The Mark and the Word: Derrida’s Tâche as a Form of Language

Tâche. AI image

Introduction

In 1990, Jacques Derrida was invited by the Louvre to curate an exhibition as part of its Parti pris series, an initiative that paired thinkers from other fields with the museum’s vast archives. Derrida’s contribution, Mémoires d’aveugle: L’autoportrait et autres ruines (Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins), explored themes of sight, self-portraiture, and blindness. The accompanying text, printed on the gallery walls, transformed the exhibition into a hybrid space where word and image intertwined. The project was neither purely philosophical nor strictly artistic, but rather a meditation on how the visible and the legible overlap and complicate one another.

Among its many reflections, Derrida dwelled on the notion of tâche—the artist’s mark or touch. This simple gesture, the trace left by the hand, opens a deep reflection on creation, interpretation, and the production of meaning. Seen through a broader lens, the tâche can be read as a metaphor for language itself: a unit that participates in a system of differences, a fragment whose significance emerges only through relation and interpretation.

Derrida at the Louvre

The exhibition Mémoires d’aveugle was structured around the theme of blindness and self-representation. Derrida selected drawings and self-portraits in which artists confronted the act of seeing and not seeing, of depicting what they could only imagine or remember. The focus on blindness served as a metaphor for the limits of self-knowledge and for the instability of representation. By juxtaposing drawings of the blind with self-portraits, Derrida invited viewers to consider how every image of the self is also an act of concealment.

His accompanying text was not merely commentary but an integral part of the exhibition. It was stencilled directly onto the gallery walls, enveloping the images in language and turning the space itself into a kind of manuscript. This interplay between drawing and writing echoed Derrida’s enduring interest in the porous boundary between visual and verbal forms. The exhibition, therefore, was not simply about art history but about the act of inscription—the gesture by which meaning, whether visual or textual, comes into being.

The Tâche: The Artist’s Mark as Trace

Within this framework, the reflection on touch and tâche becomes central. The mark made by the artist’s hand is both a physical trace and a conceptual sign. It bears the memory of contact between body and surface, yet it also belongs to a chain of marks that together compose an image. The tâche thus operates as a minimal unit of expression, not meaningful in isolation but gaining resonance through contrast and relation.

Each stroke is the residue of a gesture that has already passed. What remains on the canvas is the visible trace of an invisible act, a remainder of presence now withdrawn. The mark stands at once for presence and absence: it shows that something happened, while also pointing to what can no longer be seen. In this sense, the tâche is not merely material; it carries the structure of a sign, always referring beyond itself.

The artist’s touch, though anchored in physicality, becomes a form of writing. It records motion and intention while inevitably exceeding both. The resulting image, composed of multiple traces, invites interpretation not through direct recognition but through the interplay of difference. Meaning is not contained in any single stroke but arises from the constellation of marks that together create a field of sense.

From Mark to Language: A Broader Semiotic Reading

Viewed from a wider perspective, the tâche can be seen as an analogue to language. A single line on the canvas rarely communicates on its own; its expressive power depends on its context and its contrast with surrounding forms.

Furthermore, the process of interpretation mirrors that of reading. The viewer constructs meaning by drawing upon a repertoire of images, memories, and cultural references. The artist’s intention does not determine the result; rather, meaning emerges in the encounter between the work and its spectator. This dynamic mirrors the openness of linguistic communication, where interpretation always exceeds the speaker’s control.

The tâche thus reveals a logic of signification grounded in relationality and transformation. It demonstrates how expression, whether verbal or visual, relies on difference and repetition rather than on fixed correspondence. The mark is not a transparent medium but a threshold—a place where meaning begins to flicker into existence yet never fully stabilizes.

The Body, the Hand, and the Act of Writing

Underlying Derrida’s meditation on the artist’s touch is a reflection on the body as the origin of expression. The hand and eye mediate between interior vision and external form, transforming sensation into gesture, thought into trace. In both art and writing, the body translates an invisible impulse into material form. The tâche becomes the moment in which this translation takes place, where inner experience crosses into the visible world.

This bodily dimension grounds meaning in lived experience rather than abstract sign systems. The mark is a gesture, a movement, a rhythm—it belongs as much to the realm of touch as to that of sight. The same can be said of writing, where the hand inscribes the page in an effort to capture fleeting thought. Both painting and writing begin with contact, with a pressure exerted on a surface. The tâche, in this sense, precedes language; it is a primal form of expression that unites body and meaning, matter and sign.

Conclusion

Derrida’s Mémoires d’aveugle offers more than a meditation on art; it proposes a general philosophy of expression. The tâche, the mark, stands at the threshold between gesture and language, between presence and absence. Each stroke, like a sign, carries traces of intention yet opens itself to interpretation beyond the artist’s control. In this interplay of touch and vision, of seeing and not seeing, Derrida locates the essence of signification.

The artist’s mark, understood in this light, is a kind of writing before writing—a gesture that materializes thought while acknowledging the impossibility of full presence. To see the tâche as language is to recognize that all forms of expression share a common structure of trace, difference, and deferral. What remains on the canvas is not simply a residue of the hand, but the visible manifestation of the act of meaning itself.

Bibliography

Bennington, G. (1993). Blindness and Insight: Derrida at the Louvre. Art History, 16(3), 412–419.

Derrida, J. (1990). Mémoires d’aveugle: L’autoportrait et autres ruines. Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux.

Derrida, J. (1993). Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins (P.-A. Brault & M. Naas, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wigley, M. (1993). The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida and Hauntings of the Visible. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.