On the name

Dissemination is one consequence of iterability, and Derrida explicitly differentiates it from polysemia. Polysemia suggests that any utterance can mean different things in different contexts or even in the same context at a different time. For example, 911 can mean the emergency number in the US, the date of any old September 11, the expiration date of my credit card (Sept., 2011), or the very specific date of September 11, 2001—same phrase, different context or different time. Dissemination, however, would be the condition for polysemia; dissemination involves a repetitive scattering of signs, which break open and are inaugurally productive. Signs scatter like seeds and produce new possibilities in their repetition.