Before delving into Derrida’s “Signature Event Context,” I would like to briefly examine Ferdinand de Saussure’s structural linguistics, on which Derrida builds his theoretical basis and from which he makes his own departure. In Courses in General Linguistics, Saussure stresses the arbitrary nature of linguistic system that designates the bond between the concept and the sound-image, namely between the signified and the signifier. For instance, the Latin word arbor designates the concept “tree” because linguistic system makes it mean so (66). In Saussure’s view, language is a system of differences. Words are created to denote different meanings because they contain different phonemes. For instance, the word “cat” means “cat” only by doing without the phonic possibility of becoming the word “cap.” But for the operation of the linguistic system, the phonic and conceptual differences between “cat” and “cap”
would not exist. As Saussure indicates, “in language there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither
ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from the system” (120; emphasis original).
In Saussure’s structural linguistics, a word establishes its phonic and conceptual status only by differentiating itself from its neighboring words in a sentence by
adopting different phonemes. As a structural necessity, differences function to draw a stark line between a word and its other and thereby assure a word of its unique meaning. Differences, then, contribute to binary oppositions between a linguistic sign and its other, between a category of signs and its outside, and between an identity and its dissent in human civilization. While Saussure views differences as the boundary between a word and its other so as to assure the word of its phonic and conceptual status, Derrida reads the differences in language not as a hub of meanings but as an effect of différance. Coined to denote the meaning of both “difference” and “deferral,”
the French word différance implies a process of how a linguistic sign establishes itself by negotiating its meaning with its interior differences and deferral:
Without a retention in the minimal unit of temporal experience, without a trace retaining the other as other in the same, no difference would do its work and no meaning would appear. It is not the question of a constituted difference here, but rather, before all determination of the content, of the pure movement which produces difference. The (pure) trace is différance.
(Derrida, “Linguistics” 62; emphasis original)
If we read the word “cat” in light of Derrida’s notion of différance, the letter “a” in
“cat” contains the trace of its previous letter “c“ and paves the way for its following letter “t.” The letter “a” in the formation of “cat,” nevertheless, might have a
possibility of being followed by the letter “p” to become another word “cap.” In this sense, the absence of the letter “p” is inscribed in the formation of the word “cat.”
When we make a slip of the pen, we mistake “cap” for “cat” and, consequently,
mistake the sound-image of “cap” for the concept of “a furry animal.” Now that “cat”
is possible to be written as “cap” in a slip of the pen; the “p” in its presence marks a possibility of producing difference, not outside but within the formation of the word
“cat.” Only by making the “p” as other and retaining the possibility of becoming
“cap” can “cat” become “cat” and take on the meaning of “a furry animal.” Namely, only by differing itself from “cap” and deferring its possibility can “cat” become “cat”
and mean “cat.” Hence, the meaning of “cat” and the word itself can be viewed as a temporary outcome of the trace. The word “cat” is an effect of différance, a process in which the meaning of the word is being negotiated with its differing and deferring substitutions.
Differences, then, are but preexisting linguistic condition for word to assure stable meaning for Derrida. Instead, every word is destined to signify in a state of différance, its meaning changing according to shifting time and context. No system will fully stabilize the content of a linguistic sign. A linguistic sign can have a possibility of repeating a code and creating another context, and therefore obtain a chance to reinvent itself. For instance, the word “cat” can be repeated with “copy” or
“fish” to become “copycat” or “catfish” and assume different meanings. While
Saussure views differences as the cause of stable meanings sanctioned by the structure of language, Derrida holds that differences are would-be phonic and conceptual possibilities of a sign that keeps being other-ized as an effect of différance. The phonic elements in the word “cat” do not presuppose the concept of “a furry animal”; instead, it is through the process of différance, of negotiating its meaning with its differing and deferring substitutions, that the three letters “c-a-t” gains its meaning in a specific context. That is to say, a word does not naturally serve as a sound-image bound to a concept; rather, the concept of the word is retrospectively established by the context the word is instilled in. The sound-image (the signifier) and the concept (the signified)
is more performative than prescriptive.
