PLace-names in mexico-TenochTiTLan • 151match up to known tlaxilacalli names. The full correlation
of these glyphs to known groups or geographic locales
awaits an exhaustive archival search to yield a more fine-
grained description of the indigenous city.
But in the meantime, this source offers another oppor-
tunity. In one of his essays collected in Of Grammatology,
Jacques Derrida offers a critique of Jean-Jacques Rous-
seau’s idea that writing is simply parasitic upon the spoken
language, or as Rousseau himself put it, “Writing is noth-
ing more than the representation of speech.” Rousseau’s
fundamental proposition inflected the work of linguists
such as Ferdinand de Saussure, who posited that writing
and other sign-making functions were properly subsumed
within the science of linguistics, that is, the spoken word.
Derrida argues the reverse, pointing out the numerous
instances where writing gives a shape to and determines
language; instructive is the example drawn from Saussure,
where the misspelling of the proper name “Lefèvre” then
occasions changes in the way the word is spoken. Derrida
provocatively suggests that there should be a science of
grammatology where the science of writing subsumes that
of speech: “Since writing no longer relates to language as
an extension or frontier, let us ask how language is a pos-
sibility founded on the general possibility of writing.” 31
While my purpose here is not to carry out a Derrida-
inspired critique of the historiography or epistemology of
Nahuatl writing, I want to follow through on a proposition
that stems from Derrida’s work. Let us consider the place-
names on the page as signs that transmit the spoken word,
and also allow that the function of such signs is not limited
to their role as carriers of purely linguistic information.
Such an approach is suggested by the tendency of Nahuatl
place-names to “go beyond” a simple transcription of parts
of the spoken word by including iconographical elements.
The place-name “ Tenochtitlan,” from the Codex Mendoza,
for example, is composed of an eagle (cuauhtli) on top of a
cactus (nochtli) on top of a stone (tetl), but only the latter
two elements figure in the place-name as spoken. With the
devouring, yet unspoken, eagle, added to the place-name,
we see a scribe who is using writing to do more than simply
record the name; the written form becomes a means of
linking the spoken toponym to a particular historical nar-
rative about the foundation.
In a similar vein, let us question the relationship between
a proper noun and its referent. By convention, proper
nouns denote a single, unified referent: “Mexico” and
“Moteuczoma II” refer, respectively, to a country bordered
on the north by the Rio Grande and to one of the last
Mexica emperors. But let me propose the idea that proper
nouns may not always refer to an antecedent and unified
signified. So no matter what kind of sign (logogram/pho-
nogram) is used to represent the name of a place, let us not,
by default, view that space, the referent for either written
or spoken word, as a unified field or stable entity. We have
already seen a related phenomenon of situational meaning
in our examination of the names of Mexico City. Differ-
ent groups within the city used the proper nouns “Mexico”
and “ Tenochtitlan,” but the same terms could mean very
different geographical and political entities. The distance
between sign and signified might be even greater when we
consider the use of two different scripts. For example, in
looking at the map seen in figure 7.4, we encounter within
it a graphic sign. When we read the alphabetic documents
that accompany this map, we encounter the place-name
“ Tullan.” We assume that these different scripts refer to
the same entity, a field measuring about 860 square yards.
But what if they don’t? What if these different scripts point
not to a unified underlying reality, but to distinct or differ-
ently understood ones? 32 We know, for instance, that the
people of central Mexico held “ Tula” to be a city whose high
cultural achievements they inherited, as well as a place of
ancient origin. What if the graphic place-name carried a
host of meanings that the set of letters on the page (“t-u-
l-l-a-n”) did not? With this idea in mind, that different
scripts—even those that “say” the same thing—may point
to different referents, I now turn back to the place-names
on Genaro García 30 to pay attention to how different
scripts coexist and interact within the bounded space of
each set of pages.
Folios 4v–7r are two once-adjoined pages (their order
has been shuffled in modern times; figure 7.7). Page 4v has
four sets of images, arranged roughly into four horizontal
registers. In the top one, five turquoise disks show that
these pages cover a five-year period. In the second one, two
tribute-paying groups (they may be tlaxilacalli, although
they are not named as such) within the parcialidad of Santa
María Cuepopan have created some 60 petates, or woven
reed mats, for the gobernador. These mats were typically
used as coverings and as sleeping mats, and are represented
by a rectangular glyph of bound reeds, with 3 panitl sym-
bols at top, to make the count of 60. These mat makers
have been paid for their wares, shown by the red counts on
the facing page (folio 7r), which list a payment of 3 pesos,
6 tomines for the petates, that is, .5 tomines per mat. Below,