Significance of signatures

A signature has become the cornerstone of our society’s accountability mechanisms. For instance in professional practices audits require sign-offs, legal transactions are activated through signatures, medical procedures and instructions follow after permission is indicated through signatures. In many ways signatures act as the gateway to transact or take further action.

In higher education institutions students sign plagiarism forms when submitting their assignments, sign to indicate their presence in compulsory lectures and sign agreement for consent in research projects amongst other contexts. However we frequently hear about the undervaluing of these signatures when plagiarism is picked up in assignments, when students sign for their absent colleagues or when there may be coercion in research participation.

The significance of a signature is far more than a rubber stamp. There are many underlying meanings that have implications. In our Year 3 health and human rights workshops that focus on women’s reproductive health, students learn about coerced sterilization. Women find out years later that they were forced to sign consent for tubal ligation when they were in labour, about to have a caesarean section. Litigation is in progress in South Africa to seek retribution for some of these women.

The signature itself has undeniable agency. Medical Year 4 students in Obstetrics (as in many other disciplinary rotations) need signatures in their logbooks as sign-offs to indicate that they have achieved the required skills and number of procedures to complete the course objectives - a task-oriented move for accountability. There are relationship issues embedded in the event of signing that reflect power and authority. Students tell me how difficult it is at times to ask for the necessary signature. It drives their actions and denies them opportunities to challenge certain practices. Students learn to please those who are responsible for the signatures. They feel a dependency on others who hold the power for sign-offs. Sometimes students find themselves having to beg and plead. Any conflict can bring refusal to sign with unwelcome consequences.

Furthermore the need to get the required signatures shapes students’ attitudes and behaviours as they move through their 8 weeks in the learning block. A desire to achieve the necessary number of signatures appears to distract students’ sense of responsibility in caring for women in labour. For some, the signature matters most - at a cost.

In terms of new materialism, the signature-logbook-student becomes a dynamic apparatus that mediates the agenda of the task-driven process (Barad 2007). It can act as a barrier to care. While the signature plays an important role as a measure of accountability, it also has agency through its entanglement with other phenomena, resulting in certain exclusions - an ontological inseparability. The power dynamics in the material practice of acquiring signatures in a logbook create forces and intensities that conflict at times with compassionate caring. In the material-discursive practice of learning in Obstetrics in health facilities, the agency of matter is actually contributing to undermining the quality of health care.

What matters is the collection of signatures. It opens the academic gate to allow students to pass through into their next learning block. The image above reflects the intra-acting forces that surround the becoming-logbooks and that influence student learning. It was created on my iPad using the Brushes App.

Barad, K. 2007. Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of

matter and meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.