Abstract

In his Signature Event Context Derrida, by analyzing the dominant philosophical notion of writing, exposes one of its characteristics, which he calls “iterability”. A closer examination of this predicate allows him to redefine the traditional concept of linguistic communication, understood as a process of the transmission from one subject to another of meaning that has already been determined and always precedes this process. The way Derrida characterizes iterability is reminiscent of Wittgenstein’s considerations on rule-following in his Philosophical Investigations. Therefore, the aim of this article is to provide, on the one hand, an exposition of Derrida’s view on iterability, and on the other hand, a comparison between this view and Wittgenstein's remarks. The comparison will show that, despite efforts to build a strong connection between them, they remain incompatible, mainly because of the different role of the category of context.