Introduction

Halfway through Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins, Jacques Derrida briefly considers several remarkable self-portrait drawings by the nineteenth-century French painter Henri Fantin-Latour, He does this in the context of a discussion of what he calls the "retrait transcendantal du trait"-the "transcendental retreat or withdrawal" of the trait (a basic term in Derrida's lexicon that carries a range of meanings, from a trait or feature to a line, stroke, or mark).' Roughly, the necessity of such a retreat follows from the inherently differential structure of the trait in Derrida's account. Because the trait, once drawn, ideally has no thickness but instead only marks the separation between the inside and outside of a figure ("the single edge of a contour"), it cannot strictly speaking manifest itself (MB, p. 53). In Derrida's words: "Nothing belongs to the trait, and thus, to drawing and to the thought of drawing, not even its own 'trace"' (MB, p. 54). And: "The outline or tracing separates and separates itself; it retraces only borderlines, intervals, a spacing grid with no possible appropriation. The experience or experimenting of drawing (and experimenting, as its name indicates, always consists in journeying be- yond limits) at once crosses and institutes these borders, it invents the Shibboleth of these passages" (MB, p. 54). And that "transcendental retreat or withdrawal" in turn Derrida goes on to say that Fantin-Latour's drawings epitomize what he tentatively names the "hypothesis of sight-or the intuitive hypothesis, the hypothesis of intuition" (MB, p. 60). Derrida's point concerns the inescap- ableness of hypothesizing (of conjecturing, of presupposing) at the heart of the act of intuiting (of seeing, as it were immediately and without re- flection) the subject of Fantin-Latour's self-portrait drawings. For as Derrida remarks, we can only conjecture that the protagonist of those drawings is actually delineating his own image as he perceives it in a mirror, thereby portraying himself in the act of making his self-portrait-the one before us. In fact we are shown neither the surface of the sheet of paper on which he is drawing nor the mirror itself, whose presumed place we occupy and which indeed we effectively replace and obscure, or as Derrida also says, which

we make one blind to "by producing, by putting to work, the sought after specularity" (MB, p. 62).

For Derrida there is no pure visual experience in contemplating a drawing as its production is always ;obscured by certain blindness, so is the final product.

The drawing is blind the operation of drawing would have something to do with blindness, would in some way regard blindness (MB, p2)

Drawings, especially self-portraits, reflect the artists memory and unconscious anticipation through mediated artistic articulation in traits(brushstrokes, lines, marks etc.). As discussed, deconstruction always plays with crossover between the domains of drawing and writing; in that respect, writings, also reflect the authors memory and unconscious anticipation, which can be revealed while unveiling the traits. Nevertheless, viewers are blind to the essential traits, or rather the essential traits are invisible to viewers because they are masked by various themes, inside as well as outside of the text. In Memoirs of the Blind, Derrida directs us to the themes of point of view itself, and of sexual difference. Derrida writes Memoirs of the Blind as regards sexual difference. The issue of blindness and sexual difference are both double genitives and interchangeable: seeing and nonseeing insights situated in a paradoxical position in blindness; revealing and veiling Derrida looks for (in)sight by drawing the curtain and walking in the dark. He sets out the text by using Diderots words in his Letter to Sophie Volland:

I write without seeing. I came. I wanted to kiss your hand This is the first time I have ever written in the dark not knowing whether I am indeed forming letters. Wherever there will be nothing, read that I love you Diderot, 1972

It is not only a romantic quote, it lays down Derridas hypothesis of sight and faith. Sight and faith, in the abstract Derridean term, are unprovable, and reject verification, unlike the hypothesis in scientific experiments. Following the preface, Derrida asks Vous croyez? Readers are put in blindness right from the start without even knowing what is being asked. This opening subverts the transcendental point of view by disorienting the reader. Derrida diffuses elements of blindness in his text just like the way he plays with the notion of frame in The Truth in Painting by inserting geometrical marks. Derrida exposes the frame in which we see things, exposes us to a singular take for granted point of view that is displaced in the unknown.

In Memoirs of the Blind Derrida identifies the trac (tracing or outline) that the process of drawing requires. The trac is akin to a miners lamp. Formulated by the eye-fingers of the artist, it picks objects present but otherwise invisible out of blind blankness. On several levels, thenthose of the artist, the work itself, and those who perceive the workDerrida describes the process of creating drawings and identifying their signification. Using blindness as a trope for the ongoing process, sight for direction and critical appreciation, and insight for significance beyond the trac as measure of the artists (or the critics) success moves Derrida closer than he had been to the language of his late colleague Paul de Man, yet Derrida also identifies a consciousness of the drawings themselves. For Derrida, an artist drawing a self-portrait traces all the individuals that the artist ever was and all the artist will become, as well as the individual the artist perceives as the self at the time of the particular drawing. Though one can envision a blind sculptor, it is harder to imagine a blind draftsman; yet it is for Derrida the finger-eye guided by the mind that provides insight. Every self-portrait is a memoir, reflecting the memory, the story, the history that was, is, and will be. Through the trac, every drawing participates in the

