After several hours of reading the first pages of “Differance” by Jacques Derrida on English, and do not understand a word about he was trying to say, I decided to look for the text in Spanish, so I can easily could find what he was trying to define. I found a translation. After more than two hours of reading “Diferencia” by Jacques Derrida on Spanish, and not be able to pass the page five, I thought that there was something wrong with my brain.

I look for “Derrida for dummies” and I found there some concepts that I could catch. I read Barbara Johnson’s “Writing” essay and finally I could understand some of the ideas that Derrida explains in a very complicated way. At least, it was very complicated for me.

I had to take a break. I went to the store for buying eggs and milk. While I was walking down the street, feeling the cold wind that this Sunday blowed, I could not stop thinking about what happened with Derrida’s readings. It was impossible to understand? Why is so complicated for me? I arrived to some conclusions.

• I remember when I taught a basic reading course for undergraduate students in Colombia, there was this structured model of basic steps for reading: 1) Read the first time and try to identify all the words that you do not know and look for them on the dictionary; 2) Underline the main ideas in the second reading; 3)Try to select the most important ideas or concepts and make a list with them; 4) Try to establish an hypothesis about what the text is trying to say; 5) Make a small synopsis of the text. Well, I think that my problem with Derrida text is around the step 1 and 2. On the one hand, the vocabulary on the text is closely related to philosophy (for instance arche, ousia, parousia Greek or Latin expressions that are used by philosophers). On the other hand, it seems that syntax is working but for me is not:

 Already we had to note that differance is not, does not exist, and is not any sort of being-present (on). And we will have to point out that everything that is not, and,consequently, that is has neither existence nor essence. It belongs to no category of being, present or absent. And yet what is thus denoted as differance is not theological, not even in the most negative order of negative theology (Derrida 282).

I know probably the majority of the class got the idea but, honestly, I have read this quotation over and over and I can not find what is he trying to say.

• If the language that Derrida is using is closer to the philosophy, I think he is writing for a particular reader. Yes, this is arguable and I hope to read your arguments later, however I think Derrida’s discourse is only for students and scholars that know many of his references and can jump easily from the step 1 to the second on the “reading steps”. I wonder if the world of the ideas is only for privileged readers, like me, which have the time to produce questions like these, or if this world is for everyone.

• The idea of deconstruction, what I understood in Johnson analysis, is complex and profound. Its main purpose, like she demonstrated analyzing the poem “Meditation 6” by Edward Taylor, is to look deep in the text and see “how the logic of writing -it is also a logic that can only really exist in writing” (345). Then she add: “When one writes, one writes more than (or less than, or other than) one thinks. The reader’s task is to read what is written rather than simply attempt to intuit what might have been meant” (346). This idea reminds me Foucault, when he said that

“We must question those ready-made synthesis, those groupings that we normally accept before any examination, those links whose validity is recognized from the outset. We must oust those forms and obscure forces by which we usually link to discourse of one man with that other; they must be driven out from the darkness in which they reign” (90-91)

In that order of ideas, deconstruction should question discourses that we as readers have already accepted, and see within them how writing develops those discourse. It is a political idea, I guess. But the idea of questioning  the world in Derrida is only for philosophers? Is the same in Foucault? I wonder if this two authors are in the same quest.

•  The last reflection is around education and pedagogy. Maybe this is not the most adequate place for doing it, but I just want to express what the impossibility of reading Derrida let me.  While I was walking to the store, I started to wonder if sometimes, as a teacher, my discourse is as confusing as Derrida’s is for me. I know, his purpose is different than mine, but he and I are surrounded by “readers”. Students in my class are trying to learn an idiom, his readers are trying to find what the deconstruction is, are developing a language system. Am I that confusing? Maybe I am. Perhaps I have to check if my discourse is dark and looking for some privileges readers who comprehend it. I have to think about it.

I bought the eggs and milk. I came back and started to write down these ideas. Now that I am reading them again, I concluded that the impossibility of reading Derrida maybe deconstructed me.