Difference that resists binary opposition is always in process and positionally determined

Evidence

This is what, in another context, Derrida calls différance: “the playing movement that ‘produces’ … these differences, these effects of difference” (Derrida 1981, 1982). This is not the binary form of difference, between what is absolutely the same and what is absolutely “Other.” It is a “weave” of similarities and differences, which refuses to separate into fixed binary oppositions. Différance characterizes a system where “every concept [or meaning] is inscribed in a chain or in a system within which it refers to the other, to other concepts [meanings], by means of the systematic play of differences” (Derrida 1972). Meaning here has no origin or final destination, cannot be finally fixed, is always in process, “positional” along a spectrum. Its political value cannot be essentialized but only relationally determined. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 322

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines différance as Hall deploys it — a crucial toolkit concept for how the ‘Other’ is constructed not as fixed binary but as positional.
• XREF: Connects to the downstream Islamophobia readings on how ‘the Muslim’ is constructed positionally rather than as fixed essence; also to Said’s Orientalism as a relational system of representation.