signification of every other drawing in a remarkable confluence of profound blindness and blazing insight. Every drawing is correspondingly a ruin, signifying that which is not apparent in the trac as well as that which is explicit. Considered conventionally, the consequences of this argument are devastating, for they deny the contribution of an artists technical development to the effectiveness of signification. The childhood scribblings of Rembrandt van Rijn hold the same signifiers as his most painstaking self-portraits. Perhaps this is the reason that the artists Derrida chooses to discuss are not those normally identifiable as the first rank. All are competent, most are French, and many are identifiable with the historical period known as the Enlightenment. Is the puckish Derrida underscoring his perception of the inextricable matrix of blindness, inspiration, and insight through such choices? Is he mimetically identifying his self-confessed technical deficiencies in drawing with those of the artists he discusses? Such autobiographical confessions appear at various points in the text, even as he employs an eccentric dialogue technique to carry his discussion. Abandoning the conventional thirdperson mode, an unnamed critic with definitely unconventional perceptions dominates a diffident interviewer. Derrida effectively uses this latter persona to substitute for the reservations a general reader might well have concerning the masters comprehensive pronouncements. Still, the tone maintained is that of brilliant, facile teacher and serious but too silent student. On another level, both of these anonymous voices are those of Derrida, who initially acknowledges his reluctance to commit his unconventional ideas about drawing to writing.

Is Derridas confession that he always had considered his own ability to draw inferior to that of his brother in any way related to the fact that many of the artists he chooses to discuss are

generally rated below the first rank? Such artists serve Derridas approach to technique particularly well. His concerns are the relationship between sight and insight, the minds eye and the theme of blindness, the disjunction between the eye of the artist and the production of the artists hand. The works, all of which appear in the text, are of several varieties: depiction of blindness, relation of blind individuals to their environment, blindness cured, blindness that brings insight, the self-portrait and self-portrait series and its diachronic relationship to landscape portraiture. As one might expect, mythic and literary themes predominate. Derrida begins with several of the studies of blind people made by Antoine Coypel (16611722). Coypel was an iconoclast, his choice of subjects generally opposed to the taste of the late seventeenth century; yet by the last third of his life, Coypel had won acceptance. His blind subjects, exclusively men, advance to a goal unknown by them. In this sense, they are also self-portraits, the artists search for his stylistic voice. Even when some definite program underlies the work, as in Christs healing the blind men of Jericho, it is not specifically a cure for blindness that they seek. As Derrida perceives it, these blind men instinctively grope for truth, which they sense in the person of Christthe quest of every honest inquiry in whatever medium one expresses it. Derrida frequently notes the open gestures, the extended arms and open hands of the blind figures of various artists. Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825), most familiar for his representations of mythic and historical subjects from classical antiquity, portrays Homer, blind poet of the Iliad and Odyssey (c. 800 b.c.e.), with the same open gesture Coypel employs as he sings his verse to an impromptu audience. Here Derrida identifies the artists concerns with those of Homer, indeed implies that the search for the true is common to all the arts, whether pictorial, musical, or literary. Mistaken perceptions, at least apparently so, concern Derrida in his discussion of the biblical theme of the blind Isaacs testamentary blessing of his younger son Jacob for the elder Esau. For Derrida, the seeming mistake actually shows the light of vision, a theme captured not only in the biblical text but also in the

position of Jacobs head, his countenance, and his hand as they appear in a work by Francesco Primaticcio (1504-1570). Though he rarely makes specific assertions on the purpose of perceiving the drawn line in this unusual way, Derrida has clearly made certain original and worthwhile observations on the commonality of the arts and the interiority of inspiration. He thereby avoids the subjective aesthetic judgments that often haunt critical writing, though his ways of seeing, fascinatingly seductive as they are, often remain idiosyncratic. For Derrida, the monocular stare of a cyclops represents animal narcissismrelentless, savage, but lacking the insightful gaze of the human being. He quotes Homers vivid description of Odysseus blinding Polyphemus (Odyssey 9.406-414), and he notes that Odysseus claims his right name only after he has blinded the cyclops, when he is no longer Outis (Nobody). The double wordplay of the passage appeals to Derrida; outis and metis both mean nobody, but metis means trick or cunning. Derrida wonders whether anyone ever represented the movement of this lever, of this mochlos, or fiery-pointed stake, as it draws a piercing spiral into Polyphemus bleeding eye. This kind of insertion seems an innocent rhetorical question, indeed one bordering on the nave. On the one hand, it is difficult to believe that Derrida is unaware that the blinding of Polyphemus was a favorite theme of Greek artists from the seventh century b.c.e. Even so, Derridas words, here as elsewhere, are protean. His main point is that Odysseus wielding the mochlos is akin to the writer with pen and the draftsman-artist with pencil. Yet would Derrida be satisfied that the ancient representations of Polyphemus blinding concerned themselves sufficiently with the movement of the stylus? The analogy is clever indeed; for Derrida, the production of art is essentially a destructive act, though its purpose is transmission of insight. The ruse by which Odysseus blinds the cyclops corresponds to the strategy by which an artists skill exerts control on the raw material of the subject and reveals its trac. The blinding of Oedipus, once he has learned his double sin of patricide and incest, thus becomes a parallel literary example, as does the blinded Samson, who recognizes the true source of his strength only after he has fallen prey to the Philistines. Confessional

