Post-Human Semiotics: The Priority of Writing

Introduction Does artificial intelligence truly break with metaphysics, or does it simply relocate the metaphysics of presence into computational form? This question finds resonance in Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology , particularly in two key passages. In The Program , Derrida remarks: “If the theory of cybernetics is by itself to oust metaphysical concepts—including the concepts of soul, of life, of value, of choice, of memory—which until recently served to separate the machine from man, it must conserve the notion of writing, trace, gramme [written mark], or grapheme, until its own historico-metaphysical character is also exposed.” Meanwhile, in The Signifier and Truth , he warns: “This would perhaps mean that one does not leave the epoch whose closure one can outline. The movements of belonging or not belonging to the epoch are too subtle, the illusions in that regard are too easy, for us to make a definite judgment.” These observations remain highly relevant today as cont...

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...