Post-Human Semiotics: The Priority of Writing

Introduction For centuries, writing has been relegated to a secondary position in the hierarchy of signification, often viewed as a mere supplement to speech. Western metaphysics, particularly in its logocentric tradition, privileged the voice as the medium of presence and self-identity, while writing was deemed a derivative, exteriorized, and even corrupted form of communication. Jacques Derrida, however, disrupts this assumption in the section “The Program” of Chapter 1 of Of Grammatology , where he introduces the concept of arche-writing , asserting that writing is not simply a representation of speech but the condition of possibility for all signification. Writing as the Origin, Not the Supplement Derrida argues that writing does not merely signify a secondary inscription of speech but instead comprehends and exceeds language. He states: “By a slow movement whose necessity is hardly perceptible, everything that for at least some twenty centuries tended toward and finall...