“Subjectivity - like objectivity – is an effect of différance, an effect inscribed in a system of différance. This is why the a of différance also recalls that spacing is temporization, the detour and postponement by means of which intuition, perception, consummation – in a word, the relationship to the present, the reference to a present reality, to a being – are always deferred. Deferred by virtue of the very principle of difference which holds that an element functions and signifies, takes on or conveys meaning, only by referring to another past or future element in an economy of traces.”
Jacques Derrida: “Positions”, Page 29.

Let us now consider Deleuze’s second criterion for sign differentiation:

2) The way in which something is emitted and apprehended as a sign, but also the consequent dangers of an interpretation that may be objectivist or subjectivist.

            With reference to this second criterion, Deleuze notes:

  “Each line of apprenticeship undergoes these two moments: the disappointment afforded by an attempted objective interpretation, then the attempted remedy of this disappointment by a subjective interpretation in which we reconstruct associative series… It is because the sign is doubtless more profound than the object emitting it, but it is still attached to that object, it is still half sheathed in it. And the sign’s meaning is doubtless more profound than the subject interpreting it, but it is attached to this subject, half incarnated in a series of subjective associations. We proceed from one to the other; we leap from one to the other; we overcome the disappointment of the object by a compensation of the subject.”

“Proust and Signs", page 36.

            Here we must begin to consider the very basic impetus through which the images found within the form of writing under analysis came into being. Through this criterion, we are encountering the very acts of desiring-production which led to the creation of such images.

             Consider those situations in which stone tools were being produced; for, the image production we are here examining emerged directly from the creation of stone tools. Shaping a piece of stone into a tool requires that one decide which parts of that stone to remove, in order to create the shape of the intended tool. Parts of the stone are usually removed by striking the stone with another rock, thus knocking flakes of unneeded rock off of the stone being shaped. Deciding where to remove flakes of rock from a stone, and how and where to strike that stone in order to remove the proper flakes, demands that the surface of the stone be closely examined and interpreted, so that the structure of the stone's grain and its internal properties of cleavage can be understood well enough to be put to use.

             When so working with the subsurface properties inherent within stone by way of the apparent surface structure of the stone's grain, memory quite naturally asserts itself to supplement the activity of stone tool production. Remembering the shape of the tool one is attempting to make; remembering the characteristic shape, features, and habits of the animals one will hunt with that tool; remembering the faces of the people who taught one how to hunt, and how to make that stone tool, along with all the situations which accompanied successful hunts in the past: all of these memories, and more, flood the mind that is engaged in creating that tool. Random grain patterns, on the surface of the stone being used, resonate with these memories as those patterns are being interpreted during the process of creating the tool. The tool maker perceives fragments of these memories as peering out of the stone, through the features of the stone's natural grain patterns: and a proportionate (or, rational) concern with the stone's subsurface properties of cleavage and balance shifts into an interest directed toward the partial features suggested by the stone's random grain patterns. Thus, what is initially an objectivist orientation toward the stone being shaped soon begins to oscillate with an interpretively subjectivist position.

             Soon, alterations to that random grain pattern are being made; and these deformations align the grain patterns more closely with the features of the tools maker's memory.  However, this alignment is never complete, never perfect: the objective existence of an image, as a sign, suggested by the stone’s natural patterns of grain never quite align with the subjective expectations of the tool producer. So, the oscillation between objectivist and subjectivist interpretations continues; and within this oscillation, the alteration of the stone’s physical features extends into an ongoing creation of images upon the surface of the stone. Naturally, the production of images which so results will display a direct correspondence to the methodology of tool production from which it originates.

            Deleuze is quite adamant that the desiring-production of signs should not be taken as strictly a matter of memory: we are not primarily concerned here with specific examples of what each individual image producer was recalling from memory or expressing from experience. If we are to grasp the essential nature of such images as signs within a linguistic texture, we must here consider that each distinct type of material substrate is directly associated with an equally distinguishable set of breaks, disjunctions, stops, and starts typical of such image production and responsible for the narrative continuity of the images’ compositional texture. Thus, the desiring-productions of these images, as signs, are associated with distinctly definable differentials that can be taken as characteristic for each of the types of material substrate utilized in such image production. Since the impetus toward image production remains constant - for all producers of images - we can expect to be able to trace a developmental history for the production of such images by way of the differential aspects inherent within each particular form of materially defined image. 

"Subject and object give a poor approximation of thought. Thinking is neither a line drawn between subject and object nor a revolving of one around the other. Rather, thinking takes place in the relationship of territory and earth... The earth is not one element among others but rather brings together all elements within a single embrace while using one or another of them to deterritorialize territory. Movements of deterritorialization are inseparable from territories that open onto an elsewhere; and the process of reterritorialization is inseparable from the earth, which restores territories. Territory and earth are two components with two zones of indiscernibility - deterritorialization (from territory to earth) and reterritorialization (from earth to territory). We can not say which comes first."

