The self can not be a property of being-in-itself. By nature it is a reflexive, as syntax sufficiently indicates -- in particular the logical rigor of Latin syntax with the strict distinctions imposed by grammar between the uses of ejus and sui. The self refers, but it refers precisely to the subject. It indicates a relation between the subject and himself, and this relation is precisely a duality, but a particular duality since it requires particular verbal symbols. But on the other hand, the self does not designate being either as subject or as predicate. If indeed I consider the "se" in "il s'ennuie", for example, I establish that it opens up to allow the subject himself to appear behind it. It is not the subject, since the subject without relation to himself would be condensed into the identity of the in-itself; neither is it a consistent articulation of the real, since it allows the subject to appear behind it. In fact the self cannot be apprehended as a real existent; the subject can not be self, for coincidence with self, as we have seen, causes the self to disappear. But neither can it not be itself since the self is an indication of the subject himself. The self therefore represents an ideal distance within the immanence of the subject in relation to himself, a way of not being his own coincidence, or escaping identity while positing it as unity -- in short, of being in a perpetually unstable equilibrium between identity as absolute cohesion without a trace of diversity and unity as a synthesis of multiplicity. This is what we shall call presence to itself. The law of being of the for-itself, as the ontological foundation of consciousness, is to be itself in the form of presence to itself....Presence to self, on the contrary, supposes that an impalpable fissure has slipped into being. If being is present to iself, it is because it is not wholly itself. Presence is an immediate deterioration of coincidence, for it supposes separation. But if we ask ourselves at this point what it is which separates the subject from himself, we are forced to admit that it is nothing.
Being and Nothingness, pp 123-4.
Try substituting "différance" for "nothing" in the last sentence, and pretend Derrida wrote it. Works, doesn't it?
