Derrida’s Deconstruction of Presence in Of Grammatology and Mémoires d’aveugle
The Sign in Language and Painting Introduction Across his writings, Jacques Derrida relentlessly interrogated the metaphysical assumptions that underlie Western thought — the belief that meaning, truth, or being could be present to consciousness in its fullness. This critique begins with language, in the structure of the sign, and extends into the domains of art and perception. The present essay traces this movement from Of Grammatology (1967) to Mémoires d’aveugle: L’autoportrait et autres ruines (1990), showing how the logic of the sign and that of the portrait are structurally homologous. Both dismantle the metaphysical dream of presence by revealing that representation — whether linguistic or visual — is always a substitution, a writing of absence. The Metaphysics of the Sign In the chapter “The Signifier and Truth / The Written Being / The Being Written” of Of Grammatology , Derrida reexamines the philosophical heritage of the sign. From Aristotle through Augustine a...