Saussure’s material-conceptual split in language is a theological effect of repetition, not fundamental.

Evidence

The paradox of repetition is not something to be resolved, Derrida would argue, as a strange consequence of language. On the contrary, language is something made possible by the movement of repetition and differing. The paradoxical effect of an inseparable sameness within difference is not acknowledged, however, but avoided. It is avoided by supposing, with Saussure, that the word is an object made up of two opposing aspects, the material and the conceptual. These belong to two distinct realms, one physical and the other, somehow, meta-physical, which are assumed mysteriously to be conjoined in the unity of the word. It is this mystical distinction between two realms that Derrida shows to be no longer fundamental, but a ‘theological’ effect. ‘It depends entirely on the possibility of acts of repetition. It is constituted by this possibility.’ — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 460

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains Derrida’s claim that the Saussurean split between material and conceptual aspects of the word is a ‘theological’ effect constituted by repetition, not a fundamental given.
• XREF: Connects to the book’s broader thesis that the ‘realm’ of meaning/ideas is a produced effect, not pre-given — resonates with the chapter’s argument about Arabic writing on one side of a binary.