Blindness and Self-Portraiture in Derrida’s Memoirs of the Blind
The Deconstruction of Vision. AI image Introduction: Seeing through the Blind In 1990, Jacques Derrida curated an exhibition at the Louvre, Mémoires d’aveugle: L’autoportrait et autres ruines , combining self-portraits with images of blindness to challenge conventional distinctions between seeing and not-seeing, presence and absence. The self-portrait, emblematic of self-knowledge and self-revelation, is juxtaposed with figures who cannot see, provoking reflection on the limits of representation. This tension—between visibility and invisibility—forms the axis of Derrida’s inquiry. Derrida’s text, inscribed on the walls and reproduced in the catalogue, weaves together themes of blindness, memory, and self-portraiture, positioning lack of vision not as a deficit but as a unique modality of insight. Through the inclusion of figures such as Homer, Borges, and Joyce, the exhibition illustrates how literary and artistic creation can emerge from worlds inaccessible to the eye...