Heterogeneity/Deferral

So there are two sets of relations: the link between planform, the shape of the wing, and CLf; and the link between planform and aero­dynamic center. The delta wing is better-better, that is, in the wind tunnel.

The wind tunnel is another instance of heterogeneity/materiality, of distribution between absence and presence. On the one hand, there are the flat surfaces of the drawing office that work to pull every­thing together, to center it; and on the other, there are the three­dimensional models, materials, and measurements of the wind tun­nel. So the wind tunnel is absent from the formalisms of the design office and yet they are present too. But there is something more subtle

about the differences that emerge in that distribution. This is the fact that they are produced in movement, in a continuing process of dis­placement between materials and sites.

Perhaps one way of saying this is that it isn’t possible to ‘‘sum up’’ the wing in the design office. The representation that appears in the design office, sets of formalisms, drawings, is incomplete, unfinished. It is not centered, it is not drawn together, because it needs the wind tunnel. It needs the differences that will be generated in the move to the wind tunnel. But the version of the wing that appears here is also incomplete and needs further attention, further attention by the de­sign office, by stress engineers, machinists, metallurgists, and later by maintenance engineers and mechanics.

This is another oscillation of absence/presence. For the wing is present, all there, drawn out. But those lines also embody absence, the absent/presence of differences that are deferred and relations that are still to come. So the distributions here, the absent/presences are differences in movement. They involve displacement, displace­ment through time, in what Jacques Derrida calls difference. They involve an oscillatory distribution between the present/now and the absent/future. Or the absent/now and the present/future. In the het­erogeneous interferences of time. In heterogeneity/deferral.11