January 28, 2025

Writing

59 minutes

You might want to jot down some notes on this one! In episode 122, Ellie and David explore where writing began, the value of writing, and our reasons for writing. Is the widespread use of generative AI technologies, such as ChatGPT, a threat to creative and academic writing? How did writing originate in cuneiform, and how does Derrida's deconstruction of logocentrism encourage us to reconsider the privileging of speech over writing? Listen to it all write here, write now! Plus, in the bonus, they get into some of our most pernicious myths and misconceptions about writing. They talk about the tortured writer trope, the solitary nature of writing, and the connection of writing to class.

Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed:
David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous
Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida, “Freud and the Scene of Writing”
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology
Jacques Derrida, “Signature Event Context”
Jacques Derrida, Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences
Joan Didion, “Why I write”
Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy
George Orwell, “Why I write”
Plato, The Phaedrus
Alva Noë, The Entanglement, How Art and Philosophy Make Us Who We Are
Peter Salmon, An Event, Perhaps: A Biography of Jacques Derrida
Andrew Robinson, The Story of Writing