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, where writing itself becomes a form of “seeing in the dark” (Derrida, 1993, p. 21).

The Ruin and the Trace: Context of the Exhibition

Derrida’s curatorial project belongs to a series titled Parti pris, in which an external figure engages with the Louvre’s archives. By juxtaposing self-portraits with visually impaired figures, he disrupts the expected hierarchy between vision and knowledge. The exhibition enacts deconstruction in situ: the inscribed walls frame the images, creating a dialogue between reading and seeing. Here, the “ruin” operates both literally and metaphorically: the self-portrait as incomplete and fragile, the blind figure as a site of latent insight (Derrida, 1993, p. 21).

This interplay foregrounds his concern with the trace: the mark of an absent presence. Every act of depiction—visual or textual—is haunted by what cannot be captured. Blindness becomes a metaphor for this structural condition, wherein the unseen shapes the seen.

Blindness and Insight: Mythology and Theology

Derrida draws on mythological and biblical figures whose inability to see paradoxically confers knowledge. Oedipus, Tiresias, Isaac, and Tobit exemplify the blind seer: unable to perceive the immediate, they apprehend truths inaccessible to the fully sighted. Tiresias, living as both male and female, embodies not only prophetic vision but also the fluidity of identity, destabilizing conventional binary oppositions (Derrida, 1993, p. 45).

These figures resonate with Paul de Man’s Blindness and Insight (1983), in which textual blind spots are sites of interpretive richness. For both de Man and Derrida, sightlessness signifies critical potential: gaps, omissions, and uncertainties in perception or representation become loci of insight. Blindness is thus not a limitation but a condition for apprehending what lies beyond immediate appearances.

Homer and the Archetype of the Blind Poet

The semi-legendary Homer inaugurates the Western imagination of the vision-deprived  poet. Deprived of visual immediacy, Homer relies on sound, memory, and narrative to conjure the worlds of the Iliad and Odyssey. Language substitutes for vision, creating verbal images that transport listeners beyond the present. Derrida’s inclusion of Homer underscores a crucial point: writing and seeing are always mediated. The blind poet exemplifies the generative potential of absence, where the unseeable becomes a canvas of imagination (Derrida, 1993, p. 60).

Borges and Joyce: Blindness as Infinite Language

Two modern writers extend this paradigm: Jorge Luis Borges and James Joyce. Borges, who became progressively blind, explores infinite literary structures and reflexive textual worlds. Stories such as The Aleph and The Library of Babel construct labyrinthine networks of vision and knowledge, where reading navigates what cannot be fully seen. For Derrida, Borges exemplifies the self-reflexive text, a literary practice that “sees” its own construction (Derrida, 1993, p. 88).

Joyce, partially blind in later years, similarly foregrounds the limits of language. In Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, everyday events are articulated through elaborate linguistic architectures. The writer’s perceptual limitations inform the aesthetic form: words, like objects, are traced, manipulated, and felt before they are seen. The visionless writer transforms absence into structure, opacity into insight.

Writing, Touch, and the Body

In Memoirs of the Blind, Derrida emphasizes the interplay of hand and eye. Touch becomes a perception parallel to sight, grounding artistic and literary creation in the body. The hand, tracing lines on canvas or page, enacts perception that precedes visual confirmation. Writing, like drawing, emerges from this tactile engagement: the invisible becomes representable through gesture. Perceptually impaired creators, by necessity, privilege this modality, revealing dimensions of experience inaccessible to sighted perception alone (Derrida, 1993, p. 103).

The Self-Portrait as Ruin

The self-portrait epitomizes the tension between visibility and invisibility. Even for the sighted, portraying oneself is fraught with impossibility: one can never fully see one’s own being. For the blind, this tension is heightened yet becomes generative. Derrida positions the self-portrait alongside images of blindness, suggesting that all representation is a ruin, marked by absence and incompletion. Darkness is the condition under which self-revelation occurs; to write or to draw is to trace one’s limits, confronting what cannot be fully known (Derrida, 1993, p. 131).

Conclusion: The Blindness of Seeing

Derrida’s engagement with Homer, Borges, and Joyce illuminates the paradoxical relation between not seeing and insight. Blindness is not lack but a form of vision, enabling the creation of worlds beyond immediate perception. In the exhibition and the book, self-portraits and eyeless figures cohabit, revealing the fragile, ruinous, and generative nature of representation. Writing, like seeing, depends upon traces of the absent, unseen, and forgotten. In this sense, Derrida transforms loss of sight into a metaphor for creation itself: to see is to write, and to write is, at its root, to trace the unseen.

References

·         Borges, J. L. (1999). Selected Non-Fictions (E. Weinberger, Ed.). Penguin.

·         De Man, P. (1983). Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism. University of Minnesota Press.

·         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.). University of Chicago Press.

·         Homer. (1996). Odyssey (R. Fagles, Trans.). Penguin Classics.

·         Joyce, J. (1939). Finnegans Wake. Faber & Faber.

·         Richards, K. Malcolm. Derrida Reframed. London: I.B. Tauris, 2008.