MULTITUDE OF BLOGS None of the PDFs are my own productions. I've collected them from web (e-mule, avax, libreremo, socialist bros, cross-x, gigapedia..) What I did was thematizing. This blog's project is to create an e-library for a Heideggerian philosophy and Bourdieuan sociology Φ market-created inequalities must be overthrown in order to close knowledge gap. this is an uprising, do ya punk?

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Derrida - Memoirs of the blind



In this brilliant essay, Jacques Derrida explores issues of
vision, blindness, self-representation, and their relation to
drawing, while offering detailed readings of an extraordinary
collection of images. Selected by Derrida from the prints
and drawings department of the Louvre, the works depict
blindness—fictional, historical, and biblical. From Old
and New Testament scenes to the myth of Perseus and the
Gorgon and the blinding of Polyphemus, Derrida uncovers in
these images rich, provocative layers of interpretation.

For Derrida drawing is itself blind; as an act rooted in
memory and anticipation, drawing necessarily replaces one
kind of seeing (direct) with another (mediated). Ultimately,
he explains, the very lines which compose any drawing are
themselves never fully visible to the viewer since they exist
only in a tenuous state of multiple identities: as marks on
a page, as indicators of a contour. Lacking a "pure"
identity, the lines of a drawing summon the supplement of the
word, of verbal discourse, and, in doing so, obscure the
visual experience. Consequently, Derrida demonstrates, the
very act of depicting a blind person undertakes multiple
enactments and statements of blindness and sight.

Memoirs of the Blind is both a sophisticated
philosophical argument and a series of detailed readings.
Derrida provides compelling insights into famous and lesser
known works, interweaving analyses of texts—including
Diderot's Lettres sur les aveugles, the notion of
mnemonic art in Baudelaire's The Painter of Modern
Life, and Merleau-Ponty's The Visible and the
Invisible. Along with engaging meditations on the history
and philosophy of art, Derrida reveals the ways viewers
approach philosophical ideas through art, and the ways art
enriches philosophical reflection.

An exploration of sight, representation, and art,
Memoirs of the Blind extends and deepens the
meditation on vision and painting presented in Truth and
Painting. Readers of Derrida, both new and familiar, will
profit from this powerful contribution to the study of the
visual arts.

< at ille, ut erat, capite velato, "Sine sine" inquit 'fruatur diutius tropaeo Fortuna quod fixit ipsa.' > from my dear Apuleius

1 comment:

Guilherme said...

hello there. just to thank you for sharing Derrida's book. it just couldn't come on a better time for the making of my graduation project. thank you very much from brazil.