The Seba library treats Trace in 6 passages, across 2 authors (including Derrida, Jacques, Giegerich, Wolfgang).
presence is the trace of the trace, the trace of the erasure of the trace. Such is, for us, the text of metaphysics — and such is, for us, the language which we speak.
Derrida’s central inversion: presence is not the ground to which the trace refers but is itself constituted by the very structure of trace and erasure.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982thesis
the distinction between Being and beings, as something forgotten, can invade our experience only if it has already unveiled itself with the presencing of what is present; only if it has left a trace (eine Spur gepragt hat) which remains preserved in the language to which Being comes.
Heidegger’s Spur names the trace of the ontological difference preserved in language, which Derrida reads as the condition of possibility for metaphysical discourse itself.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982thesis
Being: the play of the trace, or the differance, which has no meaning and is not. Which does not belong. There is no maintaining, and no depth to, this bottomless chessboard on which Being is put into play.
The trace is identified with différance as the non-foundational play that subtends Being, thereby radically displacing any stable ontological ground.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982thesis
Like the concept of supplementing, the concept of trace could be determined otherwise than in the way Condillac determines it. According to him, to trace means ‘to express,’ ‘to represent,’ ‘to recall,’ ‘to make present.’
Derrida contrasts Condillac’s representational understanding of the trace — oriented toward making present — with his own deconstructive redetermination of the concept.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982supporting
The Closure of the Gramme and the Trace of Difference
This passage situates the trace within the broader problematic of the gramme and closure of metaphysics, connecting the question of temporality in Heidegger to the logic of difference.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982supporting
postmodern thinkers like DERRIDA, who, we could say, instead of shooting the stag appearing in a present moment, fundamentally attacks the notions of ‘presence’ and ‘center’ as such.
Giegerich positions Derrida’s dismantling of presence — the philosophical milieu within which the trace operates — as antithetical to depth psychology’s commitment to centered, present experience.
, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020aside