With a focus on the performative function of language, in “Signature Event Content,” Derrida quotes J. L. Austin to argue that a linguistic sign does not so much transmit a concept as it transforms a situation. In How to Do Things with Words, Austin suggests that words are uttered to go with physical or mental actions of a conscious speaker (qtd. in Derrida “Signature” 14). For instance, when a priest declares that “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” he bears witness to a Christian marriage and meanwhile has the marriage come into effect. Here, the declaration “I now pronounce you husband and wife” not only bespeaks the intention of the speaker but also performs a marital ritual. To achieve its performative function, the declaration should involve a conscious speaker (the priest) and a valid context (a Christian marriage). Instead of merely describing an event, the conscious speaker accomplishes a mission with the words he has uttered.
Favoring Austin’s notion of the performative side of language, Derrida, however, disapproves of a teleological context implied in performative utterances.
Through an emphasis on the citationality of signs, he aspires to add openness to the telos-bound nature of Austin’s theory:
Every sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or written, in a small or large unit, can be cited, put between quotation marks; in so doing it can break with every given context, engendering an infinity of new contexts in a manner which is absolutely illimitable. This doe not imply that the mark is valid outside of a context, but on the contrary that there are only contexts without any center of absolute anchoring. (“Signature” 12;
emphasis added)
This citationality, as Derrida indicates, is a property without which a linguistic sign cannot be called “normal” (“Signature” 12). With citationality, performative
utterances can be quoted and repeated to generate new contexts without the
prerequisite of a conscious speaker or an appropriate situation. Read alternatively in light of Derrida, the sentence “I now pronounce you husband and wife” can be pronounced by an actor in the theater, or a patient in the mental asylum. Even the sentence does not have to be grammatically correct in order to be meaningful because each new context of citation displays linguistic possibilities beyond the prescription of grammar. It is the citationality of a linguistic sign that leads to différance. Through being repeated and cited, a linguistic sign can be placed in new contexts, thereby differing from its “orthodox” usages and deferring its meanings in the expansion of historical fields.
The citationality, the possibility of being repeated, can deconstruct the
father-and-son relationship between speech and writing. Stressing the representational nature of writing, Saussure proposes that “language [speech] and writing are two distinct systems of signs; the second exists for the sole purpose of representing the first” (qtd. in Derrida Grammatology 45; emphasis original). Derrida, however, refuses to pin down writing as a mere notation of speech. He argues that writing is interior to speech because speech is inscribed with writ-ability, the possibility of being duplicated through writing. Repeated and duplicated through writing, a speech can be placed into different contexts and thus generates new meanings. In this sense, speech should be seen not as transparent in signification but as a writ-able “origin”
split in itself. In Writing and Difference, Derrida proposes that “repetition is writing because what disappears in it is the self-identity of the origin, the self-presence of so-called living speech” (296). Through repetition, writing puts living speech in a temporal and spatial dislocation. In other words, writing puts a speech in difference.
The writ-ability inscribed within every living speech makes possible différance.
Writing as such manifests not the absence of speech, but a deferred and differing
presence of speech instead. Never a mere notation of speech, writing has the
origin—a living speech—repeated and split in différance and in this sense dismantles the hierarchy between speech as immediate and transparent and writing as secondary and mediated.
For Derrida, only by repetition can the closure of meaning be avoided. Likewise, the repetition in Jazz makes the text a performative one, rendered in endless
différance. Instead of merely duplicating a jazz performance, jazzy elements in Jazz are rewritten to create new contexts and new room for interpretations. The
employment of jazz does not serve as a foil for the development of the story in Jazz;
rather, it runs parallel to the plot development of Jazz and contributes to the meaning of the novel. Performative rather than descriptive, jazzy elements in Jazz put jazz in différance. Like riffs in a jazz performance, repetitive rhythms and recurring motifs occur in Jazz, building different layers of narratives and rhetorical truth. In what follows, I would like to explore how repetitive rhythms and recurring motifs function in Jazz.