other. Derrida approves, and in fact regards as crucial, Saus-
sure’s emphasis on the differential character of the signifier.
But then, he writes, Saussure goes wrong. He charges that
Saussure aims to preserve and protect the signified. In Saus-
sure, Derrida writes, “the signified is a meaning thinkable in
principle within the full presence of an intuitive conscious-
ness” ( 73 ). In fact, Saussure says nothing like this. As in the
cases of Husserl and of Rousseau, who is considered next in
theGrammatology,Derrida stigmatizes one of his influences
by attributing to him the “metaphysical” and untenable idea
that meaning is fully available to a self-conscious speaker—an
idea that Saussure would never have endorsed.
Derrida argues, against Saussure, that the signified is
“always already in the position of the signifier”( 73 ). The letters
on a page, the words in the air between us: these are signifiers
and therefore fragile, apt to be misheard or misread. Their
signifieds, the concepts the words are attached to, are, accord-
ing to Derrida, just as precarious. Does the vulnerability to
misunderstanding, on the part either of a word or a concept,
render it essentiallyunstable, as Derrida claims? Philosophers,
and ordinary people as well, have used the word justicefor
thousands of years now. Justice may be subject to misprision,
but it remains recognizable. Even though no universally satis-
fying definition of it has been achieved, the idea of justice re-
tains a powerful hold on us. We still have a stake in it—and so
does Derrida, in his work of the 1990 s. (In the 1990 s, as I re-
count in chapter 5 , Derrida makes justice the center of his own
work, in somewhat implausible combination with his custom-
ary skepticism about identity and meaning.)
Saussure himself says that “in language there are only
differences” ( 68 ). If only, Derrida adds, Saussure had realized
that the signified too, not just the signifier, is afflicted by
Writing and DifferenceandOf Grammatology 81