March 22, 2005
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Make a Différance
From Frida Saal’s
“Our
proposal includes the lozenge (diamond) in between the
names, because in the relationship / non-relationship that is
established among them, a tension is created that implies
simultaneously a union and a disjunction, in the perspective of a
theoretical encounter that is at the same time necessary and
impossible. That is the meaning of the lozenge that joins and
separates the two proper names. For that reason their respective
works become totally non-superposable and at the same time they
were built with an awareness, or at least a partial awareness, of
each other. What prevails between both of them is the différance, the Derridean signifier that will become one of
the main issues in this presentation.”From a Contemporary Literary Theory website:
“Différance is that which all signs have, what constitutes them as
signs, as signs are not that to which they refer: i) they differ,
and hence
open a space from that which they represent, and ii) they defer, and
hence
open up a temporal chain, or, participate in temporality. As well,
following de Sassure’s famous argument, signs ‘mean’ by differing from other
signs. The coined word
‘différance‘ refers to at once the differing and the deferring of
signs. Taken to the
ontological level†, the differing and deferring of signs from what they
mean, means that every sign repeats the creation of
space and time; and ultimately, that différance is the ultimate
phenomenon in the universe, an operation that is not an operation, both
active and passive, that which enables and results from Being itself.”
From a text purchased on
Make a Difference Day, Oct. 23, 1999:
22. Without using the Pythagorean Theorem prove that the hypotenuse of an isosceles right triangle will have the length 
if the equal legs have the length 1. Suggestion: Consider the similar triangles in Fig. 39.
23.
The ancient Greeks regarded the Pythagorean Theorem as involving areas,
and they proved it by means of areas. We cannot do so now because
we have not yet considered the idea of area. Assuming for the
moment, however, the idea of the area of a square, use this idea
instead of similar triangles and proportion in Ex. 22 above to show that x = .
– Page 98 of Basic Geometry,
by George David Birkhoff, Professor of Mathematics at Harvard
University, and Ralph Beatley, Associate Professor of Education at
Harvard University (Scott, Foresman 1941)Though it may be true, as the president of Harvard
recently surmised, that women are inherently inferior to men at
abstract thought — in particular, pure mathematics* — they may in other respects be quite superior to men:
The above is from October 1999.
See also Naturalized Epistemology,
from Women’s History Month, 2001.* See the remarks of Frida Saal above and of Barbara Johnson on mathematics (The Shining of May 29, cited in Readings for St. Patrick’s Day).† For the diamond symbol at “the ontological level,” see Modal Theology, Feb. 21, 2005. See also Socrates on the immortality of the soul in Plato’s Meno, source of the above Basic Geometry diamond.
