Post-Human Semiotics: The Priority of Writing

  Introduction When Jacques Derrida wrote Of Grammatology in the late 1960s, cybernetics was still in its formative stages. The digital revolution had yet to materialize, and artificial intelligence, as we now understand it, remained largely a theoretical possibility. In The Program , Derrida engaged with the cybernetics of his time to argue that writing—conceived not merely as script but as archi-écriture —precedes and exceeds human speech, cognition, and presence. His intervention challenged the phonocentric bias of Western thought, asserting that meaning is never immediate but always mediated through differential relations. While he acknowledges cybernetics as expanding the field of writing, he also warns that it remains entangled in metaphysical presuppositions that must themselves be interrogated. The technological limitations of his era inevitably shaped the scope of his analysis. Cybernetics at the time remained largely mechanistic, centered on pre-programmed systems a...