The Southern Journal of Philosophy (2009) Vol.

XLVII

On Post-Heideggeresm Differences
Derrida and Deleiaze
Daniel Colucciello Barber
LaGuardia College (CUNY)
Abstract
This paper takes up the Heideggerean question of difference. I argue
that while Heidegger raises this question, his response to the question
remains ambiguous and that this ambiguity pivots around the question
of time. The bulk of the paper then looks at how Derrida and Deleuze
respectively attempt to advance beyond Heidegger's ambiguity regarding
the questions of difference and time. Derrida is able to demonstrate the
manner in which timeas delayis constitutive of any attempt to
think difference. I argue, however, that his innovative articulation of
"diffrance" maintains an extrinsic rather than intrinsic relation to
difference in-itself. To achieve an intrinsic relation, it is necessary to
turn to the work of Deleuze, particularly to his discussion of "nonsense"
and "singularity."

1. The Ambiguity of
Heideggerean Difference
It may be asserted, without controversy, that the philosophical
endeavor of Martin Heidegger is extremely important for
contemporary thought. Equally uncontroversial, however, is the
assertion that Heidegger's thought, in spite of the possibilities
it has generated, is inextricable from certain limits. Here we
face the banal mode of reception that intends to encapsulate a
philosophical effort by pronouncing it to be simultaneously
promising and limited, both an opening and a dead end. We

Daniel Colucciello Barber received his PhD from Duke University

with a dissertation entitled, "The Production of Immanence: Deleuze,
Yoder, and Adorno" (2008). He has recently published articles on
political ontology and philosophy of religion in Political Theology and
Modern Theology. His current work focuses on the relation between
philosophies of immanence, biopolitics, and secularism. He teaches in
the philosophy department at LaGuardia College (CUNY).
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might observe, for instance, how Heidegger's novel insistence
that the question of being is fundamentally inseparable from
the question of difference has now become common sense, but
also how this common sense is marked by ambiguity. Indeed',
despite the apparently widespread acceptance of a link between
being and difference, the precise nature of this link still
remains in question.
This essay, which attempts to step outside of a paradoxically
epochal and confused Heideggerean inheritance, rests on two
propositions. First, it proposes that, in order to make an advance
beyond Heidegger's formulations, the question of the being-r
difference relation must itself be brought into relation with the
question of time. In other words, while Heidegger rightly makes
the relation of being and difference that which matters most for
thought, we must still make time that which matters most for
being and difference. Second, this essay proposes that the philosophical efforts of Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze may be
understood as attempts to draw upon and exceed Heidegger's
own work. These two attempts, despite being divergent and
even mutually exclusive, proceed by attending to the question of
time. The ultimate aim of this essay, then, is to investigate and
evaluate the respective manners in which Derrida and Deleuze
elaborate the nexus of being, difference, and time. In order to
fulfill this aim, however, it is first necessary to articulate the
ambiguity of such a nexus within Heidegger's own thought. This
articulation can be achieved in brief by attending to the problejmatic of Heidegger's Identity and Difference and, in particular,
to the role of the "unthought."
The unthought is of paramount importance for Heidegger
because it names an open relation between thought and being.
It is that which is exterior to thought, insofar as it has not been
thought, yet it is also that which is intrinsic to being. Thus the
possibility of a novel configuration between thought and being
will stand or fall on thought's endeavor to understand and
encounter the unthought. This endeavor can be understood as a
dynamic of reduction and donation: reduction names the need to
bracket the given thought-being relation, in order to discover
what is unthought in this relation; donation names the sought,after, novel thoughtbeing relation, the emergence of which
depends on an encounter with the unthought.' The unthought
thus has a negative and a positive significance: negatively, it
stands as what thought has failed to think; positively, it may
furnish, when encountered by way of reduction, the donation of
a new relation between thought and being.
For Heidegger, the particular determination of the unthought
is ontological difference. Its negative and positive aspects are
delineated rather tersely in one of his declarations: "We speak
of the difference between being and beings. The step back goes
from what is unthought, from the difference as such, into what
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gives us thought [Das zu-Denkende]."^ Ontological difference is
the unthought difference of being and beings, and ontotheology
is the blockage that must be reduced. Ontotheology names the
tendency of thought that joins ontology (as science of being) and
theology (as science of God, the ground of being) through a
certain complicity between the grounded (ontos) and the ground
itheos). One cannot think the difference between being and
beings directly, for both being and beings are thinkable only by
way of their inherence in God, the being that grounds being.
Heidegger draws the evident conclusion that, in order for thought
to encounter directly the difference of being and beings, the
ontotheological, identitarian account of being must be reduced.
