Abstract

According to Jacques Derrida, there is a différance – his infamous mis-spelling of the French différence – that ‘has no name in our language’ (‘Différance’, in Margins of Philosophy); its name is not différance, and it is not just nameless but ‘unnameable’. ‘The a of différance’, he also tells us, ‘remains silent, secret and discreet as a tomb’. My essay, which is haunted throughout by Derrida, seeks to address the following question: if the a of différance is like a tomb, then who or what died? To Kzomil