Writing is not secondary to speech.
The "a" which Derrida puts into the term can only be read: it sound just the same as the "e" would in this word in French. He claims that it is merely a comforting illusion to think that speech and writing are separate, and that writing is a fallen version of speech. He will proceed to argue that speech as the prototype and more perfect version of writing tries to deny the radical insight of deSaussure.
So différance is not: it has neither existence or essence.
It comes from both "defer," to put off, which is what happens to meaning in language in a relational system where signs themselves do not have essential meanings, and from "differ," to be unlike, not identical. The "ance" gerund form of the word puts it somewhere between passive and active, like "resonance" or "dissonance".
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See that post with different algorithms in metabole
See the journal French Metablog with today different posts
