#différance

By: WPS News Staff ReportersBaybay City | December 1, 2025 Jacques Derrida, a pivotal figure in post-structuralist philosophy, offered a radical re-evaluation of numerous established concepts, including the nature of war, politics, and language. His deconstructive methodology, far from being merely an academic exercise, provides a potent framework for understanding the complex interplay of these…

On my predecessors From a note to a friend.

You must allow me to digress for a moment and clarify my philosophical perspective, an perspective which is, by turns, Derridian and Deleuzian. You see, I hold that Derrida’s deconstruction of transcendental aesthetics dealt with the play of différance kinematically: in other words, Derrida described the play of différance without describing the forces and torques which affect the play of différance. Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism, by contrast, dealt with the play of différance kinetically: Deleuze described the forces and torques affecting the play of différance, pushing, pulling, and twisting the play of différance in so many different directions. My own philosophical approach, which we might term a “deconstructive empiricism”, is a mechanics of différance, an attempt to juxtapose Derrida’s more sophisticated kinematics of différance with Deleuze’s more sophisticated kinetics of différance. Let me stress here that to juxtapose is NOT to unify. My “mechanics of différance” maintains (i) that the kinetics of différance and the kinematics of différance differ from one another, (ii) that the kinetics of différance and the kinematics of différance defer to one another only insofar as they differ from one another, and, as a consequence of (i) and (ii), “mechanics of différance” maintain (iii) that the kinetics of différance and the kinematics of différance can only be compared and contrasted with one another and never combined, neither one into the other, nor all into an encompassing one.

I was there when Francis Bacon pain-

   Ted the Baboon.

(Loved to listen, though his thoughts were all

   Rather naughty.)

Sick and tired, I sired a tick and sent

   It to the moon.

Charm had become a fossil buried

   In my body.

“The Lord’s a vast abstraction: He

   Contains the yet-to-be.”

“God’s never meant that much to me.

   I’ve no theology.

Those doors are locked.”

   “I was there when Jacques

Derrida stalked

   The streets of France,

      And it has made all the différance.”