Derrida's Differance with a Difference

Dania has kindly accepted my invitation to post one of her journals for Contemporary Literary Theory. It should be fun for you guys trying to make sense of the mad, mad, mad, mad world of deconstruction, and I'd like to see others post some of their reactions through the comments. As the blog begins to proliferate through the English Department, I'll be sending "invitations" to others to post as authors. Cheerio!
--Thanks, Dania!

-- Jay

So Derrida, since this is a blog, I am allowed to take you personally and express my discomfort with your brilliant theory of differance which, by the way, my computer keeps changing to ‘difference’. And why would it change it to difference over and over again when it is you of whom we speak, and therefore 'differance' should be accepted? Well, because as you have pointed out, spellcheck does not see differance’s closeness to ‘difference’ but its difference from it. Spellcheck uses the English word ‘difference’ as its reference point, and although (if I am to follow your logic) the standard term is itself fleeting and different from something else, it is, for Microsoft Spellcheck and in this moment that I now use it, the paragon of rightness. Is ‘difference’ still only defined by its difference from ‘differance’? Politics of English dictate otherwise. It dictates that for specific times, purposes and majors (such as mine) one is incorrect and another acceptable, and therein rests the core of my discomfort.

You see Derrida, if we lived in a fair apolitical world, your theory may have been more credible to me. But when you define sameness as difference, alterity as otherness, you begin to lose me. All things being equal, all signs could possibly just be defined by their difference from other signs; that does seem a fair way to level all. However, some things (and I am [maybe fallaciously] extrapolating here) are singled out, ridiculed, and discriminated against for their difference. Difference is not something that is naturally desirable in many contexts, especially when difference could mean discrimination or even death. When difference means otherness, the implications can be horrific, though not always and in varying degrees.
All kinds of variables come into play here. You see, your theory runs the risk of pivoting on the axis of time and not relativity as you had hoped. When my baby sister is learning something new, she forms patterns with what she learnt before that may seem similar to what she is at present required to learn. That, to me, involves sameness before difference. But stay with me here, say it is the new concept’s difference that makes her eventually grasp it; I always have to explain why it is she should accept this new sign when it is so similar to an old one with which she is already familiar. If even momentarily, the new thing must to her validate itself, its difference. It does not naturally get the same respect that the known has already got. If all were implicitly defined by their difference before and despite all other features, why was your brilliantly coined ‘differance’ not readily accepted by my computer? ‘Difference’s’ difference from your ‘differance’ made it bear “the trace”of otherness (278). Your ‘Differance’s’ difference from the standard English ‘difference’ set yours apart as ‘other’ and [therefore] a sign to be shunned, or worse, converted into the ‘correct’. For what its worth, I know you meant 'differance'.

So maybe it is hegemony I should be blaming and not you then, Derrida. You think?