Arabic script deployed inscriptions that create meaning beyond phonetic convention, contrary to Saussure.

Evidence

First of all there were its inscriptional features. Saussure argued that the material form of words was something arbitrary, attached to their meaning only by phonetic convention. Derrida points out that this separation between material form and meaning ignores all the non-phonetic aspects of writing, which are ‘material’ and yet create effects of meaning – such as punctuation, spacing and the juxtaposition of different texts. In Arabic, writing proceeded generally without recourse to punctuation or even spaces between words, often juxtaposed several texts on a single page in various significant relations to one another, made careful and meaningful distinctions between different styles of script, and in general extended the art of inscription into the most elaborate and deliberate forms. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 462

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s larger argument about the materiality of writing and representation — and to general work on Arabic manuscript culture (marginalia, glosses, juxtaposed texts).