<div>In this brilliant essay, Jacques Derrida explores issues of <br>vision, blindness, self-representation, and their relation to <br>drawing, while offering detailed readings of an extraordinary <br>collection of images. Selected by Derrida from the prints <br>and drawings department of the Louvre, the works depict <br>blindness--fictional, historical, and biblical. From Old <br>and New Testament scenes to the myth of Perseus and the <br>Gorgon and the blinding of Polyphemus, Derrida uncovers in <br>these images rich, provocative layers of interpretation. <br><br>For Derrida drawing is itself blind; as an act rooted in <br>memory and anticipation, drawing necessarily replaces one <br>kind of seeing (direct) with another (mediated). Ultimately, <br>he explains, the very lines which compose any drawing are <br>themselves never fully visible to the viewer since they exist <br>only in a tenuous state of multiple identities: as marks on <br>a page, as indicators of a contour. Lacking a "pure" <br>identity, the lines of a drawing summon the supplement of the <br>word, of verbal discourse, and, in doing so, obscure the <br>visual experience. Consequently, Derrida demonstrates, the <br>very act of depicting a blind person undertakes multiple <br>enactments and statements of blindness and sight. <br><br><i>Memoirs of the Blind</i> is both a sophisticated <br>philosophical argument and a series of detailed readings. <br>Derrida provides compelling insights into famous and lesser <br>known works, interweaving analyses of texts--including <br>Diderot's <i>Lettres sur les aveugles</i>, the notion of <br>mnemonic art in Baudelaire's <i>The Painter of Modern </i><br><i>Life</i>, and Merleau-Ponty's <i>The Visible and the </i><br><i>Invisible</i>. Along with engaging meditations on the history <br>and philosophy of art, Derrida reveals the ways viewers <br>approach philosophical ideas through art, and the ways art <br>enriches philosophical reflection. <br><br>An exploration of sight, representation, and art, <br><i>Memoirs of the Blind</i> extends and deepens the <br>meditation on vision and painting presented in <i>Truth and </i><br><i>Painting</i>. Readers of Derrida, both new and familiar, will <br>profit from this powerful contribution to the study of the <br>visual arts. <br><br></div>