Post Class 11/12/12 Jaques Derrida 'Differenace'

In short, "Derrida demonstrates how Saussure’s notion of difference deconstructs itself (note that I did not write ‘Derrida deconstructs Saussure’s notion of difference’). He brings out the unseen implications of Saussure’s model of the sign in order to underscore its inherent radicalness. Every time one says/writes ‘white,’ one simultaneously implies all the other signs from which it is differentiated in order for it to mean what it does. Far from being distinct, therefore, each sign exists in a relationship of dependency with the others. The trace of the other signs inheres, as Derrida puts it, in each sign. There are a number of important implications to all this. Firstly, Derrida to some degree turns our attention away from the relationship between sign and referent and towards their relationship with other signs. In order to signify, signs refer, if anything, to other signs. Since one can never attain to the thing-in-itself, Derrideans argue, attention should focus, rather, on the semiological processes by which the ‘thing’ is signified as well as on the ways in which those processes undo themselves".

He says that every words are concocted and we are left with only difference. It seems like Jaques Derrida's theory contains similar ideology with how semiology works. Also, his theory on the "trace" was very interesting. I understood it as people words and thoughts were only reelection or shadow of what they were actually meant, and meanings could only be expressed compared other words or thoughts. Especially in today's society, it is very difficult to look or reading something and not relate to something else. It seems like everything is connected to each other one way or the other. It is hard to look at something and take it as just for what it is, because of hour many years of practice relating things.