LP+Week+5

/*For this assignment, I first considered writing a program that would iterate through the document collecting the third sentence from every paragraph and compiling it into a paper, but fortunately realized how violent that would be. (to ensure that this is not //mis//read, I will note that this was a joke, and I never really considered that. ever.) */

/*Lindsay Poirier - Homework 5*/ /*10/03/2013-00:55*/ /*The purpose of this program is to model Derrida's idea of iteration: " This implies that there is no such thing as a code – organon of iterability – which could be structurally secret. The possibility of repeating and thus of identifying the marks is implicit in every code, making it into a network [une grille] that is communicable, transmittable, decipherable, iterable for a third, and hence for every possible user in general. To be what it is, all writing must, therefore, be capable of functioning in the radical absence of every empirically determined receiver in general. (8)"*/

/*I started writing this response as a C++ computer program because of the word iterability - a word that is used a LOT in computer science. I wanted to see what it would look like to write Derrida's argument in code. Admittedly, the translation to code was not perfect, and there was quite a bit of negotiation both on the argument side and on the code side. All the more appropriate."*/

/*written in living room, while listening to zeppelin under the influence of mountain dew this may be the best documented piece of code I've ever written it's also extremely hard to follow due to the constraints of the wiki form box i also doubt it would compile...*/

///*for standard syntax*///
 * #include **
 * using namespace std; **

/*for written text*/
 * //#include //**


 * include **

///*authored by Jacques Derrida*/// // /*By definition, a written signature implies the actual or empirical nonpresence of the signer. But, it will be claimed, the signature also marks and retains his having-been presenting a past now or present [maintenant] which will remain a future now or present [maintenant], thus in a general maintenant, in the transcendental form of presentness [maintenance]. That general maintenance is in some way inscribed, pinpointed in the always evident and singular present punctuality of the form of the signature. Such is the enigmatic originality of ever paraph. In order for the tethering to the source to occur, what must be retained is the absolute singularity of a signature-event and a signature-form: the pure re-producibility of a pure event.*/ //
 * #include  **

/*authored by John R. Searle*/
 * // #include  //**


 * struct event {**


 * string signature;**
 * int event_id;**
 * string text;**
 * string context;**

///* At the same time, a written sign carries with it a force that breaks with its context, that is, with the collectivity of presences organizing the moment of its inscription....This allegedly real context includes a certain “present” of the inscription, the presence of the writer to what he has written, the entire environment and the horizon of his experience, and above all the intention, the wanting-to-say-what-he-means, which animates his inscription at a given moment. But the sign possesses the characteristic of being readable even if the moment of its production is irrevocably lost and even if I do not know what its alleged author-scriptor consciously intended to say at the moment he wrote it, i.e. abandoned it to its essential drift. As far as the internal semiotic context is concerned, the force of the rupture is no less important: by virtue of its essential iterability, a written syntagma can always be detached from the chain in which it is inserted or given without causing it to lose all possibility of functioning, if not all possibility of “communicating,” precisely. One can perhaps come to recognize other possibilities in it by inscribing it or grafting it onto other chains. No context can entirely enclose it. (9)*/ //

///* I repeat, therefore, since it can never be repeated too often: if one admits that writing (and the mark in general) must be able to function in the absence of the sender, the receiver, the context of production, etc., that implies that this power, this being able, this possibility is always inscribed, hence necessarily inscribed as possibility in the functioning or the functional structure of the mark. Once the mark is able to function, once it is possible for it to function, once it is possible for it to function in case of an absence, etc., it follows that this possibility is a necessary part of its structure, that the latter must necessarily be such that this functioning is possible; and hence, that this must be taken into account in any attempt to analyze or to describe, in terms of necessary laws, such a structure. (48)*/ //


 * //};//**


 * //int main//**

///*opens text file*///
 * //ofstream sec(SignatureEventContext.c_str);//**

/*returns an error if text file won't open*/
 * //if (!sec)//**
 * //cerr<<"Cannot open the SEC file "<<endl;//**
 * //return 1;//**
 * //}//**
 * //}//**


 * event derridaWrittenCommunication[];**
 * derridaWrittenCommunication[0] .signature="Derrida"; **
 * derridaWrittenCommunication[0] .event_id = 0; **
 * derridaWrittenCommunication[0].text = sec;**
 * derridaWrittenCommunication[0] .context = "copyright 1972 by Les Editions de Minuit. English translation by Samuel Weber and Jeffrey Mehlman first publised in Glyph I, 1977."; **

/*variables that will be used as new texts and contexts arise*/
 * string newText = '';**
 * string newContext = '';**
 * bool derridaAlive = 1;**
 * int lengthOfTimeBetweenReadings = 0;**

/*the following for loop will iterate infinitely through new uses of the text*/
 * for (int newUse = 0; newUse < thereAreStillMoreUses; newUse = newUse +1) {**

/*please note that I am well aware that this will result in an infinite loop*/

/* For the structure of iteration – and this is another of its decisive traits – implies both identity and difference. Iteration in its “purest” form – and it is always impure – contains in itself the discrepancy of a difference that constitutes it as iteration. The iterability of an element divides its own identity a priori, even without taking into account the fact that this identity can only determine or delimit itself through differential relations to other elements and that it hence bears the mark of this difference. (53)*/

/*signature should never change*/
 * derridaWrittenCommunication[newUse].signature="Derrida";**
 * derridaWrittenCommunication[newUse].event_id = newUse;**


 * cout<<"Enter your citation of the text: "<>newText;**
 * derridaWrittenCommunication[newUse].text = newText;**

/* Every sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or written (in the current sense of this opposition), 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 does not imply that the mark is valid outside of a context, but on the contrary that there are only contexts without any center or absolute anchoring [ancrage]. This citationality, this duplication or duplicity, this iterability of the mark is neither an accident nor an anomaly, it is that (normal/abnormal) without which a mark could not even have a function called “normal.” (12)*/


 * cout<<"Enter the context in which the text was used: "<>newContext;**
 * derridaWrittenCommunication[newUse].context = newContext;**

/* This does not seem to be the case, or at least this distance, divergence, delay, this deferral [difference] must be capable of being carried to a certain absoluteness of absence if the structure of writing, assuming that writing exists, it to constitute itself. It is at that point that difference [difference and deferral, trans.] as writing could no longer (be) an (ontological) modification of presence. (7)*/
 * sleep(lengthOfTimeBetweenReadings);**


 * if (derridaAlive == 0) {**
 * continue; **
 * }**

/* A writing that is not structurally readable – iterable – beyond the death of the addressee would not be writing. (7)*/
 * }**

/*we are left with an infinitely growing array of possible uses of a text*/
 * return 0;**
 * }**