Thought, by thus moving into the between of ontological
difference, can move into what Heidegger calls "the Same"; the
Sameness of thought and being can be appropriated only by way
of difference. Heidegger appeals to an idiosyncratic interpretation of Parmenides: "for the same perceiving (thinking) as
well as being."^ Whereas the "doctrine of metaphysics" (in the
improper, ontotheological sense) states that "identity belongs to
Being," Heidegger develops a more fundamental condition
where "thinking and Being belong together in the Same and by
virtue of this Same."'' The Same distinguishes itself from the
identical insofar as the Same is a "belonging together" where
belonging determines together. The benefit of this distinction is
"the possibility of no longer representing belonging in the unity
of the together, but rather of experiencing this together in terms
of belonging."^ The Same, in other words, frees the senseand
experienceof thought and being's belonging together from the
presuppositions of identity. At stake is a reduction of identity in
virtue of unthought difference, and consequently a new articulation of the relation of thought and being (a relation vaguely
invoked by the "belonging together" of "the Same"). Reduction
thus puts identity out of play in order to advance toward an
"event of appropriation"an event in which thought encounters
ontological difference and appropriates the concomitant
possibility of thought and being's belonging together.** Thus the
Heideggerean reduction opens "a more originary way"a way
prior to the identity that is reducedand "moves out of [improper, ontotheological] metaphysics into the essential nature of
metaphysics," an essence encountered through unthought
difference.'
Two critical questions arise in the wake of Heidegger's
analysis, and the points they present are those around which
any Heideggerean inheritance pivots. First, there is the matter
of constitution. The fact that, with the Same, belonging determines togethernessrather than vice versaundoubtedly
suffices, at least in an initial manner, to separate thinking from
identity and representation. There are, however, places where
the nature of this separation remains vague. We experience.
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rather than represent, samenessyet what is it that takes place
in experience? It involves a belonging together where belonging
is the experience of thinking. But one must ask whether the
Same is already there and then enters into the experience of
thinking, or whether there is some sense in which the experience of thinking genuinely constitutes the Same? We have
Heidegger's ambiguous claim that the event of appropriation
moves us from (improper) metaphysics to the "essential nature"
of the metaphysical, yet this "essential nature" is indeterminate.
A thinking of the Same, by way of unthought difference, seems
both to open a new thought-being relation and to return to a
yet more primordial and originary metaphysics. Accordingly, we
must ask whether the event appropriates what is already
constituted, or whether the event genuinely constitutes what it
appropriates?
Second, there is the temporality of thinkingor of coming to
thinkthe event of appropriation. The relation between the
reduction of being-as-identity and the donation of being-asdifference must be temporalized. On one hand, being is already
available since it arrives "neither incidentally nor only on rare
occasions," but on the other, it is not present in the proper
manner (due to ontotheological blockages).^ It is therefore a
matter of enabling being to emerge otherwise, as difference
rather than as identity. Crucial to this process, however, is the
question of time. The donation of a belonging together of thought;
and being is promised, through the reduction of identity, but it
is not something that "could be achieved in a day ... it must take
its time, the time of thinking."^ It is within this indeterminate
time of thinking that the processual dynamic of reduction and
donation is located. Accordingly, the event of appropriation, the
passage from the reduction of^ identity to the donation of the
Same, is set forth not only by the thought of unthought difference, but also by the time of thinking. This means a novel
relation between thought and being pivots not only around the
question of difference, but also around the question of time. In
order to advance further into these questions, or into the link
between the question of difference and the question of time, we
must move from Heidegger's ambiguous formulation of this
problematic to the development of this problematic as it is
found in Derrida and Deleuze.
2. The Delay of the
Event of Appropriation
We can first turn to Derrida, who offers a significant elaboration
(or renovation, perhaps) of the theme of difference. Derrida's
elaboration, like Heidegger's own thought, has a phenomenological provenance. Yet while Heidegger moves straightforwardly
from phenomenology to ontology (due to phenomenology's
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inability to answer the question of being), Derrida seeks to
delineate the exact degree to which phenomenology truly permits
an opening onto being. For Derrida, in other words, the validity
of Heidegger's discourse on being must be crossed by a phenomenological analysis of the move from phenomenology to ontology.
Derrida argues that phenomenology, while attempting to
distance itself from (improperly) metaphysical philosophies by
subjecting every (first) principle to the "principle of principles"
that is, the principle that evidence lies solely in the immediacy
of lived experiencestill remains (improperly) metaphysical in
that it conceives lived experience according to a notion of
"presence." Derrida demonstrates that "presence" can come to be
only on the basis of what amounts to an "absence," such that
absence is just as much a part of experience as is presence. The
very criterion that phenomenology uses in order to separate
real experience from baseless metaphysical presupposition is
itself presupposedor, at the very least, not given in experience. If phenomenology seeks to break from the (improperly)
metaphysical by perceiving things according to lived experience,
or to their mode of appearance (i.e., presence), then it must also
carry out a further critique (or phenomenology) of notions of
experience and appearancea phenomenology of "phenomenology." In this sense, one could say that Derrida turns the
impetus of phenomenology against phenomenology proper.
