Editing Différance (section)

=== Paradox ===
It may seem paradoxical to suggest that {{lang|fr|différance}}, a word invented by Derrida, is not a concept (i.e. does not have a definition), but this is indicative of his broad general approach. Derrida introduces a number of new words and reinterprets others ("deconstruction" itself being the best-known example), but he vigorously resists attempts to pin them down to precise conceptual definitions. He does not seek simply to replace existing conceptual vocabularies with a new "deconstructive" one, whose terms would themselves silently embody precisely the same kinds of systems and structures of meaning, belief and value that he was questioning.

Derrida's focus is on the process by which language secretly embodies, replicates and enforces certain ways of thinking, certain beliefs and values - a process which on occasion he describes as "violence" - and his method, using the tools and techniques of his invented vocabulary, is to shake it up so that their silences and secrets are brought out into the open. (It is not irrelevant that for [[Heidegger]] the Ancient Greek word for "truth" - ''aletheia'' - means "unconcealing", i.e. bringing out of concealment into the light.) In later years, when "deconstruction" had come to be used as a kind of quasi-technical term in fields as diverse as literary criticism and cookery, Derrida regretted choosing that word rather than "de-sedimentation" as the name of his approach to critical thinking.