Publication Details

Abstract

The article introduces handwritten signature as a sort of performative. Contrary to the theory of speech acts, the author proposes to grasp it not as a speech act, but as a writing act inspired by Derrida’s deconstructive conception of parasitical iterability of the writing. In this perspective, the writing act is habited by an aporetical double bind, where ontologically “similar” and logically “identical” are pervading. The unsatisfiable metaphysical obligation of the civil identification via signature can be understood only thanks to the aporia of deferred meaning, where the only original is actually the deferral. As the analysis of the well known polemics between Derrida and Searle shows, the deconstructed writing produces writing acts as parasitical performatives, which are far from communicational, citational and identificational claim of Searle’s conception of speech acts. Finally, the article proposes a new revision of the differences in performative conception of sign in Austin, Searle, Derrida and Ronell.