The argument that absence is a condition of appearance opens
a layer of experience that might be named as the inapparent.^
But if phenomenology sets the conditions of possibility for
appearance, and that which is is such only because it presents
itself according to the conditions of phenomenality, then phenomenology itself enters an undecidable statefor the determined conditions of appearance necessarily carry a layer of
experience that cannot finally present itself according to these
conditions. The phenomenon is essentially prevented from
presenting itself as a phenomenon due to the irreducibility of
the inapparent. For this reason, it is insufficient to say that
Derrida preserves the phenomenological method while discarding
phenomenology. He calls into question the methodological
criterion itself. Furthermore, the phenomenological evidence is
doubled: on one hand, it "shows" nothing, but on the other (if we
follow Derrida), the failure to show is not a lackthis would be
the case only if we retain the metaphysical presupposition of
presence. Phenomenology shows nothing, but this nothing is not
simply nothing; what it shows is inapparent, and this inappearance is neither appearance nor not-appearance.
The ambiguity of the inapparent is extended by Derrida's
claim that "the polemical unity of appearing and disappearing
[is] irreducible."" This polemos "signifies the authenticity of
phenomenological delay and limitation."!^ Phenomenology thus
makes valid the reality of the between of appearing and dis-

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appearing, a between that makes temporality and spatiality
ineluctable. It is through this temporalization and spatialization that "diffrance" is articulated. The verb "diffrer,'' Derrida
points out, has two valences: first, it indicates a deferring, "the
action of putting off until later," a delaying; second, it indicates
a differing, a discernibility or nonidenticality." The former
valence implies a temporalization of difference, while the latter
implies a spatialization of difference. Therefore "diffrence" is
said in two valences, one of which must be foregrounded!.
"Diffra/zce," however, says both valences at once by putting
them in circulation. It can do this because it adopts the middle
voice i-ance), which refuses the choice between active and
passive, and thus prevents a situation in which either spatial
difference (discernibility) or temporal difference (delay) is the
effect of the other. Derrida's diffrance affirms this middle voice
by articulating "the becoming-time of space and the becomingspace of time."" Now, if it is this play of diffranceof appearance
and inappearance, of presence and absencethat phenomenology
makes irreducible, what are we to say of a phenomenological
path into being?
:
Derrida both affirms and critiques Heidegger's path. He
affirms the necessity of a phenomenological opening onto the
question of being. If one commits oneself to the phenomenological approach and attempts to fulfill the phenomenological
task, one finds that phenomenology opens onto a question it
cannot resolve from within its own resources. This question is
the question of being. Such a question also involves the question
of a history of being. This is the case because, as thought poses
the question of being, it rearticulates or modifies the thoughtsbeing relation. The various emergences of these modifications of
the thought-being relation are dependent on the manner in
which the relation is exercised through questioning, and they
make up being's history. It is in this sense, Derrida says, that
"phenomenology can be articulated, without confusion, within
'philosophy' posing the question of being or History."'^ In this
moment we are beyond phenomenology, but legitimately so.
However, if we are to grasp Derrida's critique of Heidegger, wje
must understand what makes the advance from phenomenology
to ontology legitimate. Heidegger's advance is illegitimate
insofar as it assumes that phenomenology, because it cannot
answer the question of being, may simply be discarded in favor
of ontology. Against Heidegger's ontological supercession of
phenomenology, Derrida argues that the question can never
"simply precede transcendental phenomenology as its presupposition or latent ground."^^ One mayindeed, one mustmove
from phenomenology to the question of being, but one must do
so by following phenomenology all the way to the end, such that
the "question would mark within philosophy in general the
moment wherein phenomenology terminates as the philosophical
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propaedeutic for every philosophical decision."" All this,
however, raises the question, why is it so important to pursue
phenomenology to its limit, if indeed it is limited? We must do
so, Derrida argues, because phenomenology still retains the
capacity to articulate conditions for ontological decisions. Even
though phenomenology cannot make such decisions, ontology
cannot ignore certain phenomenologically delineated structures
of experience. For Derrida, one key structure that Heidegger
ignores is temporalization.
The decisions made by thought are what modify the thoughtbeing relation and, thus, the history of being. These decisions,
however, cannot be separated from their condition. Decisions
determinative of the thought-being relation, and thus of the
history of being, are themselves conditioned by a fundamental
temporalization of the thought-being relation that is decided.
