Two Debates Surrounding Writing

Abstract

This article proposes to offer a panorama of theoretical, historical, and typological questions that find themselves intertwined in grammatology. The first part tries to specify the category of "pure writing” associating it with the appearance of phonographic systems, and differentiating it from the ideographic or pictographic codes that precede it. The second part tries to specify the type of phonographic representation that corresponds to the most widespread writing system: the alphabet. Lastly, it is our intention to offer some general conclusions surrounding the history of writing. Truly, the purpose is a little ambitious, but it has as a compensation to offer an adequate image of the state of contemporary grammatology, which is a relatively young science that is still struggling to establish its own conceptual authority.