Difference Without Regress: Saussure Against Zeno’s Paradox
In Read My Desire, Joan Copjec, following Samuel Weber’s essay “Closure and Exclusion,” contends that Ferdinand de Saussure’s dictum — “in language there are no positive terms, only differences” — entangles Saussure’s linguistics in the trap of Zeno’s paradox. If each signifier derives its value only from another signifier, and that from another in turn, meaning appears suspended in indefinite referral. Confronted with this abyss, Saussure allegedly retreats. He abandons a radical conception of “pure difference” and replaces it with “determinate oppositions”, isolating a synchronic moment to arrest what would otherwise be an infinite regress (see quote below).
The accusation is rhetorically powerful. Yet it rests on two decisive displacements: first, the translation of la langue as “language”; second, the assumption that Saussurean difference operates without structural limits. Once these two shifts are corrected, the specter of infinite regress evaporates.
La langue Is Not “Language”
Saussure’s statement reads: «Dans la langue, il n’y a que des différences.» The opening phrase is determinative. La langue does not signify “language” in the abstract or as an unbounded medium of signification. Saussure repeatedly warns that terminological equivalence across languages is illusory and that one must not “start from words in order to define things.” The distinction between langue, langage, and parole is central.
Difference therefore operates within a socially instituted system. It neither precedes nor exceeds that system. As Saussure writes, “The value of each term is determined by those which surround it” (Course in General Linguistics, p. 160). The surrounding elements form a structured field of coexistence. Relationality presupposes simultaneity within a shared framework.
Once the formula “only differences” is detached from this institutional horizon and elevated into a metaphysical principle, dispersion without limit becomes imaginable. Within Saussure’s theory, however, differences function inside a delimited network of conventions inherited by a linguistic community. Each sign’s value arises from its position within this finite relational configuration. Differential relations do not proliferate endlessly because they are circumscribed by the system that makes them operative.
Infinite regress appears only when structural difference is abstracted from la langue and converted into an ontological thesis.
Synchronic Autonomy Is Not a Retreat
The allegation of retreat depends on conflating methodological bracketing with metaphysical closure. Saussure explicitly grants priority to the synchronic perspective because, for the speaking community, it constitutes “the true and only reality” (p. 117). He also insists that the linguist must ignore diachrony in order to understand a given state (p. 81). This is not a denial of temporality; it is a disciplined analytical decision.
A synchronic state is internally structured and functionally autonomous. Contemporary French operates independently of Latin; modern English does not rely on Old English for its present intelligibility. Historical derivation does not imply structural coexistence. Each état de langue forms a coherent configuration with its own network of contrasts and values.
The boundary that prevents unbounded proliferation is intrinsic to the synchronic configuration itself. The system defines the horizon within which signification occurs. Bracketing diachrony does not suppress transformation; it isolates a relational totality in order to analyze its internal organization. To interpret this methodological move as defensive closure is to mistake rigor for retreat.
Difference and Opposition: No Substitution, No Retreat
The second alleged capitulation concerns terminology. According to Copjec and Weber, Saussure replaces “pure difference” with “determinate opposition” in order to halt an infinite deferral. This interpretation conflates two distinct analytical levels.
“Difference” designates the negativity internal to each plane: the phonetic distinctions among signifiers and the conceptual distinctions among signifieds. “Opposition,” by contrast, designates the relation between complete units—signs composed of both elements—within la langue.
These notions do not compete; one presupposes the other. Without differential distinctions at the level of signifier and signified, no oppositional structure among signs could emerge. Saussure explicitly states that between complete signs “there is only opposition.” This does not signal an abandonment of difference but its structural articulation. The vocabulary shifts because the analytical focus shifts—from the internal negativity of each order to the relational confrontation of constituted units. To construe opposition as a device for arresting infinite referral is to misconstrue Saussurean difference.
The central point may be stated succinctly: “difference” names the internal negativity of each order—phonic and conceptual; “opposition” names the structural confrontation between complete signs within a given state of langue; value arises from the system of oppositions; and the positivity of the sign is institutional rather than substantial. Opposition does not cancel difference. It presupposes it and organizes it into operative units within the linguistic system.