We return here to what Derrida highlighted as the "authenticity
ojphenomenological delay and limitation." This delay, far from
being that which may finally be overcome by a decisionsuch as
is found in Heidegger's "event of appropriation"is that which
must itself be appropriated. The delay is no longer the time
until appropriation, nor the time it takes to appropriate, it is
now the very object of appropriation. "Reduction is only pure
thought as ... delay, pure thought investigating the sense of
itself as delay within philosophy."'^ Derrida thus resolves, or
perhaps complicates, the Heideggerean ambiguity between the
event of appropriation and the temporality of this appropriation.
It is resolved insofar as time is not just that which lies between
(improperly) metaphysical thought and thought that appropriates the "essence of metaphysics"; rather, it is that which
itself must be thought in order to accede to any appropriation.
But is this still the same event of appropriation? Here the
ambiguity remains. Derrida's reformulation claims that delay
and limitation are irreducible, and this seems to turn the event
of appropriation in a very different direction. Yet he also claims
that, within this delay, there appears an "alterity of the absolute origin,"'^ and this certainly corresponds (even if only
loosely) to Heidegger's "essence of metaphysics."
3. What Comes After Diffrance?
Derrida, we can now see, pushes phenomenology to its limits, as
well as to its most fundamental insights, through the discovery
of a polemical play between appearance and disappearance (or
between presence and absence), and of a delay intrinsic to the
temporality of reduction. "Diffrance" names the condition in
which these "phenomenological" structures become fully
operative. It radically temporalizes and spatializes difference,
such that difference cannot be equated with the differentiation
of an organic whole or the teleology of a dialectical negation of
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negation. Diffrance is anterior to these paradigms, which are
then grasped as stoppages or inadequate resolutions of differential play. In this sense, the movement of diffrance is irreducible and cannot be surpassed (although we will qualify this
below). One could say that we find ourselves in the movement
of diffrance. At the same time, the play of difference articulated
by diffrance does not unfold according to an eternal lawon
the contrary, it is historical. Derrida notes that "if the word
'history' did not in and of itself convey the motif of a final
repression of difference, one could say that only differences can
be 'historical' from the outset and in each of their aspects."^"
How, then, are we to negotiate diffrance's dual status as phenomenological structure and historical openness?
We have already discussed Derrida's complicated proximity to
Heidegger. This proximity is further evincedand in an
especially direct mannerwhen Derrida claims that diffrance is
"irreducible to any ontological or theologicalonto-theologicaW
reappropriation" and is "the very opening of the space in which
onto-theologyphilosophyproduces its system and its history."^^
In other words, Derrida's diffrance, like Heidegger's ontological
difference, is prior to and effects a reduction of ontotheology.
What, then, is the relationship of priority between diffrance and
ontological difference? It initially seems possible to lean toward
either of two alternatives. In the first alternative, diffrance is
simply a deployment or unfolding of ontological difference, a
way of giving ontological difference more precision. In the
second alternative, diffrance is the very condition of thinking
the difference of being and beings, such that ontological difference amounts to an effect of diffrance. Here diffrance requires
the thinking of an "unheard-of thought," that is, one not yet
called for by Heidegger. It marks the very possibility of an
ontological difference and is thus, as Derrida says, "older" than
being.^^ This second alternative would initially seem preferable,
though it might be imprecise to derive its propriety from its
transcendental antiquity. Perhaps it would be better to say that
diffrance, though not older than being, is fasternot in the
sense of a quantitative speed, but in the sense that diffrance is
able to think its temporalization. Diffrance puts difference and
time in circulation. The delay of phenomenological reduction,
which is at the essence of the movement of diffrance, makes the
question of difference unthinkable apart from the question of
time. In doing so, it interweaves the problems of temporalization and constitution. Diffrance, then, does not deploy ontological difference, for it is the delay that constitutes ontological
difference.
Let us return to the question of history. If diffrance names
the movement that constitutes and temporalizes the passage of
reduction and donation, and if this movementthat is, deconstructionis irreducible, what then does it mean to say that
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this play of difference is itself "'historical' from the outset"? If
diffrance is historical, then does this mean diffrance can be
reduced to history? Certainly not, if this involves forgetting that
diffrance is the condition for thinking history. History only
emerges as history through diffrance. This means not that
diffrance is the essence of history but, rather, that diffrance is
the condition for thinking history as genuinely history, as the
openness of difference. No history without diffrance, then, but
where this is true it seems that diffrance need not be the final
word. And this is actually quite literally true when Derrida
remarks that diffrance is "neither a word nor a concept," but a
strategic name.^^ He "wish[es] to emphasize that the efficacy of
the thematic of diffrance may very well, indeed must, one day
be superseded, lending itself if not to its own replacement, at
least to enmeshing itself in a chain that in truth it never will
have commanded. Whereas, once again, it is not theological."^''
The relation between the name "diffrance" and the (historical)
differential movement it marks out is determined by strategy. It
is important to note the slippage between a movementhere
determined as the play of differenceand its strategic name
(diffrance). This slippage is conditioned by the manner in
which (historical) differential movement produces an exteriority
that cannot be named beforehand. This is the reason not only for
the strategic origination of its name, but also for the possibility
indeed, the necessityof this strategic name's nonfinality.
