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