Page 76 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

DIFFERENCE

One of Derrida’s purposes is to illustrate the argument that the very idea of literal
meaning is based on the idea of the ‘letter’, that is, writing. Literal meaning is thus
underpinned by metaphor – its apparent opposite. Here Derrida critiques what he
calls the ‘logocentrism’ and ‘phonocentrism’ of Western philosophy. At the same 53
time, the endless play of signification that Derrida explores is arguably regulated
and partially ‘fixed’ as the marks and noises of language take on pragmatically
stabilized meanings related to the achievement of purposes in the context of social
practice.
Links Deconstruction, logocentricism, meaning, poststructuralism, under erasure

Difference A concern with ideas of difference gained ground during the 1990s to the
point that it is the word of the hour for cultural studies in the twenty-first century.
Difference is about the non-identical and dissimilar. It is about distinction, division,
multiplicity and otherness. As such, difference is not an essence or attribute of an
object but a relationship and position or perspective of signification. The
importance of difference as a concept also lies in the way it links the themes of
contemporary cultural studies. Thus, the significance of difference for cultural
studies lies in two connected directions: the linguistic generation of meaning and
the co-existence of variant cultural identities.
As described by structuralism and poststructuralism difference is the
mechanism for the generation of meaning. That is, meaning is not generated
because an object or referent has an essential and intrinsic meaning but is produced
because signs are phonetically and conceptually different from one another. In
language, it is said, there are only differences without positive terms, that is, signs
do not have fixed meanings by dint of reference to an independent object. Derrida
extends this idea with his concept of différance (above), whereby meaning
generated through the play of signifiers can never be fixed but is continually
supplemented and deferred.
It follows from these primary arguments of structuralism and
poststructuralism that all the categories that had been used to describe and talk
about human beings – ’culture’, ‘identity’, ‘women’, ‘class’, ‘society’, ‘interests’,
etc., can no longer be conceived of as having fixed meanings. That is, we cannot
understand these categories in terms of unitary objects with single underlying
structures and determinations; rather they are understood to be discursive
constructs. This is the basis of the anti-essentialism that pervades contemporary
cultural studies.
A central concern of cultural studies during the 1990s and into the new
millennium has been identity. The word identity in common parlance connotes
sameness. However, within cultural studies it has been understood much more
through the notion of difference. Here, identity is not a fixed ‘thing’ that we possess
but an emotionally charged symbolic description of ourselves. Subject to the idea
of difference and deferral (différance) identity is never stable but a process of
becoming. This signals to Hall the ‘impossibility’ of identity as well as its ‘political
significance’. The latter lies in the meanings attached to difference and the actions