All Derrida wishes to observe by this strategic namea
name that is ultimately conditioned, and in principle exceeded,
by the very character of the movement it describesis that any
replacement for it cannot belong to a thought that would resolve
differential play in virtue of a preconceived manner of identification. Granting this, there is still the question of whether the
gap between diffrance and the differential play it strategically
names requires a further deconstruction of diffrance itself?
One cannot reduce diffrance in any basic manner, but one can
pass through it, in virtue of the differential play that exceeds it.
In this passage one may exceed diffrance not by way of identity
but, rather, by way of differential play. We can, therefore, see how
a history conditioned by diffrance may surpass diffrance as a
result of the historical openness that diffrance strategically
names.
Perhaps the essential question is: What comes after diffrance? This question can be posed in two senses. First, we view it
in the obvious relation to chronological position. If the name of
diffrance will be replaced, then what replaces it? Yet what
truly matters is a second, more fundamental question concerning
diffrance's role as a transcendentalthat is, as a condition of
the movement or play of difference. If diffrance must be
replaced (though in a manner consistent with the sort of conditions it delineates), then there is a condition belonging to
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differential play that exceeds diffrance itself In other words, if
diffrance can or must be replaced, then there is a capacity of
differential playwhich thought must encounterthat is not
named by the transcendental condition of diffrance. The
question of "after-diffrance" would be not simply historically
after, but transcendentally before. That which is donated in the
movement named by diffrance may exceed, and thus cause us
to replace, the reduction articulated by diffrance. There is,
intrinsic to the passage of reduction and donation, an open
relation between thought and difference that exceeds the
articulation of diffrance.
Derrida, in a critique of Edmund Husserl's phenomenology,
stresses the need to make this excessdescribed here in terms
of time and matterinto the essential object of thought. Derrida
argues that Husserl, despite his attempts to integrate structural
and genetic phenomenology, failed to grant sufficient attention 'to
the latter. A specific point of contention is Husserl's division pf
labor between morphe and hyle. Derrida remarks that, for
Husserl, hyle indicates "the sensate ... material of affect before
any animation by intentional form. It is the pole of pure
passivity" without which consciousness would be severed from
its outside and receive only itself.^^ In this sense, consciousness
is dependent on hyle. Yet even as Husserl requires hyle in order
for phenomena to emerge, he does not adequately thematize
this condition of phenomenal emergence. Husserl's hyle, Derrida
says, is "primarily temporal matter" and "the possibility of geriesis itself "^^ But despite hyle's value, Derrida continues, Husserl
arranges phenomenological concepts such that hyl^ is always
placed in a derivative relation to morphe. Hyle provides the
material necessary to morphe and, in this sense, concerns the
genesis o morphe. Nonetheless, Husserl makes the sense of
what is generated the property o morphe, rather than o hyle.
Consequently, the genesis of phenomena, by means of hyle, is
subordinated to a predetermination by morphe. Because morphe
holds a privileged position in a structural phenomenology, we
can see how the structural delimitation of the genetic turns on
morphe's delimitation of hyle'. To grant proper weight to hyle
would be to mark the (phenomenological) necessity of moving
from a structural to a genetic phenomenology. Derrida signalls
the distance between Husserl's account and what is required by
his own strictures by asserting that there must be a "break or| a
conversion" toward the genetic.^' Thought must, in other words,
attend to the alterity presented by time and matter, which
belong to the genetic and are constitutive of phenomena.
At the heart of Derrida's criticism of Husserl is the claim
that thought must take "primarily temporal matter" as i|ts
essential object. Husserl's exclusion of time and matter from the
object of thought rests on the baseless presupposition that form
is primary. Derrida argues, on the contrary, that the formlessness
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On Post-Heideggerean Difference
of temporal matter, rather than form's givenness, is primary.
Husserl, by granting form primacy over temporal matter,
effectively grants the generated primacy over the condition of
possibility for its generation. This formless, temporal, material
condition of generation, we should add, is the play of difference.
Accordingly, we can see that Derrida, in strategically naming
differential play as diffrance, repeats Husserl's mistake.
Husserl indicates the role of time and matter, but he fails to
grant primacy to this role. He does not achieve a point of view
intrinsic to time and matter, preferring instead to maintain an
extrinsic point of view. Similarly, Derrida's diffrance remains
extrinsic to the differential play it strategically names, failing
to provide a point of view intrinsic to differential play in-itself
4. From an Extrinsic to an
Intrinsic Relation to Difference
In order to find a point of view intrinsic to difference, it is
necessary to turn to Deleuze's work. I will first attend to his
theory of language, noting its affinity with some of Derrida's
claims, before showing how Deleuze's theory of difference
advances beyond that proposed by Derrida.
