When Feminist Review first appeared in 1979 it described itself as a socialist and feminist journal, ‘a vehicle to unite research and theory with political practice, and contribute to the development of both’. This is the concept of difference in social categories. Elsewhere, Derrida coined the term différance (a deliberate misspelling of différence) in order to provide a conceptual hook for his thinking on the meaning processes at work within writing/language. To further comprehend the two concepts, take a read of the given article. b : an instance of being unlike or distinct in nature, form, or … JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization helping the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways. Derrida thereby argues that meaning does not arise out of fixed differences between static elements in a structure, but that the meanings produced in language and other signifying systems are always partial, provisional and infinitely deferred along a chain of differing/deferring signifiers. SAGE Publications is an academic and professional publisher. Check out using a credit card or bank account with. In his work, Derrida sought to show how the differences on which any signifying system depends are not fixed, but get caught up and entangled with each other. Even more important: a difference generally implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in language there are only differences without positive terms. Structural linguistics, and subsequently structuralism proper, are founded on the idea that meaning can only be produced differentially in signifying systems (such as language). But, as phaenomena are objects of sensibility, and, as the understanding, in respect of them, must be employed empirically and not purely or transcendentally, plurality and numerical difference are given by space itself as the condition of external phaenomena. These can be along the dimensions of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, or other ideologies. JSTOR®, the JSTOR logo, JPASS®, Artstor®, Reveal Digital™ and ITHAKA® are registered trademarks of ITHAKA. In other words, because identity (particularly, personal identity) is viewed in non-essentialist terms as a construct, and because constructs only produce meaning through the interplay of differences (see below), it is the case that for both structuralism and poststructuralism, identity cannot be said to exist without difference. Example: The difference between 8 and 3 is 5. ©2000-2020 ITHAKA. © 1987 Sage Publications, Ltd. The former was concerned to question the prevailing view of meaning "inhering" in words, or the idea that language is a nomenclature bearing a one-to-one correspondence to the real. Difference is the most general: differences in color and size; a difference of degree but not of kind. Instead, Saussure argues that meaning arises through differentiation of one sign from another, or even of one phoneme from another: In language there are only differences. Feminist Review resists the increasing instrumentalisation of scholarship within British and international higher education and thus supports the generation of creative and innovative approaches to knowledge production. When unequal statuses and rewards are attached to social categories and these are ranked on the basis of one or more defining factors, they are treated as unequal. Main Difference – Concept vs Theory. How to use difference in a sentence. Philosophical concept; set of properties by which one entity is distinguished from another, The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy, Introduction to Husserl's The Origin of Geometry, Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in Philosophy, Ethics, Institutions, and the Right to Philosophy, The Intellectuals and Power: A Discussion Between Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, Périclès et Verdi: La philosophie de Francois Châtelet, L'inconscient machinique. Difference is a key concept of philosophy, denoting the process or set of properties by which one entity is distinguished from another within a relational field or a given conceptual system. How much one number differs from another. Request Permissions. This issue of Virtual Mentor will not focus so much on why sex and gender should not be used interchangeably, but instead on how sex and gender together and to varying degrees influence today's practice of medicine [1]. In structuralist and poststructuralistaccounts, however, difference is understood to be constitutive of both meaning and ide… Difference definition is - the quality or state of being dissimilar or different. The "phonemic" (non-)difference between différence and différance can only be observed in writing, hence producing differential meaning only in a partial, deferred and entangled manner. All persons do have common human traits. In the Western philosophical system, difference is traditionally viewed as being opposed to identity, following the Principles of Leibniz, and in particular, his Law of the identity of indiscernibles. In contrast, the term “difference” simply refers to variation in a trait, like having blue or brown eyes. Concept basically refers to a general idea or understanding of something. (2004), differences assume importance when ranking diversities becomes difficult. 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