# trace (deconstruction) trace (french:) is one of the most important concepts in derridian deconstruction. in the 1960s jacques derrida used this concept in two of ir early books namely writing and difference and of grammatology # overview in french the word trace has a range of meanings similar to those of its english equivalent but also suggests meanings related to the english words "track" "path" or "mark." in the preface to ir translation of of grammatology gayatri chakravorty spivak wrote "i stick to 'trace' in my translation because it 'looks the same' as derrida's word; the reader must remind himself of at least the track even the spoor contained within the french word." because the meaning of a sign is generated from the difference it has from other signs especially the other half of its binary pairs the sign itself contains a trace of what it does not mean ie bringing up the concepts of woman normality or speech may simultaneously evoke the concepts of man abnormality or writing. derrida does not positively or strictly define trace and denies the possibility of such a project. indeed words like "differance" "arche-writing" "pharmakos/pharmakon" and especially "specter" carry similar meanings in many other texts by derrida. ir refusal to apply only one name to ir concepts is a deliberate strategy to avoid a set of metaphysical assumptions that ey argues have been central to the history of european thought trace can be seen as an always contingent term for a "mark of the absence of a presence an always-already absent present" of the 'originary lack' that seems to be "the condition of thought and experience." trace is a contingent unit of the critique of language always-already present: "language bears within itself the necessity of its own critique." deconstruction unlike analysis or interpretation tries to lay the inner contradictions of a text bare and in turn build a different meaning from that: it is at once a process of destruction and construction. derrida claims that these contradictions are neither accidental nor exceptions; they are the exposure of certain "metaphysics of pure presence" an exposure of the "transcendental signified" always-already hidden inside language. this "always-already hidden" contradiction is trace # metaphysics and logocentrism; differance and trace one of the many difficulties of expressing jacques derrida's project (deconstruction) in simple terms is the enormous scale of it. just to understand the context of derrida's theory one needs to be acquainted intimately with philosophers such as socrates-plato-aristotle rene descartes immanuel kant georg wilhelm friedrich hegel charles sanders peirce jean-jacques rousseau karl marx friedrich nietzsche emmanuel levinas edmund husserl martin heidegger and others. some have tried to write simplified versions of this theory such as deconstruction for beginners and deconstructions: a user's guide but ir attempts have moved away from the original. the best way to learn about deconstruction is to read derrida's own work; nonetheless this short exposition of the relationship between "trace" and derrida's project may help orient ir readers derrida's philosophy is chiefly concerned with metaphysics although ey does not define it rigorously and takes it to be "the science of presence." in ir own words > the history of metaphysics like the history of the west is the history of these metaphors and metonymies. its matrix - if you will pardon me for demonstrating so little and for being so elliptical in order to bring me more quickly to my principal theme - is the determination of being as presence in all the senses of this word. it would be possible to show that all the names related to fundamentals to principles or to the center have always designated the constant of a presence - eidos arche telos energia ousia aletheia transcendentality consciousness or conscience god man and so forth derrida finds the root of this metaphysics which ey calls "metaphysics of pure presence" in logos which is internal to language itself. ey calls this "logocentrism" which is a tendency towards definitive truth-values through forced closure of structures. in ir belief it is the structure of language itself that forces us into metaphysics best represented through truth-values closures speech as valorised by socrates in phaedrus. in fact according to derrida logocentrism is so all-pervasive that the mere act of opposing it cannot evade it by any margin. on the other hand derrida finds ir nietzschean hope (ir own word is "affirmation") in heterogeneity contradictions absence etc. to counter the privileged position of the speech (parole) or the phonè ey puts forward a new science of gramme or the unit of writing: grammatology unlike structuralists derrida does not see language as the one-to-one correspondence between signified and signifier; to ir language is a play of identity and difference an endless chain of signifiers leading to other signifiers. in spite of all the logocentric tendencies towards closure and truth-values language or text for that matter always contradicts itself. this critique is inherent in all texts not through a presence but an absence of a presence long sought by logocentric visions. influenced by some aspects of freudian psycho-analysis derrida presents us the strategy of deconstruction an amalgamation of heidegger's concept of destruktion and levinas's concept of the other deconstruction as a strategy tries to find the most surprising contradictions in texts unravel them and build upon this; instead of finding the truth the closure or the steadfast meaning it finds absence of presence freeplay of meanings etc. it is this