The Misplaced Specter of Infinite Regress
Zeno’s paradox presupposes divisibility without structural boundary. The regress becomes infinite because nothing limits the division. Saussure’s theory posits the opposite: a delimited relational system.
The speaking subject operates within a specific institutional configuration. That configuration may change historically, yet at any given moment it forms a finite relational whole. The differential play of French does not spill into Latin. The English lexicon does not defer into Anglo-Saxon strata in ordinary communication. The synchronic state establishes the field within which value is generated. Outside that field, for the speaker, there is nothing operative.
The infinite appears only if one detaches “difference” from the institutional structure that conditions it and treats it as an autonomous metaphysical force. In that case, structural linguistics is transformed into an ontology of indeterminacy. But this transformation is imposed upon Saussure; it is not derived from him.
Conclusion: Structural Limit, Not Metaphysical Abyss
The claim that Saussure recoils from his own insight depends on a sequence of reinterpretations: la langue becomes abstract “language”; structural difference becomes temporal deferral; analytic bracketing becomes metaphysical closure. Once these substitutions are reversed, the charge loses its force.
Saussure does not confront Zeno because his theory does not posit an infinitely divisible continuum. It posits a finite relational system whose limits are drawn by a linguistic institution. Difference constitutes the structural condition of that system; opposition articulates its operation within a synchronic state. Neither entails infinite regress.
The specter of endless referral emerges only when structural boundedness is ignored. Saussure did not retreat from difference. He located it precisely where it functions: within the determinate horizon of la langue.
When we recognize that Derrida’s Différance, Lacan’s signifier, and other cornerstone concepts of poststructuralism and modern critical theory arise from such a highly idiosyncratic reading of Ferdinand de Saussure, we begin to grasp the magnitude of the problem.
Daniel 2:31–35
31 “Your Majesty looked, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. 32 The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, 33 its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. 34 While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. 35 Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were all broken to pieces and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace.
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Achilles and the Tortoise
That Zeno's paradoxes are still relevant to any semiotically based theory of the subject is demonstrated in an important essay by Samuel Weber entitled "Closure and Exclusion. " Here Weber explores how an acceptance of the Saussurian dictum, "in language there are no positive terms, only differences," forces us to confront the specter of Zeno and the problem of infinite regress. For, once one breaks up the signifying chain, the statement, into a series of minimal units, of diacritical terms or signifiers that take their meaning only from their reference to another signifier, which in turn refers to another, and so on and on, and once this endless deferral is no longer considered to be grounded in some external reality (language being conceived as autonomous, as self-sustaining) , we are obliged to wonder how it is possible to produce any statement at all. It would seem that this deferral would suspend meaning indefinitely. Intimidated by this problem of infinite and therefore de-determining regress, Saussure eventually retreated from his original path breaking notion of pure difference and replaced it with a notion of determinate oppositions by isolating a moment within this process of deferral. That is, Saussure temporarily limited the differential play of signification to the moment of understanding, when the open-ended diachrony of the system was bracketed and a synchronic closure was supposed to be operative. The signifier, then, no longer awaited a future signifier that would give it meaning but received its value from a signifier with which it was co-present. Past and future, temporality and change dropped out of the system of signifiers that now were assumed to determine each other mutually, simultaneously (emphasis added). Read My Desire, Joan Copjec
Bibliography
Copjec, Joan. Read My Desire: Lacan against the Historicists. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994.
Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics. Edited by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye. Translated by Wade Baskin. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011 [1916].
Saussure, F. (1910-1911). Troisième cours de linguistique générale: d'après les cahiers d'Emile Constantin [Saussure's Third Course of Lectures on General Linguistics: From the Notebooks of Emile Constantin]. (R. Harris, Trans.) University of Oxford.1993
Weber, Samuel. “Closure and Exclusion.” In Institution and Interpretation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
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