Derrida introduces the crucial and elusive technical notion of a "trace" in passing. Not only does he fail to define it, but he doesn't even give any indication that he's introduced a technical term. It's just all of a sudden there in a who-invited-this-guy-and-why-is-he-hogging-all-the-snacks kinda way. Sigh.
Piecing together the meaning of "trace" from context, it's something like a gap in a semiotic system, a telling patch of negative space. Because I can't figure out what J.D. is getting at beyond this sketchy surmise, I find myself falling back on structuralist metaphors: a trace is an element of a symbolic system that takes on meaning by virtue of being different from the elements around it. What matters about a /d/ is that it's not a /t/ or a /ɖ/, and so on. Basically, my definition comes straight from Saussure, which is probably not what was intended, but since certain 20th-century Franco-Algerian philosophers I could name think defining one's terms is just so square I guess it'll have to do.
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