again that there is no absolute origin of sense in general. The
trace is the differencewhich opens appearance and signifi-
cation” ( 65 ). The trace is difference, deferral-différance: the
gap between one word and another, or one moment and an-
other, that makes meaning.
Derrida now brings out the big guns. The trace has been
discovered by the ultimate legitimating authority: science.
“And finally, in all scientific fields, notably in biology, this no-
tion [of the trace] seems currently to be dominant and irre-
ducible,” he announces, without providing evidence ( 70 ). Is
everything reallyjust writing: the whole world the work of the
trace, as Derrida asserts? What about visual pleasures, or the
body’s quick embraces? These too, Derrida insists, are forms of
writing (or “writing”): based on absence rather than, as we
naïvely thought, presence.
For all Derrida’s fervent denunciations of logocentrism
and his apocalyptic thundering in the Grammatology,he also
suggests that there is no radical change possible and no real
place for individual self-assertion. If we trumpet our own orig-
inality, we merely turn ourselves into benighted examples of
logocentric prejudice. Instead, we should adopt the practice of
commenting subversively on previous thinkers, while also ad-
mitting that their thought is the inevitable basis of our own.
We can only disturb the universe; genuine newness is ruled out
from the start. The metaphysics-skepticism paradigm has al-
ready determined our thinking.
Here is an example of the Derridean way of diminishing
originality in the Grammatology.In this passage, Derrida, with
some shuffling, explains his use of the word trace:
Why of the trace?What has led us to the choice of
this word? I have begun to answer this question.
But this question is such, and such the nature of my84 Writing and DifferenceandOf Grammatology