon forget it, or to communicate something to someone
who is not with us. According to Derrida, all writing, in order to be what it is, must be able to
function in the absence of every empirically determined addressee. Derrida also considers deferral
to be typical of the written and this is to reinforce that the meaning of a certain text is never
present, never entirely captured by a critic's attempt to pin it down. The meaning of a text is
constantly subject to the whims of the future, but when that so-called future is itself 'present' (if we
try and circumscribe the future by reference to a specific date or event) its meaning is equally not
realised, but subject to yet another future that can also never be present. The key to a text is never
even present to the author themselves, for the written always defers its meaning. As a consequence
we cannot simply ask Derrida to explain exactly what he meant by propounding that enigmatic
sentiment that has been translated as "there is nothing outside of the text". Any explanatory words
that Derrida may offer would themselves require further explanation. [That said, it needs to be
emphasised that Derrida's point is not so much that everything is simply semiotic or linguistic - as
this is something that he explicitly denies - but that the processes of differing and deferring found
within linguistic representation are symptomatic of a more general situation that afflicts everything,
including the body and the perceptual]. So, Derrida's more generalised notion of writing, arche-
writing, refers to the way in which the written is possible only on account of this 'ordinary'
deferral of meaning that ensures that meaning can never be definitively present. In conjunction
with the differing aspect that we have already seen him associate with, and then extend beyond
the traditional confines of writing, he will come to describe these two overlapping processes via
that most famous of neologisms: différance.

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