4.6.3—
Becoming as Différance

We can summarize the discussion thus far by calling upon a notion the inspiration for which is both Heraclitean and Nietzschean: Jacques Derrida's conception of différance .^[85] Derrida provides this gloss:

The verb "to differ" [Fr. différer ; L. differre ] seems to differ from itself. On the one hand, it indicates difference as distinction, inequality, or discernibility; on the other, it expresses the interposition of delay, the interval of a spacing and temporalizing that puts off until "later" what is presently denied, the pos-

[85] See Jacques Derrida, "Différance," in Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs, trans. David B. Allison (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 148ff, and 154, where Nietzsche and Heraclitus are cited as having foreshadowed the notion of différance . On the Nietzschean inspiration, see also Derrida, "Implications," in Positions, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 9–10.

sible that is presently impossible. Sometimes the different and sometimes the deferred correspond [in French] to the verb "to differ." [ . . . ] In the one case "to differ" signifies nonidentity; in the other case it signifies the order of the same . Yet there must be a common, although entirely differant [différante ], root within the sphere that relates the two movements of differing to one another. We provisionally give the name différance to this sameness which is not identical: by the silent writing of its a, it has the desired advantage of referring to differing, both as spacing/temporalizing and as the movement that structures every dissociation.^[86]

Derrida's neologism (or neographism) is perhaps a better name for the complex notion of "becoming" we have been discussing. It captures both senses of "becoming" we have found at work in Heraclitus and Nietzsche: becoming as "self-change" and as "aspect-change." As "self-change," différance designates difference within "the order of the same ": the one that, in time, becomes-other, postponing any definitive characterization. As "aspect-change," différance "signifies non-identity," "difference as distinction, inequality, or discernibility": the one that is simultaneously other—"the road up," which both is and is not "the road down." Furthermore, it serves to highlight several features not immediately evident in Nietzsche's and Heraclitus's notion but that we have seen are central to it. First, it discards the image of becoming as a fluid, primary, pre-formed plenum and instead figures it as an assemblage of differences, of forces in struggle, as "a 'productive,' conflictual movement which cannot be preceded by any identity, any unity, or any original simplicity."^[87] It thus serves to remind us that, if Nietzsche and Heraclitus at times picture becoming as a "river," it is one in which "different and different waters flow."^[88] Second, différance describes "an allergic or polemical otherness," "the 'active,' moving discord of different forces, and difference of forces," thus highlighting the agonistic quality we have seen to be so crucial in Heraclitus's and Nietzsche's notions of becoming.^[89] Third, it emphasizes that becoming is not something that happens to beings but rather constitutes the rejection of

[86] Derrida, "Différance," 129–30. Note that David B. Allison's translation of "Différance" includes a brief introduction (from which I quote above) that appeared in the original version of the essay, published in Théorie d'ensemble (Paris: Editions Seuil, 1968), but was omitted in the version reprinted in Marges de la philosophie (Margins of Philosophy ).

[87] Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 6.

[88] Heraclitus, fr. 12, trans. Kirk and Raven, Presocratic Philosophers, 217.

[89] Jacques Derrida, "Différance," in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 8, 18.

being, "the operation of differing which at one and the same time both fissures and retards [being-] presence, submitting it simultaneously to primordial division and delay."^[90] Finally, if Heraclitus's "becoming" has lost some of its force through its long service in the metaphysical vocabulary, Derrida's neographism restores this force and draws attention to what both Nietzsche and Derrida see as the decisive feature of our modernity (or postmodernity): the differing and deferring of being and presence that follows the "death of God."^[91]