absence of presence that is described as 'trace' by derrida. however ey treats the word cautiously and terms it thus only as a contingency measure because the traditional meaning of the word 'trace' is a part of the scheme derrida wants to uncloak # # differance by the virtue of trace signifiers always simultaneously differ and defer from the illusive signified. this is something derrida calls "differance." according to derrida "differance is the non-full non-simple "origin"; it is the structured and differing origin of differences." further language is labyrinthine inter-woven and inter-related and the threads of this labyrinth are the differences traces. along with "supplement" trace and differance convey a picture of what language is to derrida. all these terms are part of ir strategy; ey wants to use trace to "indicate a way out of the closure imposed by the system...." trace is again not presence but an empty simulation of it > the trace is not a presence but is rather the simulacrum of a presence that dislocates displaces and refers beyond itself. the trace has properly speaking no place for effacement belongs to the very structure of the trace. . . . in this way the metaphysical text is understood; it is still readable and remains read it is essentially an "antistructuralist gesture" as ey felt that the "structures were to be undone decomposed desedimented." trace or difference is also pivotal in jeopardizing strict dichotomies > t has been necessary to analyze to set to work within the text of the history of philosophy as well as within the so-called literary text-... certain marks shall we say-... that by analogy (i underline) i have called undecidables that is unities of simulacrum "false" verbal properties (nominal or semantic) that can no longer be included within philosophical (binary) opposition resisting and disorganizing it without ever constituting a third term without ever leaving room for a solution in the form of speculative dialectics while the 'trace' cannot be indicated as linear or properly 'chronological' in any sense of the word its resonance as a relay situates it as constitutive of temporality in a way prior to and conditional of historicity as such: "it is because of differance that the movement of signification is possible only if each so-called 'present' element each element appearing on the scene of presence is related to something other than itself thereby keeping within itself the mark of the past element and already letting itself be vitiated by the mark of its relation to the future element this trace being related no less to what is called the future than to what is called the past and constituting what is called the present by means of this very relation to what it is not: what it absolutely is not not even a past or a future as a modified present." trace is a contingent strategy a bricolage for derrida that helps ir produce a new concept of writing (as opposed to the socratic or saussurean speech) where "the interweaving results in each 'element' - phoneme or grapheme - being constituted on the basis of the trace within it of the other elements of the chain or system. this interweaving this textile is the text produced only in the transformation of another text" # heideggerian dasein and derridian trace derrida's concept of "trace" is quite similar to martin heidegger's concept of dasein although from different perspectives. here we see the relationship between heideggerian existentialism and the derridian concept of "trace" which in turn will also work as an indicator of a very close relationship between existentialism and deconstruction derrida's first indebtedness to heidegger lies in ir use of the notion of sous rature ('under erasure'.) to write 'under erasure' is to write a word cross it out and then print both word and deletion. the word is inaccurate (which itself is an inaccurate word) hence the cross yet the word is necessary hence the printing of the word. this is one of the principal strategies of derrida: "(possibility) of a discourse which borrows from a heritage the resources necessary for the deconstruction of that heritage itself." this is similar to the concept of bricolage coined by anthropologist claude levi-strauss. derrida himself explains > levi-strauss will always remain faithful to this double-intention: to preserve as an instrument that whose truth-value ey criticizes conserving.....all these old concepts while exposing....ir limits treating them as tools which can still be of use. no longer is any truth-value attributed to them; there is a readiness to abandon them if necessary if other instruments should appear more useful. in the meantime ir relative efficacy is exploited and they are employed to destroy this old machinery to which they belong and of which they themselves are pieces however now that we are done discussing this derridean strategy let us get back to the concept of sous rature. to understand it properly we need to learn about heidegger's existentialist theories. in doing so we will also explore the link between existentialism and structuralism. heidegger said that the possibility of 'being' or what ey called "dasein" (meaning being-there) is the presupposition behind any definition any defined entity. ey comes to this decision through the general problem of definition: if anything is to be defined as an entity then the question of being in general has to be answered affirmatively at first. before we can think and decide that something exists we must acknowledge the fact that anything can be. this being is not an answer to a question as it predates any thought or possibility of thought: if the subject of your thought "exists" then the being is always-already there. yet heidegger refuses the metaphysicality of the word "being" and tries to keep it to the human realm by crossing it out. when heidegger puts "being" before all concepts ey is trying to put an end to a certain trend of western philosophy that is obsessed about the origin and by the same token the end. putting "being" under erasure is an attempt by heidegger to save ir concept of "being" from becoming the metaphysical origin and the eschatological end of all entities. yet by making "dasein" or "being" ir master-word ir function-word heidegger nonetheless fails to do so. heidegger's concept of "dasein" is similar to the structuralist concept of the 'signified'. to put it simply in structuralism all signifiers are directly connected to an extra-linguistic signified the invariable ones. to 'mean' anything a signifier must presuppose a signified already-always outside it. this is what derrida terms as the "transcendental signified": as a signified it belongs to the realm of language but by being invariable and by refusing any movement it remains outside it. dasein by being under the erasure claims to remain in the realm of physicality but by being prior and anterior to any entity and any thought it remains outside them. in short heidegger's idea of "dasein" fails to overcome the metaphysical trap. derrida takes almost a similar strategy. but in ir case ey puts the concept of "trace" under erasure. trace unlike "dasein" is the absence of the presence never itself the master-word; it is the radically "other" it plays within a certain structure of difference. to derrida sign is the play of identity and difference; half of the sign is always "not there" and another half "not that" oxford university press: 2011 **+** powell james and lee joe deconstruction for beginners (writers & readers publishing 2005) **+** nicholas royle deconstructions: a user's guide (palgrave macmillan 2000) **+** "sign structure & play in human sciences-" in the languages of criticism and the sciences of man: the structuralist controversy- ed. by richard macsey and eugenio donato (baltimore 1970) p. 249 **+** for a detailed critique of the structuralist project read sign structure and play in human sciences at **+** see of grammatology- p. 70 "i relate this concept of trace to what is at the center of the latest work of emmanuel levinas and ir critique of ontology: relationship to the illeity as to the alterity of a past that never was and can never be lived in the originary or modified form of presence. reconciled here to a heideggerian intention--as it is not in levinas's thought-this notion signifies sometimes beyond heideggerian discourse the undermining of an ontology which in its innermost course has determined the meaning of being as presence and the meaning of language as the full continuity of speech. ... this deconstruction of presence accomplishes itself through the deconstruction of consciousness and therefore through the irreducible notion of the trace (spur) as it appears in both nietzschean and freudian discourse." **+** see of grammatology- p. 61 "the value of the transcendental arche must make its necessity felt before letting itself be erased. the concept of the arche-trace must comply with both the necessity and the erasure....the trace is not only the disappearance of origin-.....it means that the origin did not even disappear that it was never constituted except reciprocally by a non-origin the trace which thus becomes the origin of the origin. from then on to wrench the concept of the trace from the classical scheme which would derive it from a presence or from an originary non-trace and which would make of it an empirical mark one must indeed speak of an originary trace or arche-trace." **+** jacques derrida speech and phenomena: and other essays on husserl′s theory of signs- trans. david allison (evanston: northwestern university press 1973) p.141 **+** speech and phenomena- p.141 **+** speech and phenomena- p.156 **+** jacques derrida "letter to a japanese friend-" in derrida and differance- ed. david wood and robert bernasconi (warwick: parousia) 1985 p. 2 **+** derrida and differance- p. 2 **+** jacques derrida positions- trans. alan bass (chicago: university of chicago press 1981) p. 42-43 **+** jacques derrida differance in margins of philosophy trans. alan bass (brighton: harvester 1982) p. 13 **+** jacques derrida positions- trans. alan bass (chicago & london: university of chicago press 1981) p. 387-88 **+** writing and difference- p. 416 **+** structuralist controversy- p. 254-55 **+** martin heidegger the question of being- trans. william kluback and jean t. wilde bilingual edition (new york 1958) # references **+** derrida jacques. of grammatology. trans. gayatri chakravorty spivak. baltimore & london: johns hopkins university press 1976. (hardcover: paperback: corrected edition: ) **+** derrida jacques. margins of philosophy. trans. alan bass. brighton: harvester 1982 **+** derrida jacques. positions. trans. alan bass. chicago & london: university of chicago press 1981 **+** derrida jacques. dissemination. trans. barbara johnson. chicago & london: chicago university press 1981 **+** derrida jacques. "letter to a japanese friend-" in derrida and differance. ed. david wood and robert bernasconi. warwick: parousia 1985 **+** derrida jacques. speech and phenomena: and other essays on husserl′s theory of signs. trans david allison. evanston: northwestern university press 1973 **+** macsey richard and eugenio donato eds. the languages of criticism and the sciences of man: the structuralist controversy. baltimore: johns hopkins press 1970 // republic of bob