In ”Signature Event Context”, Derrida unfolds the radical consequences of Ferdinand de Saussure’s argument that spacing – on a material level – is a precondition for any kind of linguistic structure:

“This force of rupture is due to the spacing with constitutes the written sign: the spacing which separates it from other elements of the internal contextual chain (the always open possibility of its extraction and grafting), but also from all the forms of a present referent (past or to come in the modified form of the present or to come) that is objective or subjective. The spacing is not the simple negativity of a lack, but the emergence of the mark.” (Derrida 317)

As opposed to the aspirations of the Swiss linguist’s, “Signature Event Context” demonstrates that these constitutional gaps and breaches can never be bridged. Breaking with a context, any context, is both cause and effect of all writing and speaking. Since the emergence of these meaning-producing ruptures can impossibly be explained from the context with which they break, Derrida refers to them as events.

Due to these ruptures, statements and utterances cannot be used in an inappropriate manner. Or at least, there is no false use in respect to an original context or addressee. The intentions of an author, or the norms, values, and customs of a historical discourse, can never – not even partially – determine the proper use of an utterance. A statement has to be iterable (repeatable, citable) in any possible context in order to be legible at all.

“The possibility of repeating, and therefore identifying, marks is implied in every code, making of it a communicable, transmittable, decipherable grid that is iterable for a third party, and thus for any possible user in general” (315)

According to Derrida, every linguistic system has to consists solely of quotable marks. A system of differences – spacing – is a precondition for this radical iterability. Even speaking is therefore a form of writing. The fact, however, that these potential citations neither have an original nor an ultimate meaning, does not imply that they are completely devoid of sense. On the contrary, each utterance or statement – more precisely, each instantiation of an utterance or a statement – by definition produces its own context. Its proper use and meaning coincide with an act of writing, and it is in that very broad sense that language is performative.

To a student of Friedrich Nietzsche like Jacques Derrida, this universalizing conclusion — every statement is iterable; language is always performative — would not make sense, if it were not immediately followed by a pluralizing gesture: there are different modes of iteration. It is exactly in pluralizing and specifying these broad, abstract categories that Derrida sees opportunities for future philosophical research. Towards the end of “Signature Event Context”, he states:

“Thus, one must less oppose citation or iteration to the noniteration of the event, than construct a differential typology of forms of iteration, supposing that this is a tenable project that can give rise to an exhaustive program, a question I am holding off on here. In this typology, the category of intention will not disappear; it have its place, but from this place it will no longer be able to govern the entire scene and the entire system of utterances. Above all, one then would be concerned with different type of marks or chains of iterable marks, and not with an opposition between citational statements on the one hand, and singular and original statement-events on the other.” (326)

Rather than finding or constructing an origin, truth, presence, or consciousness, Derrida proposes to capitalize on the possibilities that emerge from the lack of such a foundation for knowledge. Hence, a typology of iterations. To cover this programmatic aspect of “Signature Event Context”, however, I find the terms iteration and citation an unfortunate choice. These two words suggest that Derrida’s argument is limited to linguistics, while it actually applies to all forms of writing. Each mark that emerges necessarily breaks with its context; every inscription is an event.

I would argue that Derrida’s usage of the terms iteration and citation in “Signature Event Context” is strategic. He needs them to emphasize the impossibility of singularity in language; To show that every utterance is defined by it iterability. When Derrida calls for a typology of forms iterations, however, these concepts actually obscure rather than clarify his point. Derrida does not literally wants to classify different forms of citation, he wants to explore the heterogeneous acts that invoke events. There are many ways to break with a context. In order to emphasize this broader relevance of Derrida’s critique, I propose to replace the term iteration with (medial) operation.