The center...

"Is not the center, the absence of play and difference, another name for death? "

"Ellipsis"  Derrida

Derrida on play

"There is nothing outside the text; all is textual play with no connection with original truth."


In another earlier text, Derrida defined play as "the absence of the transcendental signified as limitlessness of play, that is to say as the destruction of ontotheology and the metaphysics of presence."


Derrida also wrote, "The absence of the transcendental signified extends the domain and the play of signification infinitely


From: JACQUE DERRIDA, DECONSTRUCTIONISM & POSTMODERNISM

By Cky J. Carrigan, Ph. D. (April 1996)

Primordial writing

The first writing was the memory of the spoken.

On Dreams...

"The laconic, lapidary quality of dreams is not the impassive presence of petrified signs."


Derrida  "Freud and the Scene of Writing" 

Différance -- differ and defer...

"Derrida indicates that différance gestures at a number of heterogeneous features which govern the production of textual meaning. The first (relating to deferral) is the notion that words and signs can never fully summon forth what they mean, but can only be defined through appeal to additional words, from which they differ. Thus, meaning is forever "deferred" or postponed through an endless chain of signifiers. The second (relating to difference, sometimes referred to as espacement or "spacing") concerns the force which differentiates elements from one another and, in so doing, engenders binary oppositions and hierarchies which underpin meaning itself." 


--from the Wikipedia article on différance