Deleuze argues that, in addition to the three conventional
dimensions of a propositiondenotation (or indication), manifestation, and significationthere is a fourth dimension, which is
that of sense. Denotation, manifestation, and signification form
a circle. When we move from one conditioned dimension (Dj) to
its conditioning dimension (Dj), we also move from the condition
back to the conditioned, for the conditioning dimension (Dj) is
conditioned by the third dimension (D3)which itself is conditioned by the conditioned dimension (Dj) with which we began.
To escape this turning about, it will be necessary "to have something unconditioned capable of assuring a real genesis of denotation and of the other dimensions of the proposition. Thus the
condition of truth would be defined no longer as the form of conceptual possibility, but rather as ideational material or 'stratum,'
that is to say ... as sense."^^ This fourth dimension, sense, is that
which conditions all three dimensions of our circle without being
conditioned by any of them.
The truth of a proposition, then, lies not in what it denotes,
manifests, or signifies, for all of these are conditioned by sense,
or "ideational material." A proposition's sense is irreducible to
any of these conditions. Accordingly, to judge a proposition as
nonsensical in virtue of its failure to denote, manifest, or signify
something logical or recognizable is to miss the point. Such a
judgment addresses the proposition from the point of view of a
logical form of sense, rather than from the unconditioned ideational material upon which the proposition depends. Judgment of
this kind gets it backwards, for the imperative is not to subject
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the proposition to forms of sense, it is instead to subject these
forms of sense to the unconditioned. At stake is a reduction of
forms of sense, such that unconditioned sensethe ideational
material upon which forms of sense dependmight be donated.
The reduction of sense sets forth the emergence of nonsense.
Importantly, nonsense appears not as the privation of senseas
the judgment set forth by forms of sense would have itbut
rather as the excess of sense. The fact that nonsense is the
generative condition of sense can be highlighted by contrasting
the sense-nonsense relation with the true-false relation. The
judgment of a proposition as true or as false is dependent upon
its accord or lack of accord with a determined form of sense. Yet
sense, when understood in terms of its nonsensical generation,
is unconditioned and formless. While the false is derived from
its disaccord with a form of truth, nonsense is derived from the
formless condition of all forms. Nonsense belongs to the excessiveness of sense; when a proposition has no sense, this is not
due to a lack. As Deleuze remarks, "Nonsense is that which has
no sense, and that which, as such and as it enacts the donation of
sense, is opposed to the absence of sense."^^ Sense, as the unconditioned, is excessive, and the "non-" of sense names this intrinsic excessiveness. A proposition is not sensible for adherents of
common forms of sense, but this "not" is prior to the very form
of sense that would exclude such a proposition from the sensible.
Common forms of sense are thus rendered accidental or
secondary, for they presuppose a donation of sense in relation to
which they are epiphenomenal.
Deleuze is thus far in close proximity to Derrida, who argues
that morphe functions in Husserl according to a logic analogous
to what Deleuze calls common sense. Derrida's demand that
Husserl convert to a genetic phenomenology resembles Deleuze's
call to move from conditioned forms of sense to an unconditioned, formless dimension of sense. It is in fact Derrida's
additional achievement to show that Husserl's phenomenology
of language is still too formal, for the latter ties sense, or the
quality of being logical, to classical notionsthose that are
formal or already fully constituted, apart from open temporalityof knowledge, objectivity, and reason. A phenomenology
stripped of these unfounded constraints, Derrida argues, would
have to affirm the "signifying force of such formations" as
"Abracadabra" or "Green is where."^ The point is simply that
Derridanot unlike Deleuzewants to grant sense to nonsensical propositions. Both Derrida and Deleuze call for a reduction
of those formal conditions that would distinguish sense from
nonsense. For both thinkers, reduction effects a donation of
nonsense, such that the real primacy of the nonsensical is
asserted. The ensuing task, however, is to find a way not only to
assert the primacy of the nonsensical, but also to make the
nonsensical into the object of thought.
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While Derrida and Deleuze are basically in agreement with
regard to the imperative of reduction, they diverge with regard
to the possibility of becoming adequate to what is donated. For
Derrida, the donation of nonsense is set forth through diffrance.
Nonsense exceeds given sense in virtue of the play of difference.
Diffrance articulates the irreducibility of this differential play
to any form or telos. What is nonsensical is the play of difference, and diffrance's essential function is to affirm the impossibility of resolving this differential play from a point of view
extrinsic to difference. What remains, however, is the task of
providing a point of view intrinsic to the play of difference.
