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relational. His term In an attempt to capture the signified (the meaning of the word), we keep moving from one signifier (word) to another signifier, we never get to the signified, the signified gets lost in the search, and we keep going round and round. Thus one can mark the circularity of 'signifiers'.For meaning perpetually slips away from word to word with in the linguistic chain.? One may try defining (i.e. capturing the signified) even of simple words like 'a city', it can never be defined in absolute terms. We can only say, it is a larger town. But, again the word 'town' has to be specified, we can say, it is a large village. This clearly shows that a sign is a sign of another sign with no fixed meaning or signified, there is no final transcendental signified.' According to Derrida, language is structured as an endless deferal of meaning and any search for the essential, absolute stable meaning must therefore be considered metaphysical. There is no fixed element, no fundamental unit, no transcendental signified that is meaningful in itself.
In addition to this, Derrida pointed out that in everything (sign, text, context) whatever the opposite of it, is always already there, as a trace. According to Derrida, wherever there is endless deferral, there is trace. For example, in light there is trace of darkness and vice-versa. There is a trace of land in sea and vice-versa. In adult there is a trace of child, in man there is a trace of women. You can't dycotomize and say, this is absolute man and absolute women. Jain view of anekānta is in agreement with this concept of trace, when Hemachandra also says that in the particles of darkness, there are particles of light
Derek Johnson. A Brief History of Philosophy: From Socrates to Derrida.
op.cit., p. 202. 2 Christropher Butler. Post Modernism: A Very Short Introduction, p. 18. 3 N. Krishnaswamy, John Varghese and Sunita Mishra. Contemporary
Literary Theory: A Student's Companion. Delhi: Macmillan India Ltd, (1st edn., 2001), Reprint 2005, p. 33.
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