Derrida and Prosthetic Usage; or, How to Return to Cinder

Explores in both theory and practice the deconstructive demand to never let traces die.

At a time when technological advancements, especially LLMs, have all of us wondering about the future of reading and writing, Derrida and Prosthetic Usage; or, How to Return to Cinder studies deconstruction as an ethical injunction to read and write on every technological surface one can find or create. To study this general theory of deconstruction, and Derrida's powerful demand that we "never let the dead bury the dead," this book works in tandem with the website Return to Cinder, an enormous concordance of notes on Derrida taken by author Jake Reeder. Less media studies and more a reading of philosophy and thought in general, Reeder claims that all thought, speech, and writing are forms of re-marking, and that imbedded in the condensation of every re-mark is the demand to create new technological formats. Thus, returning to cinder is both a call for more technological innovation in the humanities and a call to leave more traces.