Derrida himself asserts that diffrance does not provide such an
intrinsic point of view. We can see this by recalling his admission
that diffrance must be superceded. It must be superceded
because its relation to differential play is strategic and extrinsic.
Diffrance articulates a strategic denial of any thought that
would resolve and foreclose differential play, but it does not
articulate the play of difference itself. Its strategy is to draw a
border around differential play, such that differential play is
secured against any resolution of difference from the outside. In
doing so, however, diffrance itself remains extrinsic to the
differential play it secures. Again, it is for this reason that
Derrida admits the necessity of diffrance's replacement, and it
is in view of this necessity that we have spoken of an afterdiffrance. What, then, comes after diffrance? It would have to
be a manner of thinking that sets forth a point of view intrinsic
to differential play. I contend that such an intrinsic point of
view can be found in Deleuze.
In order to understand how Deleuze provides a point of view
intrinsic to the play of difference, we can turn to his theory of
singularity. For Deleuze, difference consists of and persists as a
transcendental field of preindividual singularities. These
singularities constitute a field of pure difference, of difference
in-itself Therefore individuals are not singular, they are on the
contrary resolutions of the pure difference set forth by the field
of singularities. As transcendental, the differential play of
singularities furnishes the condition of possibility l'or the
constitution of individuals. Similarly, this transcendental field
sets forth the condition of possibility for the constitution of
sense. If nonsense exceeds every presumed form of sense, it is
because the transcendental field of singularities, as pure difference, remains nonsensical and formless in-itself. Singularities
thus provide the ideational material that Deleuze points to as
the unconditioned dimension of sense.
Unlike Derrida, however, Deleuze proceeds not simply to
secure the donation of difference against its occlusion, but also
to envision a manner in which thought might engage with, and
perhaps become adequate to, this donation. Deleuze does this by
emphasizing the objectively problematic character of difference.
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The transcendental field of singularities poses a field of differences, a differential field that is objective and determinate. To
be objective and determinate, however, is not to be closed. The
great advance of Deleuze here is to bring together objective
determinacy and openness. Singularities make difference objective, but the manner in which they do so makes objectivity
problematic. Objectivity, as the intensive difference of singullarities, is immediately open or problematicthat is, the probleni
posed by difference opens beyond the given solutions furnished
by common forms of sense. Thus the field of singularities, as
nonsensical, formless difference in-itself, provides a problematic
horizon in excess of any predetermined sense or form. At the
same time, however, the singular determination of a differential
problematic sets forth the conditions for the generation of new
senses and forms. The play of difference, objectively determined
by singularities, certainly refuses any thought driven by given
sense and forms, but it simultaneously provides the object of a
new kind of thought. This new kind of thought is one that begins
from the nonsensical and formless, one that finds in the nonsen-sical and formless a possibility for the constitution of novel
senses and forms. The objectivity of singularly determined
difference in-itself does not become something to be negatively
secured against what is already given, it becomesmore affirma-tivelythat which must be thought. Here we find a point of viev/
intrinsic to difference, for difference becomes the matter of
thought.
Deleuze gestures at this possibility when he describes the
unconditioned dimension of the propositionsense, or more
precisely nonsense, as sense's excess over every conditioned
dimension of senseas "ideational material." Difference is th
objective material of thought, but because this material is problematic and nonsensical, the only manner in which thought gen-erates ideas adequate to difference is through creation. The aim
of ideas is not to correspond to difference, but rather to create
new ideas out of the ideational material of difference. Ideas
cannot achieve isomorphism with difference, since difference is
formless. Nevertheless, this formless material provides a horizon
for creation, whereby the created senses and idea-objects are genjerated by the composition of difference's problematic ideational
material. It is in view of this compositional process of differential
creation that Deleuze can say that "problems are Ideas themr
selves," and that "Ideas are the differentials of thought."^^ Thought
achieves a point of view intrinsic to difference, for it affirms
difference in the same moment that it creatively composes it.
5. Time
Let us now return to the question of time. I argued, at the outset
of this essay, that the essential ambiguity of Heidegger's efforts
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resides in the question of constitution, and particularly in the
question of the temporality of constitution. Heidegger aims at
the constitution of a new relation between thought and being,
and he makes this constitution pivot around a thinking of what
has remained unthoughtnamely, difference. A new relation
between thought and being thus calls for a reduction of an
identitarian (or ontotheological) thought-being relation. What is
donated by this reduction is difference, which makes possible
the sought-after novel thought-being relation. But again, it was
unclear whether the temporality of thinking difference reveals a
novel thought-being relation that is already there yet presently
occluded, or whether the temporality of thinking difference
actually constitutes a novel relation.
Derrida argues convincingly that the temporality of thinking
difference cannot be accidental to what it constitutes. He demonstrates that difference involves some manner of deferral, such
that the thought of difference must become a temporal thought.