elements necessarily follow from the sight-blindness-insight matrix that Derrida identifies. This is obvious in the androgynous self-portraits of Jean-Baptiste Simon Chardin (16991779), less so in the trompe loeil of Jean-Marie Faverjon (1828-1873), in which the eyes, forehead, and hands of a man, presumably the artist, point, emerge from behind, and indicate another painting, a mythic consummation scene of lovers framed by a curtain draped in the form of an eye. The painting within a painting describes the desire, insight, and indeed voyeurism that attend both the production of art and its appreciation. Derrida also touches on the relationship of the conversion experience to insight and to the violence of the creation process. He notes Caravaggios use of light in his The Conversion of Saint Paul and compares it with drawings on the same theme by Lelio Orsi (1511-1587) and Laurent de La Hyre (1606-1656). All the constituents that Derrida identified before emerge again: blindness, light, insight, creation, and here re-creation of a life. Still, it is noteworthy that Derrida makes no observations on the relative aesthetic worth of the three works. Art criticism written more traditionally would surely have included some commentary on the dramatic superiority Caravaggio achieves through his use of darkness and light. Saint Augustines Confessiones (c. 400 c.e.; Confessions) figure prominently as a literary touchstone for the conclusion of Derridas book. Augustines conversion in the garden appears in literary terms, his bibliomantic encounter with a text from Saint Paul. Derrida, however, focuses on Augustines numerous references to weeping and tears, symbolic of clouded vision and acquired insight. He parallels this, quite unconventionally but with great lan, to the Dionysian counterconfessions of Friedrich Nietzsche in Ecce Homo (1908; English translation, 1911). For Derrida, as different and philosophically irreconcilable as Nietzsche is to Paul and Augustine, the question that faces all three remains that of blindness and insight, a concern that is subjective in the medium through which it is expressed but universal in its appearance across the disciplines.

Conclusion

In Memoirs of the Blind blindnesses often turn out to be illustrations and figures, and paradoxes are only one form of logical conundrum. Despite their scare quotes, the "two great 'logics"' really do unfold as logical possibilities apart from the mythological and biblical stories that surround them. The first logic is "transcendental": the "invisible condition of the possibility of drawing, of the act of drawing, of the drawing of drawing."2fi It is neither the object nor the theme of any drawing, but is required in order for there to be drawing. This is the "arche-trace" that Derrida discusses in Of Grammatology: the production of differance by "pure movement" that sets up the formal properties of disjunction, rupture, difference, and deferral of meaning before the content itself becomes visible and before there is any question of shape, boundary, or area. The arche-trace is the condition under which marks may emerge, become visible, have meaning, and take on form. Derrida evokes it in Memoirs of the Blind, without repeating the analyses he had made in Of Grammatology, "Differance," Dissemination, and elsewhere, in order to set the stage for the discussion of specifically graphic marking.28 The second logic is the "sacrificial," defined as what "meets the eyes, the narrative, spectacle, or representation of the blind." By "becoming the theme" of the first logic, it reflects and represents the invisible, unrepresentable nature of drawing (MB, p. 41; MA, p. 46). Drawing is said to take place in "play" between these two principles, and the fuller doctrine of the drawn trace comprises three "aspects" or "types of powerlessness for the eye" his more precise way of putting the reflection of the meta- phorical blindness of the originary "invisible condition" of drawing (MB, pp. 44, 41; MA, pp. 48, 46). First is the "aperspective of the graphic act," Derrida's phrase for the necessary voyage into blindness that every mark makes as it moves across the blank surface. "Even if drawing is, as they say, mimetic, that

is, reproductive, figurative, representative, even if the model is presently facing the artist, the trait must proceed in the night. It escapes the field of vision." This is a way of emphasizing the "abyssal" difference between "the thing drawn and the drawing trait," which is "radically and definitively foreign to the phenomenality of the day" (MB, pp. 4445; MA, pp. 48, 50). But the trait also bears the traces of vision and daylight, since the person making the mark will remember images, motions of the hand, and the appearance of the model, all of those memories guiding the hand across the page as it travels into the whiteness of the blank paper or the darkness of the not-yet-existent image.

Bibliography and References Derrida, Jacques, The Truth in Painting, trans. Bennington, Geoff, and McLeod, Ian (Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 1987) Derrida, Jacques, Memoirs of the Blind: the self-portrait and other ruins, trans. Brault, Pascale-Anne, and Naas, Michael (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 1993) Derrida, Jacques, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore, 1974) De Saussure, Ferdinand, Course in General Linguistics (1910-1911), Literary Theory: An Anthology, ed. Rivkin, Julie, and Ryan, Michael, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1998) Alexandre Koyr, tudes d'Histoire de la Pense Philosophique (Paris: A. Colin, 1961) Diderot, Denis, Letters to Sophie Volland, (London; Oxford University Press, 1972) Llewelyn, John, Derrida On The Threshold of Sense (New York: St Martin's Press, c1986)