Iterability: The Basic Condition of Writing

In the chapter “The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing” from his book Of Grammatology, Derrida looks at writing in terms of language and boundaries.  While the written word, such as the text of a book, is printed and limited, it is still made up of language, meaning that it truly has no boundaries.  He also looks at writing in relation to the spoken word, saying, “As has been more or less implicitly determined, the essence of the phoné would be immediately proximate to that which within ‘thought’ as logos relates to ‘meaning,’ produces it, receives it, speaks it, ‘composes’ it” (11); speech signifies the speaker’s immediate thought, and writing signifies that speech (“the voice, producer of the first symbols, has a relationship of essential and immediate proximity with the mind” [11]). 

I am reminded of Derrida’s “Signature Event Context” in the sense that the concept of iterability is applicable here. To iterate is to “perform or utter repeatedly,” However, this does not mean immutable iteration.  When one iterates, nothing exactly repeats and something will change.  Precisely because a sign, such as a written or spoken word, is recognizable and repeatable, it will mutate in the course of repetition; nothing means the exact same thing twice, and on top of that, nothing means the exact same thing twice.  If this is true, then speech may rank higher than writing in that there is less distance between the original thought and the iteration, whereas a written word is just that much more disjoined from its origin.

However, Derrida comments on how these modes of communication are changing, both in use and in hierarchy.  He notes that we have used the word/sign “language” to mean “action, movement, thought, reflection, consciousness, unconsciousness, experience, affectivity, etc” (9), which all very clearly relate to the spoken word and its immediacy.  However, when we say “writing,” we refer to “language” and “all that gives rise to an inscription in general, whether it is literal or not and even if what it distributes in space is alien to the order of the voice: cinematography, choreography, of course, but also pictorial, musical, sculptural ‘writing’” (9). Essentially, writing is the totality of the experience of communication, a concept that can be observed in action right now, as you are reading my blog post for class rather than listening to a short oral presentation, or when you choose to send a text rather than call the person directly, and even when I tutor someone via chat box rather in a one-on-one session.

I believe that yet another reason we privilege writing over speech is, if I may return to the idea, because of its iterability.  Let me try to explain…

When a sign is iterated or repeated, another instance of that sign comes into existence.  What is at stake here is the seriousness of an utterance or a piece of writing, as it is the case that some utterances (or arguments or readings), among all the disseminations, seem to us more acceptable and satisfactory than others.  There are, claims Derrida, endless interpretations of any sign: “Every sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or written…can be cited, put between quotation marks; thereby it can break with every given context, and engender infinitely new contexts in an absolutely nonsaturable fashion” (“SEC” 320).  Putting words in quotation marks shifts emphasis onto the words themselves and away from their “intended meaning.”  With an endless possibility for dissemination from both the intention of the speaker and original context, it becomes a chore to consider every interpretation and its value or adequacy.  But as long as we don’t claim that adequacy is always determined by how “in line” an interpretation is with the speaker’s intentions, then we have to explain, each time we are presented with a new context, why we find one inference more cogent and satisfying than another.  This process of interpretation and explanation of the seriousness of an utterance is never complete, yet I believe Derrida sees this as the valuable aspect of writing and speech.  He definitely proves in his essay that because of iterability, the concepts around writing are indefinable but legitimate.  If signs carried the exact same meaning each time they were iterated, they would be less valuable as their ability to “communicate” would be extremely limited.  It is precisely the “drifting” (to use Derrida’s word) of writing that allows it to be interpreted out of context; the sign does not need intention to signify, signified meaning, or even a referent. 

Language always allows for iterability, but the spoken word is limited to its very context.  Writing, on the other hand, can transcend time and place, making it far more iterable than any other form of language.  What I say in class is then and there, and while there are 11 different possibilities for the interpretation of what I say at that moment, this blog post is available to those same 11 people, as well as everyone else on the Internet, at any point in time.  With that said, it may be that the “seriousness” of a dissemination is dependent upon both the non-contextual reading the and the context, or “event,” of that particular utterance.  Yes, a readable argument that can be deciphered independently of context is available to a patient and diligent reader, but contexts can be taken into account to help yield different readings that otherwise would have been unavailable.  Iterability allows the basic condition of possibility without which there would be no speech or writing at all, and this is why a plethora of interpretations is an indwelling side effect of reading a written text.