Accordingly, the temporality of thinking difference must truly
constitute the donation of difference. Derrida, in support of this
point, goes so far as to install a delay into any attempt to think
difference. He does this through his articulation of diffrance,
which names the play of difference, but in doing so affirms a
gap between this naming and the play of difference in-itself.
The gap between the name of diffrance and difference in-itself is
a temporal oneit is in virtue of this temporal gap that Derrida
observes the necessity of a supercession of the name of diffrance. Accordingly, the articulation of diffrance is also an articulation of after-diffrance, or also an articulation of a temporality
of thinking difference that exceeds diffrance.
The significant benefit of Derrida's diffrance, I argued, is
that it secures the play of difference in-itself from any premature attempt to capture, foreclose, and resolve difference.
Putting this benefit in terms of the question of time, it becomes
clear that Derrida, in securing difference in-itself from its premature closure, also secures the temporality of difference. The
gap between the strategic name of diffrance and difference initself is a temporal one. I argued, however, that difference initself is secured by Derrida only by way of an extrinsic point of
view on difference. We can now see that, similarly, the temporality of thinking difference is secured only by way of an extrinsic point of view on time. For Derrida, timeas perpetually
indefinite delaynames the measure of the gap between the
present and the play of difference, but this prevents time from
ever naming the process by which we encounter and enter into
the play of difference. What is needed, then, is a manner of
achieving a point of view intrinsic to difference and to time.
Deleuze's account addresses this need, for it makes formless,
nonsensical difference not only the irreducible excess of every
predetermined form of sense, but also the problematically objec127

Daniel Colucciello Barber

tive matter of thought. Difference in-itself, as unconditioned

ideational material, makes possible novel encounters of thought.
Importantly, with regard to the question of time, this means
that the temporality of thinking difference becomes the temporality of creatively composing difference. Deleuze affirms, with
Derrida and against Heidegger, that time is essential rather
than accidental to the constitution of difference. He departs from
Derrida, however, by envisioning time in a creative manner.
Derrida secures difference in-itself by conceiving time as the
insuperable delay between thought and differential play. Deleuze,
on the contrary, conceives time affirmativelyhe conceives it not
as that which opens a gap between thought and differential
play but, rather, as that by which thought enters into differential play. The temporality of thinking difference thus becomes
the temporality of encountering differential play's problematic
objectivity. Because this problematic objectivity becomes the
essential matter of thought, thought can creatively compose
difference. Derrida, of course, might fear that such compositional endeavors would amount to a foreclosure of time, and thus
of difference. But this fear has no ground in Deleuze's account,
for thought creates only by composing, and it composes only by
returning, temporally, to the objectively differential and problematic ideational matter of thought.
Notes
' It should be noted that, in making use of the language of
"reduction" and "donation," I am borrowing from the work of Jean-Luc
Marion (see especially his Reduction and Givenness, trans. Thomas
A. Carlson [Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998], but
also his Being Given, trans. Jeffrey L. Kosky [Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2002]). While I do not find the entirety of his work
compelling, I do think that this language of reduction and donation
provides an excellent way of getting at the heart of what is at stake iii
the work of Heidegger and Derrida (and, I would add, beyond Marion,
in the work of Deleuze).
^ Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference, trans. Joan
Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 2002), 50. Stambaugh, in a
corresponding footnote, aptly comments that this key term. Das zuDenkende, "is that which gives thinking to us and it is that which is
to be thought."
3 Ibid., 27.
" Ibid.
' Ibid., 29.
<* Ibid., 39.
' Ibid., 40, 51.
8 Ibid., 31.
^ Ibid., 41.
' The concept of the "inapparent," like those of reduction and
donation, may be derived from the work of Marion. In this case,
however, I would note that the lineage described by Dominique
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On Post-Heideggerean Difference
Janicaudin "Toward a Minimalist Phenomenology," Research in
Phenomenology 30, no. 1 (2000): 89-106provides a better point of
reference for the concept.
" Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserl's "Origin of Geometry": An
Introduction, trans. John P. Leavey, Jr. (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1989), 153.
'' Ibid.
" Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 8.
" Ibid.
'^ Derrida, Edmund Husserl's "Origin of Geometry," 150.

"^ Ibid.
" Ibid.
'8 Ibid., 153.
'9 Ibid.
'"' Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, 11.

2' Ibid., 6.
22 Ibid., 22, 26.
23 Ibid., 7.
2'' Ibid.; my emphasis.
2'' Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 163.
^^^ Ibid.
2' Ibid., 164.
2^ Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 19.
23 Ibid., 71.
^ Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, and Other Essays on
Husserl's Theory of Signs, trans. David B. Allison (Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press), 99.
^' Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 162, 181.

129