"What Is Philosophy?", pages 85-86.

            Thus, in examining the differential textures of which this form of image writing is composed, we will be experiencing the presentation of relationships of territoriality relative to the earth… for specific groups of people, at specific times in history, at specific geographical places. It is through these relationships of territoriality that we are directly placed within those conceptual spaces of contingent exteriority which ultimately allow us to exceed the characteristic interiorization of the expressive phonocentricism that presently determines and dominates the interpretive scope of semiology. In short, we will eventually find that this form of image writing can provide us with a direct link between grammatology and geophilosophy.

            Perhaps the best way to quickly grasp the territorial relationships holding between those people who produced each set of these examples of image writing and the earth of their world(s) is to examine how these people interacted with the light by which they produced these images. Certainly, this approach would be neither subject nor object oriented; and it would directly relate to the way in which these images were ‘emitted as signs’, and, apprehended as such.

            Consider this section of stone, located upon an example from the first set we examined. It seems, by daylight, to be cross-etched or, deeply scratched in a pattern that doesn’t really appear to be a distinct image. However, when the same area is viewed by firelight, the image of a running horse immediately becomes apparent. Clearly, this stone was worked upon by firelight.

            Now, consider this artifact from the second set of examples. It actually has a function which goes far beyond the merely decorative aspects of an art piece: this is a stone astrolabe, designed to highlight specific images during specific seasons of the year. Used at midday , the interplay of shadow and light upon its surface presents such information as the availability of season-specific food sources, and other cyclical events of importance. Since this would have had to have been designed to be used at mid-day in order for it to function in such a differential fashion (by way of seasonal variations in the maximum daily height of the sun) , it must also have been produced upon - and over - many, many mid-days.

            Examples taken from the third set of images are much more subtle in their preservation of an apparent orientation within the lighting conditions under which they were produced. Since examples of the form of writing which were produced from this period of time tend have been created using solid granite as the material substrate of choice, the primary characteristic of such examples is the random pattern of grain exhibited by that kind of rock. Often, a certain type of granite was used: one which is primarily of a white, semi-translucent quartz with black flecks of stone grain throughout. Those who wrote using this type of stone as a substrate necessarily did so by at least somewhat ‘reading’ the underlying patternings of black grain encased within the surrounding matrix of white rock; that is, by interpreting the ‘neutral grey’ appearance of the black flecks so concealed. In effect, they were interpreting a ‘difference’ within the stone which was of something there (below the surface) and, at the same time, not there (not a part of the surface images which they were creating). As anyone will have noticed when engrossed in a good book at day’s end, the high degree of concentration required to produce such intricate patternings from such an indiscernible medium would no doubt have resulted in many such writing sessions lasting beyond the strong light of afternoon and into the twilight of evening. Something of this is suggested by the way in which different image patterns become apparent upon such stones as the light by which they are viewed is dimmed; and this characteristic has a corollary in the way image patterns upon such stones can shift in appearance depending upon the angle at which they are viewed. One might be tempted to say that such shifts in apparent image patterns are due solely to the process whereby stone grain located below the surface being worked upon was interpreted; but, the image shifts caused by changes in viewing luminosity are too global, too pronounced, and too consistent for this to be so. To me, this can only suggest that people working upon such stones were so engrossed in their task that they often stayed focused on their work well after the main part of day had faded into the beginning of night.

            In this, I would suggest, we can again see a progression – this time, relative to the pursuit of a leisure task (such as writing through the production of images); and, that this progression tells us something about how the people who produced these images were territorially relating to the world(s) in which they were immersed. In the first example, such leisure activity occurred by firelight: that is, at night and in some sort of protected location. In the second example, this form of production occurred in daylight – at high noon – and, in open, unobstructed areas. In the third example, this form of production appears to have often occurred through the twilight hours, and into the early evening.

            Since such an activity (the production of  images upon stone) demands complete concentration and attention to detail, we must assume that those undertaking it would have been vulnerable to attacks by wild animals. Yet, we see a steady progression in assuredness here: from a sheltered, protected space; to open daylight; to the most dangerous period of the day relative to animal attacks: twilight. Thus, we are probably examining a temporal cross-section indicative of the social development of First Nations’ culture: we are seeing the degrees by which the First Nations territorialized their world, becoming over time increasingly more in charge of their own fates and destinies, and more self-assured in their relationships to the world around them. This can in all probability be attributed to increased social organization on the part of the First Nations… as witnessed by an increase in the complexity of image writing that can only be interpreted as showing a movement from the individualistic production of such artifacts, toward the shared, social production of such artifacts.