Sign, Design, Communication - Principia Designae: Pre-Design, Design, and Post-Design - page 31

By definition, a written signature implies the actual or empirical non presence of the signer.
However, it will be claimed, the signature also marks and retains his having-been present in
a past now or present which will remain a future now or present. (Derrida 1988 , p. 20)
When someone signs their name to a document, it is taken as an original, specific
fact that governs other signatures. A banker may refer a signature and confirm it
with past signatures. So, even in the absence of a physical entity, a signature is
recognized as a representation of our will and intention. Nevertheless, the only
course of action is to reference the present sign with the original estimated one:
Effects of signature are the most common thing in the world, but the condition of possibility
of those effects is simultaneously, once again, the condition of their impossibility, of the
impossibility of their rigorous purity. In order to function, that is, to be readable, a signature
must have a repeatable, iterable, imitable form; it must be able to be detached from the
present and singular intention of its production. It is its sameness which, by corrupting its
identity and its singularity, divides its seal [sceau]. (Derrida 1988 , p. 20)
A signature that takes place only once has no true function and may not even be
admitted as a signature. A signature, as long as we accept its validity, has the
possibility of plural occurrences. In other words, a signature may be viewed as an
event that divides itself logically, as in the case of other biometrics. The meaning or
the function of the signature is not prior to words or language, just like what he or
she says or means (vouloir dire)—the meaning is the effect of the signature.
The identifiable, repeatable and at the same time iterable character may also be
confirmed by spoken language: “Through empirical variations of tone, voice, etc.,
possibly of a certain accent, for example, we must be able to recognize the identity,
roughly speaking, of a signifying form” (Derrida 1988 , p. 10).
On the other hand, a strong and influential tradition of Western philosophy still
supports the identity of meaning. For example,
Aristotle says that
by a 'sense' is meant what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things
without the matter. This must be conceived of as taking place in the way in which a piece of
wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold; we say that what
produces the impression is a signet of bronze or gold, but its particular metallic constitution
makes no difference: in a similar way the sense is affected by what is colored or flavored or
sounding, but it is indifferent what in each case the substance is. (Aristotle 1931 , Part 12)
According to Aristotle, things or objects are combinations of form and matter or
material. We receive a form without material. Sense organs, as far as they are
attached to a body, are entangled material, but in the inner, mental sphere, we can
receive the form of the object apart from materials. During speech, we receive the
identical form of meaning apart from changing materials such as tone of voice,
inflection, etc. We can always transit from the outside into the inside to eliminate
materiality, and come to take a sound as an articulated identifiable voice not as a
noise. Modern German philosopher Edmund Husserl names this transition from
a sound to articulated voice, or from an ink stain to writing, as the “meaning
giving intentionality of a consciousness” (Husserl 1984 , Section I. 'Expression
and Meaning', § 23).
Alternatively, according to linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), it is
possible to receive a phoneme apart from the voice that occurs in space and time.