Reference no: EM133542801
Assignment:
Discussion: Supplementarity and Différance
PROMPT:
In "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," Derrida lays out a robust critique of structuralism's emphasis on conceptions of "origins" or "essences," provocatively arguing that "the center is at the center of totality, and yet since the center does not belong to the totality (is not part of the totality), the totality has its center elsewhere. The center is not the center. The concept of the centered structure...is contradictorily coherent" (517-518).
But what replaces the center? In typical Derridean fashion, he uses a cluster of terms to articulate what a "structure without origins" might look like, terms such as "free play" (529), "supplementarity" (529), and "différance" (534).
Try your best to make sense of what these terms mean for Derrida and their implications for our understanding of language (particularly from the structuralist perspective). That is, what exactly does "play," "supplement," or "différance" mean? And what's at stake if we embrace these clustered ideas?