Writing Différance

Différance means to both defer and differ. Originally suggested by Jacques Derrida as a Postmodernist critical consideration of conventions and aesthetics, to the writer, it alludes to the French différer (defer and differ). Différance can apply to many aspects of writing technique—i.e., a creative writer will both defer and differ from linguistic convention in order to form individual voice and additional meaning within the narrative as well as deferring and differing from axioms in order to create intimacy and irony. (“Cogito et Histoire de la Folie”)

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Sources

The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the PresentEric Kandel.

A Handbook to Literature. William Harmon.

“Cogito et Histoire de la Folie.” Jacques Derrida.

Eats Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. Lynne Truss.

The Elements of Style. William Strunk. 

New Oxford American DictionaryEdited by Angus Stevenson and Christine A. Lindberg.

The Norton Anthology of World LiteratureMartin Puchner, et al.

The Norton Introduction to PhilosophyGideon Rosen and Alex Byrne.

Woe is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English. Patricia T. O’Conner

Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. Janet Burroway, Elizabeth Stuckey-French & Ned Stuckey-French.

Writing the Other. Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward.

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Eckleburg is a print and online literary journal that offers original fiction, poetry, essays, music, art, writing workshops and more.